Belinda Johnson: Improving Business Planning and Forecasting with Intelligent Solutions for Better Decisioning

Mindfull is an analytics business that delivers services and software to large and medium enterprise businesses. The company has offices in New Zealand, the USA, and South Africa. Mindfull helps its clients make sense of this fast-changing world. The company helps solves real business problems with technology.

Mindfull which was formerly known as Cortell New Zealand is a Business Intelligence and Analytic consultancy, operating within New Zealand for more than 18 years implementing market-leading solutions. The company has served over 250 organizations nationally and internationally over this period. Mindfull has a wealth of knowledge in delivering performance management applications. By applying its unrivalled experience, the company delivers robust, workable and customized solutions for customers who want better value, efficiency, and accuracy from their data.

In today's global economic environment, having the right information on hand to make informed decisions is critical. Mindfull is finding that New Zealand organizations are becoming more reliant on BI and Analytics, with over 98% of New Zealand CIO's citing it as the key tool to enhance their organizations' competitiveness.

Mindfull's services promise to better inform customers about their data, how to utilize it and most importantly how to draw insight to base business decisions. The company's staff includes some of the best IBM Cognos TM1 consultants recognized globally. Mindfull has been a leading IBM Premier Business Partner recognized by IBM in 2009 at the Beacon awards as one of the top three companies globally for providing Business Intelligence solutions.

The Decisive Leadership

Belinda Johnson is the CEO of Mindfull Limited, the New Zealand consulting practice. She has a B Comm., MBA and is a New Zealand Chartered Accountant. Belinda worked for 5 years in a CA firm, then became CFO of a large property development company for 5 years. She joined Mindfull after that and has been with the company for 17 years now.

She has been working with a number of CFOs and financial executives throughout New Zealand and some Global clients. In every case, Belinda has helped them improve their business planning, budget forecasting, and reporting. This was achieved by gaining real-time visibility of key business operations and turning complex data into useful Business Intelligence, enabling the clients to make sound decisions efficiently and with confidence.

Serving Clients with Efficient Offerings

Mindfull has been in the business for 25 years with hundreds of clients locally and globally. The company's clients love it and the solutions it has implemented for them.

Mindfull's clients know that using multiple and disparate reporting systems no longer works for their forecasting and planning needs. Instead, they are looking for a single source and view of the true business performance of their organization.

Since 1998, the company has been supplying BI and Analytics solutions to over 250 organizations representing a broad cross-section of New Zealand industries. These businesses have chosen the company for the following reasons:

• Customer service – providing the right solution and maintaining client confidentiality.

• Flexibility – not all business solutions are the same, so Mindfull's approaches need to be flexible for its customers.

• Teamwork – delivering the best result through collaboration and information transfer.

• Decisiveness – in problem-solving, planning, executing plans and speed of work.

• Quality of Products and Services – market-leading software and a professional team of highly skilled individuals with nearly 20 years of experience across varied industries.

Valuable Lessons That Shaped Success

According to Belinda, hard work and tenacity will help people achieve their goals. She says one should always collaborate and employ people smarter than themselves. She presses on the fact of being authentic and have fun with the people one works with.

Standing Against Odds

While talking about the primal challenges she faced during the initial phase of her journey she recalls, in the early days of her career she believed that being a young female leader in business was not to her advantage but Belinda changed her perspective and changing her own believes has shown her how much change female leaders can make in the technology space. Women in technology have an edge and an advantage with the perspective they bring.

Authenticity and Empathy: Vitality of Leadership

According to Belinda, Authenticity and Empathy are the most vital attributes that every innovative leader should possess. She asserts, "You need to build trust with the people you work with so they can run the race with and believe in your vision. Collaborate, communicate and celebrate your team every day."

Driving Customer-Centric Innovation

By listening to what Mindfull's customers want and building those features, as per Belinda's view, is the way the company innovates its products/solutions to appeal to its target audience. She suggests, "Don't build things you think customers may want; build things they actually want. Always do research and talk to your customers."

Analytics: Instrumental for Future Businesses

Belinda foresees that the Analytics industries will be instrumental in providing all business insights that are needed to compete, success and innovate. In the future, businesses will no longer be driven by accountants and lawyers but data stewards and analysts.

An Advice to 'Understand Your Data'

"Get up to speed with understanding the data in your business. Connect the dots and harness the data to give you the insights you need to prosper," advises Belinda to the budding or emerging business leaders/executives.