Ep. 19 The Art of Problem-Solving: strategies behind the growth of Revolut Business

[Music] Hello and welcome to the Revolut Insider Podcast where we explore Revolut rocket ship from the Insider out one episode at a time. I'm your host Alex Carill and joining me today is Manuel Soto, head of operations for Revolut Business. Hi Manuel, hi Alex, thank you for having me here. Of course, thanks for being here today. You know when I first started I honestly didn't know that Revolut had its own app for business customers specifically. Do you think I was alone in that? Well, let me tell you, Revolut Business is actually pretty big. Currently we represent around 15% of the revenue for Revolut Group. Wow. And we have more than 200,000 active business using us every month. So, as Revolut. Pretty big. And if you compare us to some of our mayor competitors on the Niobang space, where you have a larger than them or pretty close in size. I invited you on the show so you can teach me a little bit more about Revolut Business. You know what's the overall goal? Some stand out features and maybe what's in store for the future as well. And of course, I'd also like to know more about your journey here at Revolut. Of course, hopefully after everybody knows a bit about Revolut Business and definitely let's start with you. Can we share a little bit about your background and how you became a part of the Revolut rocket ship? Yeah, of course. So I started my career out of Madrid. After the union, I became a consultant. I spent around three years in Madrid working as a strategic consultant. And then after that, moved with my previous company to London. Another day and a half or so working in London as a consultant, I decided, look, I want to do something else. Back at the time, I was using already Revolut since 2016. I have some friends working in the company. So I asked around, what do you think? Do you think I'm going to enjoy working in Revolut? I love the product. So it was quite easy for me to make a decision to apply. Then you know, everything was quite well. I got enough team, seemed very interesting opportunity for me to join. And I said, why not? I know, here I am. And it's been a long now. It's been more than three years now. Wow. Yeah. And every day is a new challenge, a new opportunity. Definitely. And when you feel like you're getting the grasp of things that is new thing coming to keep you, you know, to keep you on your toes. I'm sure. And what goes into being an operations manager? Well, tons of things, if I'm honest. Overall, each different operational manager you have in the company will do different things as part of the role. But the way I would like to think about is we try to solve problems and we try to manage projects to completion. What does it mean? We were very closely together with product owners, designers, developers, people from business development, people from our compliance team, legal teams, just to make sure that whatever we want to do, a new feature, we want to launch, a new market, we want to be in, that that project gets to completion. Yeah. Sometimes it's also about how we solve a specific business problem. How do you optimize a process that doesn't work? How do you improve the level of service you give to your customers? It's a bit of everything, but as I said, I will go back to, you know, problem solving, managing complex projects, making sure that they get to completion. I think a lot of positions here, Revolut, are problem solving based. This start and mentality that we have has continued that really wherever you are, you're looking into problem solving. You're looking to see how you can think deeper and how you can deliver this wow experience. Not definitely. This is one of the reasons why most of our candidates need to go through a problem solving interview. No matter the position they're going to be working on if they join, for us is at the core of what we do is how do you actually look at what you have today and how do you get to something better and that sort of problem solving. Yeah. Actually, I had Yasin Bostanzi on an earlier episode talking about the problem solving interview because it is such an important part and we want people who can think deeper. You can find these solutions. Definitely. I actually do some interviews for problem solving. I really tried to get through a process and many people actually asked me, why are you doing for problem solving for this specific role and they always go back to this point about how important it is to be able to problem solve if you join Revolut. Definitely. So when you're problem solving and you're thinking about creating and implementing these new strategies, what skills of yours do you think have been the most useful? I would say two of them. One would be data driven. I think overall for us is very important to try and understand what is that we need to do? What is the problem we're trying to solve? And then once we're working on something on an initiative on a new feature, what are the right metrics we need to track? At the end of the day is how do you make sure that the solution you put in place makes sense and is successful and everything comes back to being able to measure the impact you have? And it happens many times that we're discussing about a project and one of the main challenges we have is okay how do we set up the structure for us to be able to measure? We want to measure and we put a lot of thinking into that. So think that data that we might set helps a lot. The second work would be prioritization. If you can think about the amount of things we try to do, launching new markets, launching new features, launching new processes, it's an incredible amount of work and sometimes it gets very very tricky to say okay what is our priority? So it's about being able to have the data to backup what you want to do and then once you have the list of things you want