Strategist on the Move

Dr. Tere­sa Schlicht­ing is an open-mind­ed, cheer­ful doer with­out a trace of atti­tude or insignias of power. Some­one who instant­ly, nat­u­ral­ly, and sin­cere­ly gen­er­ates a team spir­it and a pos­i­tive work­ing atmos­phere. She needs both. She and her col­leagues on the board are in the midst of a major task that requires them to con­vince and inte­grate many indi­vid­u­als. Exec­u­tives and employ­ees alike need to pull togeth­er and put a strate­gic trans­for­ma­tion into practice.

If you ask this top man­ag­er which of her company’s many loca­tions is its main office, she will reply that “we don’t have a cen­ter of grav­i­ty.” She rejects head­quar­ters and board­rooms, pre­fer­ring a flex­i­ble approach that prompts her to find a desk wher­ev­er she is need­ed. Nat­u­ral­ness and the abil­i­ty to relate to peo­ple are far more impor­tant to her than author­i­ty in the sense of hold­ing an office. Tere­sa Schlicht­ing has a doc­tor­ate in eco­nom­ics and became Riverty’s Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer in 2021. Her vision is also a pre­cise­ly defined long-term goal of turn­ing the com­pa­ny into a “peo­ple-cen­tered fin­tech” enter­prise. She and her team want to shape the com­pa­ny such that “peo­ple are pas­sion­ate about it” — and by peo­ple she means its employ­ees as much as its customers.

At River­ty the next chal­lenge con­sists of fill­ing this newly cre­at­ed name with con­tent and rais­ing its pro­file. Until the fall of 2022 the com­pa­ny was known as Arva­to Finan­cial Solu­tions — a sub­sidiary of the Ber­tels­mann inter­na­tion­al media cor­po­ra­tion found­ed in 1835 in the west­ern Ger­man city of Güter­sloh. The aim is to turn what was a low-pro­file B2B finan­cial ser­vice provider into a fin­tech com­pa­ny that every­one knows and likes. Includ­ing end con­sumers such as clas­sic retail cus­tomers and inter­net shop­pers who want to pay online or in installments.

Riverty’s more than 5,000 employ­ees in 13 coun­tries want to sup­port indi­vid­u­als, com­pa­nies, and orga­ni­za­tions “with eas­i­ly acces­si­ble pay­ment prod­ucts” and to “take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the entire chain of trans­ac­tions.” The idea is to enable con­sumers to ben­e­fit from mod­ern pay­ment options. And to help mer­chants prof­it from the trans­paren­cy need­ed to track pay­ment flows.

“River­ty” com­bines the words “river” and “lib­er­ty.” Its under­ly­ing idea is described as “a nat­u­ral­ly con­trolled flow of finances that guides com­pa­nies and con­sumers through the uncer­tain­ties and chal­lenges of daily life.” The for­mu­la makes sense when one con­sid­ers that River­ty now com­pris­es the After­Pay install­ment sys­tem, the Paigo col­lec­tion ser­vice, and the Aqount book­keep­ing and trans­ac­tion sys­tem. These divi­sions had pre­vi­ous­ly had their own teams, struc­tures, strate­gies, and areas of expertise.

The point of the trans­for­ma­tion is to bring busi­ness fields and their spe­cial­ists togeth­er and make use of syn­er­gies. “We’re gath­er­ing all our prod­ucts and employ­ees togeth­er under a shared vision,” says Schlicht­ing. A pri­or­i­ty is placed on offer­ing inte­grat­ed ser­vices. Which in turn puts a pre­mi­um on col­lab­o­ra­tion in new con­stel­la­tions. Strict­ly defined depart­ments are giv­ing way to indi­vid­ual group­ings, pri­mar­i­ly in the form of func­tion­al teams of experts and project groups as well as cross-func­tion­al teams.

This new ori­en­ta­tion comes with a key task that might well have seemed super­flu­ous over the past six decades of the company’s his­to­ry and there­fore hard­ly played a role: that of increas­ing Riverty’s name recog­ni­tion on a broad scale. “With River­ty we’re cre­at­ing a strong brand that will appeal to cus­tomers through­out Europe,” says Schlicht­ing. “We used to devel­op solu­tions for large com­pa­nies. Today we’re build­ing on that strength while also view­ing every indi­vid­ual as a cus­tomer. We’re tai­lor­ing our ser­vices close­ly to dynam­ic con­sumer behavior.”

