Gina Mastantuono, CFO at ServiceNow, is a proponent of stretch assignments.
"When I graduated college, I never imagined, as a woman, that being a CFO was possible," Mastantuono told Fortune earlier this spring. "I got there by pushing the envelope and getting outside my comfort zone. Growth and comfort do not coexist. You have to put yourself out there in the small ways and the big ways. Don’t be afraid to speak up in those meetings."
Mastantuono, who previously had CFO roles at Ingram Micro and Revlon, took on the finance chief position at ServiceNow in January 2020. Three years later, the tech company made its debut on the 2023 Fortune 500 list. Fortune sat down with Mastantuono in June to discuss the company's momentum and how it has avoided layoffs.
Taking a risk
With digital transformation and remote work as tailwinds, ServiceNow landed at No. 499 on the Fortune 500 list. The revenue threshold for making the annual list was $7.238 billion this year, up 13% from a year ago. ServiceNow, a SaaS company led by Bill McDermott, chairman and CEO, generated revenue of $7.25 billion, up 22.9% year over year. The company has more than 20,000 employees.
“We just hit our first $2 billion quarter,” Mastantuono said. In following an organic growth strategy since the company was founded, “we were one of the only software companies to reach $7 billion in revenue almost entirely organically in 2022," she noted. "We're expecting $8.5 billion in revenue in 2023.”
ServiceNow was founded 20 years ago by Fred Luddy, who had a vast background in coding and IT, Mastantuono explained. Luddy’s first use case for the tech company was IT management. “But his belief from day one was that this platform could go across the enterprise and really help simplify work, no matter what department you're in,” she said.
With a growth mindset, ServiceNow took a big risk a few years ago—expanding from an IT focus to include customer service and employee workflows, now all included on the platform she said. Some told ServiceNow leadership they shouldn't venture too far afield, she explained. They said “we're going to infringe on some competitors, we're going to make some people angry, and we don't have the right to play in that space,” Mastantuono said.
Along with ServiceNow’s platform, other big customer service and HR solution providers in the tech sector include companies like Salesforce, Oracle, Workday, and SAP.
But as finance chief, Mastantuono's philosophy is: “If CFOs don't take smart risks around investments that drive new innovation, we risk being left behind."
Some of ServiceNow’s Fortune 500 clients include Walmart, CVS Health, and AT&T. For example, AT&T, which has more than 200,000 employees, implemented the platform as its foundation technology for digital transformation. Using customer workflows, and leveraging A.I. and machine learning, helps to predict customer disruptions, like outages, before they occur, according to ServiceNow. AT&T employees use the platform for real-time collaboration and to automate processes in departments from IT service management, compliance, and security to talent management, finance. And the telecom company also co-developed a solution with ServiceNow to manage its 5G and fiber networks globally.
“A lot of our innovation that we've built has been in response to what our customers have told us they need and want,” Mastantuono explained. “I'm talking to customers all the time, and understanding their needs.”
No layoffs
As CEO, McDermott said in an interview in January that ServiceNow will have “absolutely no layoffs in 2023.” Mastantuono said she’s often asked: “How have you been able to do that when everyone else is having to lay off people?”
“When the macro really started to turn, early last year, we didn't stop hiring,” she explained. “But we really moderated the pace very early on. And that has helped. But what we’ve also done is partnered and strategized with our chief people officer [Jacqui Canney] about ways to redistribute and retain talent.”
She continued, “In 2022, we filled 1,500 open positions through talent mobility—that's existing employees. So, providing them new opportunities to grow their careers, while at the same time not having to go externally and bring in even more headcount into the business.”
“We’ve always prioritized growth and profitability,” Mastantuono said. "It's not all about the numbers. The only way that I’m going to hit my growth targets is if I have a really clear talent strategy for the entirety of the company." So, she works hand in hand with Canney. "I probably spend as much time with her as I do with my chief revenue officer," she said.
Vowing to avoid layoffs may seem like a stretch to some—but that's the type of assignment Mastantuono embraces.