to do, be ruthless in prioritization. We will do everything. It's a matter of when we do some of the things that we want to do. Prioritize and see what is going to be the first steps to get you to your ultimate goal. Definitely. What motivated you to focus on the business services within Revolute? Well if I'm honest it was a bit of an accident. I initially joined our chief revenue office of special projects managers to help the departments all initiatives to focus on growing the top line of the company. So then as part of that I joined Revolute business and I started working a lot on how to streamline the process to more businesses and then how to make sure that there is no friction for them to use their account. And then after some months working with the team, I really didn't want to leave and I've been there for three years already. I'm sure they don't want you to leave either. Since you started how have you seen Revolute business evolve? Well, I've a fault I will stress the customer growth we've seen. Over the last years we've been experiencing growth in the number of customers of more than 50% year-on-year. Wow. And this is not a testament of people actually trusting us more and more. You know obviously there are new features, new markets within lunch. Our team has been growing quite a lot. We're now close to 180 people. But as I said it all comes to see the amount of growth we've seen on our customer base and being people using us every day for their business needs. I'm sure. And with FinTech usually moving faster than traditional industries, how do you stay on top of the latest trends and developments? We stopped by going back to basics right? For us back to the point about problem solving. We tried to understand what are the problems our customers have and what are the pain points this offer. So we listened a lot at the customer feedback that we received. And there are many ways we collect feedback, customer support, people that reach out to us. We have our sales team to try to discuss about how our product can help some of our customers. We gathered that feedback about the pain points, the features we're missing. And then based on that we tried to develop the products that will make sure that we tap into those needs. Obviously, apart of that we also do market research, we look at what our competitors are doing. Or we also look at the industry that sometimes we see an opportunity to use some of the business models they have to apply to us. But I think overall for us, it's been back to basics. What is the customer demanding? What do they need and how do we give them that in a easy way with an amazing customer experience? Definitely. And we know about Revolute's goal in general of disrupting the financial industry. So how have you seen Revolute business manage to do that? I would say it's similar to what we were doing on our retail business, in which it's all about how do you create a ecosystem of financial features that tap into the needs of our customers. And getting that set of features that sometimes you have to go to many different providers to get all these features. But we are able to offer that in just one app. Very simple. It simplifies all the processes they have to follow. Can you share some specific examples of how Revolute business features address common challenges faced by businesses today? Yeah, of course. I think currently we have features that are aiming to tap into some of the needs that every single business might have. You can also keep different currency at the same time in different pockets, which is very good for businesses that have needs to have different currencies or they conduct business on different countries. You have some money on your account and you want to get some return on it. We can actually give you interest on our savings account. You need to even take payments from customers, right? Of course. Your iPhone and you use our tap to pay to easily accept payments. Or you can even share a simple payment link that customers can use to pay. So they need to pay an invoice. For example, you send this link. You can send a payment link easily and they can you pay. Or even in this store, you can use your iPhone even to accept that payment quickly, which is, as I said, for the small businesses. It's a very easy, very simple way to accept payments. I think you know these small businesses like in a farmer's market or something, right? You don't really have access to a terminal, but you can just use your phone to accept that payment. Oh, you don't want the hassle to have a terminal. Everybody has a fund. True. you can use that as well to accept the payment and you don't need potentially to have in these cases they can read a quite slick customer experience and convenient you don't have to log anything else around you already have a phone with you we also have a specific features that help a lot bigger companies if I were to think about the needs of some of our business customers they need to send money all across the world you can today send money to a rebel business or a rebel retail customer anywhere just using our red tag you do that instantly and for free let's say you have an international team this says and you need to add users anywhere in the world to the account given a car again then it see access and different sets of permissions you can do that as well easily you can have really a truly international team and enable them to do their work but also imagine you want to streamline how you manage business expenses imagine being able to integrate with your HR system and set up rules based on the information on this HR system I can give you access to the account and say look for certain spends you need your line manager to approve then you will go pay the spend will need to be approved by your line manager but if you leave the company this will be updated on the HR system so automatically the car