Increas­ing brand recog­ni­tion also means fos­ter­ing a pos­i­tive image among the pub­lic at large. River­ty plus rep­u­ta­tion — the link­age is designed to yield mea­sur­able added value. “We’re in a marathon, not a sprint,” observes Schlicht­ing. Real­is­tic, respon­si­ble assess­ments are part of the company’s lead­er­ship cul­ture. “Our trans­for­ma­tion will never end,” she adds with a view to the future. Pre­cise­ly that makes it impor­tant to pur­sue a clear course that is com­pre­hen­sive­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed and sin­cere­ly embraced. The prin­ci­ple is the fol­low­ing: “We’re divid­ing our her­culean task into rea­son­able steps. All the employ­ees know both the road map and the mile­stones.” Yes, one might say, this should be part of any manager’s skill set. How­ev­er, the fact that exec­u­tive plans at many com­pa­nies are often not imple­ment­ed and ambi­tious aims not real­ly attained is fre­quent­ly due to the same, typ­i­cal fac­tors: the peo­ple truly need­ed for the imple­men­ta­tion are inad­e­quate­ly informed, only par­tial­ly inte­grat­ed into the trans­for­ma­tive process, and insuf­fi­cient­ly moti­vat­ed to com­mit them­selves to the cause.

“Top man­age­ment per­son­nel should be the first to notice when things aren’t being com­mu­ni­cat­ed clear­ly enough or pri­or­i­ties aren’t suf­fi­cient­ly well defined,” says Schlicht­ing with a crit­i­cal eye on her­self as well. That is why each and every employ­ee is so impor­tant to the chief strate­gist. “Every­body at River­ty should know what their very own next steps are,” she says. Con­tent is com­mu­ni­cat­ed direct­ly by super­vi­sors, via the “My River­ty” social media plat­form on the intranet, and by week­ly videos to the entire team from CEO Jan Altersten.

Real inte­gra­tion ful­fills a crit­i­cal func­tion. “We shared the new strat­e­gy in large groups and gath­ered feed­back, there­by lay­ing the ground­work for a cul­ture that encour­ages every­one to con­tribute their ideas,” says Schlicht­ing, who joined the com­pa­ny and its board in 2021. Her term for this all-inclu­sive approach is “par­tic­i­pa­to­ry think­ing.” And it seems to be work­ing. “Right from the start I was sur­prised at how open our peo­ple were and are to the trans­for­ma­tion,” she adds. There was no expec­ta­tion of sail­ing right through this type of change with­out a hitch, how­ev­er. Instead, she antic­i­pates obsta­cles along the way, much like a pilot might announce from the cock­pit that “we’ll be run­ning into pock­ets of tur­bu­lence.” At River­ty, how­ev­er, that doesn’t mean seat belts but rather car­ry­ing on with even greater élan.

Riverty’s tool­box con­tains what are known as behav­ioral anchors. The rel­e­vant indi­ca­tors assess fac­tors like employ­ee exper­tise, skills, and trans­dis­ci­pli­nary qual­i­fi­ca­tions. The anchors can also be applied to enhance the company’s con­cen­tra­tion on end cus­tomers. This focus rep­re­sents new ter­ri­to­ry that needs to be acquired. “We live our prod­ucts,” remarks Schlicht­ing. But she also often asks, “How well do we actu­al­ly know and under­stand our prod­ucts? How should we be devel­op­ing them further?”

An impor­tant future busi­ness in Riverty’s exten­sive finan­cial ser­vice port­fo­lio has to do with dig­i­tal­iza­tion and the tran­si­tion under­way in mobil­i­ty. The aim is to cre­ate “seam­less cus­tomer expe­ri­ences” in the use of pub­lic trans­porta­tion and other forms of mobil­i­ty. In addi­tion to tick­et­ing and pay­ments for pub­lic trans­porta­tion and dig­i­tal pay­ment options for large park­ing garages, River­ty also spe­cial­izes in what are known as mobil­i­ty budgets.

Employ­ers can set up month­ly bud­gets that let employ­ees choose among car shar­ing, rail ser­vices, e‑scooters, and other ways of com­mut­ing to work. By let­ting expe­ri­enced providers han­dle the rel­e­vant pay­ment process­es, com­pa­nies save time and money and free up resources for their core activities.

“In addi­tion to the ben­e­fits that mobil­i­ty bud­gets offer for ESG report­ing, they can also increase employ­ers’ recruit­ing power and improve their brand­ing. The bud­gets can be used to pro­mote green forms of mobil­i­ty and there­by help pro­tect the cli­mate and the envi­ron­ment,” says Schlicht­ing. Soon com­pa­nies will also be able to select more indi­vid­ual func­tions such as bonus sys­tems that incen­tivize the use of espe­cial­ly envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly modes of trans­port. “Gam­i­fi­ca­tion” is what Schlicht­ing calls the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of points, which can moti­vate peo­ple in play­ful ways to walk or ride their bicy­cles to work.

River­ty has already test­ed these types of sys­tems at its own com­pa­ny, of course, and gen­er­at­ed fur­ther ideas. “We can even orga­nize dig­i­tal­ly run con­tests between depart­ments, and reward teams that adopt espe­cial­ly cli­mate-friend­ly forms of mobil­i­ty,” says Schlicht­ing. In short, she wants to make mod­ern finan­cial ser­vices more of an “expe­ri­ence.” That is the emo­tion­al core of Riverty’s trans­for­ma­tion. The chief strate­gist is mobi­liz­ing her com­pa­ny to sup­port change while tak­ing a very peo­ple-ori­ent­ed approach — with both her team and her customers.