will be frozen oh well if your line manager changes the HR system will also know about that and we can actually change the approval rules automatically incredible this is stuff you can do today so automating these features instead of having it be a manual process of someone selecting each control or changing the permissions exactly once you set up you have the integration with your HR system we take care of that can't really enable to do this with a Google workspace and we're working to integrate with more HR system to make sure as again we can work with most of the HR system our customers use these days and not just working with most of the HR systems but working with businesses of all sizes as well definitely as I said we have a set of features that we spend every business being able to use and then we understand depending on the size of the business what are the features that are more helpful for those business given the size and you talked about prioritization earlier how do you decide on what features your role out next I'd say it's a combination of many different things as I said before the feedback from our customers is very important what do they need what do they want and how important that is to cover some of their pain points we also try to have as much as we can parity across markets obviously we started out in the UK and in Europe but as we launch into expansion markets we want to make sure that the experience for customers is the same and above all is sort of creating this ecosystem for all our customers to have all the financial features they need in what place as an operations manager how do you coordinate with your team when let's say we're developing this new feature everything comes back to we spend a lot of time at the beginning of a project or initiative to define what our KPIs or keep performance indicators that we care about what are we today and where do we want to be by the end of the project we need to define success criteria so what good looks like and then we need to have clear Roma with clear ownership we say look these are the tasks we need to complete to get there and who is going to own each one of them and then we give a lot of autonomy to the members on the team just to make sure that they are able to bring back to the KPI the way they are supposed to obviously we check we make sure that as a team we work together with the Libert and what we are supposed to by spectates with the people in Revolute can water autonomously and that they have that drive to complete what they need to do speaking of the dream team you know we're big on culture here which of Revolute's core values resonates with you and the work that you're doing for me would be never settled I think it's quite interesting in terms of my mindset you see in Revolute you go to other companies and you hear a lot the kind of descendants well this is how it's done it has been done like that for 20 years this is what the industry does for us is well does this make sense is this the way we want to do things do we think this is a proper solution to the problem and when the answer to that is no is okay what do we need to do to get there to get to a solution that is better than what we currently have and try to remain again and you spend one month looking at a solution you're very convinced and then you realize at the very end there is a blocker and then you go back to the beginning and try to find something else and something else and something else I think this is what is very very unique of our culture and I think it's one of the main drivers of the growth we've seen we're able to move a lot faster I think when we have this mindset of never settling of trying to find that best solution and continuing to iterate continuing to come up with the best idea I think that's what is pushing the industry as a whole forward not just revolved but I think FinTech in general of disrupting the industry is just constantly innovating and moving away from these traditional ideas like you mentioned of this is just the way we do it definitely and I think it helps a lot for people working revolved to have a holistic overview of problems I think in the past traditional financial institutions it was more segmented to have people to accomplish people to do in legal operations but it would be difficult to have people having the full picture here are what teams are very cross functional so when you are launching a new feature everybody's in the same room should you really understand the trade-offs and you can actually come up with a solution that addresses everybody's concerns and for those who may be interested in joining Revolute Business be a part of the innovation here how can they position themselves to stand out for these opportunities in an interview or even once they're hired we want to see people that are driven that are able and want to wear multiple hats and they are not afraid of challenges obviously we like people that have a story of a strong performance but we're very agnostic when it comes to industry experience we think that is smart and driven people will always do well in Revolute so as such you know previous experience is not something we actively look for for most of the positions we have we see that exceptions most of them for us is a matter of is this passion the rebound especially from smart then they will get there I think that kind of goes along with the need and importance of having interview stages like problems of it exactly it's about making sure that they're going to be a good fit and they're going to be able to meet their expectations because as I said sometimes we like to reinvent the things we do so previous knowledge is helpful but it's not always applicable to what we're trying to do yeah it makes a lot of sense we're going to take a quick break and when we come back manual I want to hear about what we can expect from Revolute Business in the future I'm going to say we'll be right back with more insider views this podcast is brought to you by Revolute Business tried tested and trusted by hundreds of thousands of businesses Revolute Business gives you what you need to run your business in one place scale and save with global payments multi currency accounts and smarter spending to learn more visit Revolute.com/business we're back here in the Revolute Insider podcast with Manuel Soto operations manager for Revolute Business how you doing Manuel very good good to be back wonderful I want to ask are there any recent success stories that you can share with me well earlier this year we announced a big partnership between AirLingues the artist's airline and Revolute Business they are now using Rebelo Pay as a way to accept payment from their customers when booking flights I think it's a very impactful and cool partnership and I think an amazing way to show that bigger and bigger customers are trusting us with their financial needs are there any tips that you have on how business customers can best utilize their accounts it's very important for our customers before starting using a specific feature to do some research try to understand what different accounts might offer trying to compare fees as you're going to pay for specific features and I think second thing on the business space is super important to be in contact with a relationship manager from the company you are thinking of you seeing somebody else from the sales team definitely and I feel like I used to work as a private banker in Los Angeles part of it is sales but I think when you are working with customers business or retail it's about building relationships and when you have that with your relationship manager they're able to understand your needs to suggest what might work for your business that maybe you're not aware of to really provide the best level of service no definitely and also sometimes you might be that after sometime working together there are features that your financial services provider does not provide but if they take feedback from customers as seriously as we take it they will make sure that that feedback gets to their product teams so they kind of start thinking about how to develop these features and I think this is quite important to keep that open relationship and be very clear about the needs and how you can work together with your relationship manager talks your relationship manager because the feedback channel is listened to and we take that seriously we're rolling out for example local livens across different countries in Europe one of the main reasons why we're doing this is it was one of the most demanded features for our customers so they were asking for it and then we decided we need to leave these two our customers and let's prioritize it asking you shall receive exactly exactly and as an operations manager do you work directly with customers it depends on the project currently we are in the process of scoping lunch in a new market so a lot of the world is having interviews with the people in the market to really understand look this is the features we're thinking of lunching what do you think is there any big gap that you think we have Is there any feature that you will consider like, look, this is something I would love to see? And having this back and forth with customers, understanding sometimes some business, what are the currencies they use more, what are the features they use more, what are the specific challenges from the way the market works, whether you have a need for using more cash or you have a need for example to have credit. Having all that feedback from customers is very, very helpful. So in the projects or initiatives in which we see value on it, we try to reach out to people that will be willing to use our features. Yeah, I mean that kind of all goes back to ensuring that our customers get the best experience. Exactly, exactly. And as you oversee these projects and launching it into new areas, obviously you manage a team to do that. Do you have any management tips for other managers out there? I think for me it's very important to enable your team. What I find very effective when I'm working with my team on initiative is to make sure that they understand the expectations, to make sure they understand what they are expected to do. And then for me to help them as much as I can to get them there. But I think on the other day, you have to trust your team and then make sure that you help them when they need help. Great advice. Okay, so what are the newest features with Revolute Business? And what can we see from Revolute Business in the future? Tons of things. There are many things coming. Well, we just launched money market funds in Europe. But we forward customers in Europe will be able to put money on these money market funds and get an interest out of their money. We're also working to launch business credit. We're trying to see what are the credit options that make more sense for our customers. But we're definitely exploring the space and they will be good initiatives coming. And then we continue working on more advanced tools to manage your in-store business. So point of sale software, next generation payment terminal, I'm more. Is there anything that you would say has been your biggest achievement during your time here? There are many, many different things, very good ones, with done. If I were to highlight one, specifically to my wallet Revolute, it's been contributing to building the ops function within Revolute Business. I think when I joined, there were only two or three ops managers in the department. Now we have an obstacle for more than 20 people. Incredible. With a very clear structure that is working very closely with product developers. So I think that's something that I'm proud of. For you, Manuel, how do you measure personal success? I think in the work context, it would be about finding what I do interesting and challenging. I like to try new things. I like to one of the things I'm not sure how I'm going to tackle, but then finding a way. I think when a personal side probably is about making sure that I have time to do the things that I want to do. Making sure that I have time to spend with my friends, with my family to travel. I think I'm going to only some matter of do I have the time to do what I do? And I think in that sense, Revolute allows me to do well on the worst side of things. And gives me the time for me to also have success with my personal life. Yeah, that's great to hear. And for me, I also have these check-ins with myself from time to time. But sometimes I need feedback either from my friends or coworkers to get a different view of things. How important do you think it is to have this feedback, either with yourself or with your team to kind of gauge how you're doing? I think it's critical. I think it's critical sometimes to add back into what we're working at the moment. And we lose track of a big picture. And I find very helpful to have feedback and explain to sometimes to my team, look, these are the things that we're doing well. I think these are the areas that we need to improve. And I also do that with myself. And sometimes I love to do this with me or even with my team, which for somebody that's been working with me for a long time. I look at something that they prepare a piece of what they did two years ago. And what I do it now. And then you see, look, you don't notice on the day today is the progress. But look at it too. Yeah. And go back. And I think it's a very good, really to check. You realize, whoa, it's been a lot of progress, it's been a lot of growth. Sometimes you just don't notice because you're adding to what comes next. Yeah, it's perspective, right? Exactly. There's this thing that I like to do about zooming in, zooming out. When you're so zoomed in and what you're doing, you kind of forget about the bigger picture. But if you zoom out and you see, wow, in the last two years, like you gave the example, you've done a lot. You can measure your growth, measure your successes over a longer period of time when you have this zoom in zoom out mentality. Definitely. I also have you navigate the complexity of the day to day. Yeah. You realize, I've been in a situation like this one before, so we will get there. It gives you that little bit of hope to get through it. And through it. It gives you that difficult parts. And you know, this feedback that you mentioned, we know from customers is critical for any business success. But we really take that seriously. How can businesses better position themselves to receive and apply feedback in their own companies? It's a very good question. I think it's all about building relationships with your providers or with your clients. It has to work both ways. But I find that when you work with somebody or you work with another company for an extended period of time, I think that helps you start understanding better the needs of one side. You understand better the ask from the other side and then you can work together to find something that works for you for you. Yeah. So thinking time helps a lot on trying to understand the feedback and trying to understand how to come up with a solution to the problems we face. And I think it goes along with this idea that it's not separate. It's a collaborative effort that you're working with your customers to do better for both sides. Exactly. There are specific types of features that we are starting to offer, our customers that require that huge collaboration in which both parties come together to try and decide, "Okay, what's the right solution how we define it and then how we implement it?" But I think putting that aside on the specific feature, I think you always benefit from having these very healthy relationships with your clients, because that also helps you even to understand more about how you can serve them better. All right, well we're almost out of time and I just realized, Manuel, I haven't found out any fun fact about you. Is there anything you might like to share today? Yeah, I mean, that is one. My friends and people I work with always make fun of is I usually quite organize when it comes to work. I usually post-structural, really light for understand what I need to do and make sure I do things according to the plan. But then when it comes to my personal life, all these admin needs, I keep postponing, postponing, postponing, postponing, and then I never do anything on time. It's very funny to see how different I am without any personal life and work. I think a lot of people actually could relate to that. And I just have one more question before I let you go today. What advice would you have given yourself when you were just starting out in your career? Career growth or growth in general, it never goes in a linear trajectory. Sometimes when you are back in uni or back in school, you say, look, I go to the next class and the next class and you spec everything to be a linear trajectory moving forward. But I think reality is that it never works like that. There's, you know, bump along the way and I think they are okay. And the sooner you realize, I think they better. I love that. Well, thank you for sharing your experience and talking to us today about Revolute Business. Thank you very much for having me and until next time you can count on that. Thank you. And for those of you listening, thank you so much and you can add the Revolute Insider Podcast to your favorite so you don't miss an episode and follow us on Instagram at Revolute Insider. Thanks for tuning in to the Revolute Insider Podcast where we explore Revolute's rocket ship from the inside out. Until next time, remember, this guy is not the limit, it's just the beginning. Revolute. Change the way you money.