FP&A Today

Larysa Melnychuk: Becoming the Agent for Change in FP&A

It is fair to say that Larysa Melnychuk did not have the expected start to a career which has since seen her emerge as the biggest transformational force in the FP&A profession
Larysa was born in the former USSR in Siberia to a Ukrainian family. Opportunities in the USSR were limited. She was resigned to give up on her childhood dream of international travel (“It was absolutely certain that I would never be able to travel.”). Eventually, Larysa and her family moved to Ukraine where she studied engineering.
However, it was her skills in finance that brought her opportunities.
She moved to the UK more than two decades ago through a British government initiative for talented finance immigrants that set her on her career.
In the UK, she gained a chartered management accountant from CIMA and spent 15 years leading FP&A teams including at a subsidiary of HSBC Bank and at multinational engineering company  Invensys (now part of Schneider Electric).
Today, as founder and CEO at FP&A Trends Group and the International FP&A Board, Larysa  is  pushing FP&A to new levels, having launched  27 chapters across 16 countries hosting webinars, posting resources and championing the industry.
In this episode Paul Barnhurst speaks with Larysa about:
Her career from the USSR to international finance leadership
Definitive new findings around the real impact of the pandemic on FP&A
Scenario management compared to scenario planning
How to assess FP&A maturity in your organization 
The new role of FP&A Data Scientist and how to get there
How companies including Microsoft, Swiss RE, and Deutsche Bank are capitalizing on of AI to change their FP&A approach
Best practices towards using external data to forge new FP&A analysis
How the horror of war in Ukraine has affected her personally and impacts her perspective
Why it is vital for anyone starting in FP&A to be the Agent for Change, rather than complain about routine
To contribute to the charities that FP&A Trends support for Ukraine follow the following links.
National Bank to raise funds for the army - https://bit.ly/3sPWRHW
Leleka Foundation - US-based, volunteer-run non-profit organization helping people affected by the armed conflict in Ukraine - https://bit.ly/3IS30sn
Children's hospital Ohmadid: https://fonddopomoga.org.ua/en/all-project-list/okhmatdet/
 
About FP&A Trends
FP&A Trends Group is a high-profile thinktank whose mission is to identify and share the latest trends and best practices in modern Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A).
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
 
Read the Blog and Full Program Transcript
Watch The Full Episode on YouTube
To suggest a great guest for the show, or if you would like to be the FP&A Leader being interviewed contact jonathan.m@datarails.com

CJ Gustafson: Gaining FP&A Mastery in SaaS Rocket Ships

CJ Gustafson started as an M&A Advisory Associate at a Big Four firm digging into the finances of big tech or healthcare firms for large buyouts. This was followed by a switch to a large private equity firm where he “learned financial modeling to marry what I learned in consulting.”
 
However, his stellar FP&A SaaS career (“moving from the funder to the funded”) began as he moved to a $500m-VC backed backup and data management platform. He set up the company’s first FP&A function. Though he would soon become a leader in FP&A SaaS,  he first had to ask what the function involved. "I was like, 'What's FP&A? What do I do here?'" However, he soon understood the power of the role: “It puts you in a great position to get into that room. You're the one with the keys to the operating plan. You have the analysis as to how things are trending.”
In a follow-up role at another rocket ship startup, CJ joined as Director of financial planning and analysis, and later Director of Investor Relations where he oversaw a rise in headcount from 150 people to almost 1,500 people and a valuation of $8.5 billion. His FP&A team was forced to constantly  evolve as the company needed to forecast its needs with growth. The SaaS FP&A achievements included working closely with their recruiting team hitting ambitious  targets for hires without breaking the operating plan; enhancing board reporting as they learnt over time what investors found most helpful; and adding more and more reporting as new leaders climbed to the top of the organization (sales, marketing, product).
 
Overall, CJ built FP&A teams of up to six people. His strategy? “ I first started by hiring financial athletes - people who could just dig in and do multiple things. Then I expanded the team to include people with specific skill sets - like systems or revenue. The biggest challenge is always to make decisions with 80% of the data you wish you had. We need to put a stake in the reforecast at some point, even if we would have liked a few more days to run more analyses. The other challenge is that you're constantly changing tires on the car while it's in motion. There are no pit stops in the hyper growth SaaS world. So if you need to, say, move from google sheets to an FP&A tool like Datarails, or move from QuickBooks to NetSuite on the accounting side, you have to do it while in motion, and not sacrifice any accuracy.”
 
He has now realized a long term goal of becoming CFO, starting in September 2022 as CFO at PartsTech, a tech ordering platform stopping the hassle of professionals buying auto parts. 
 
In this episode of FP&A Today CJ talks to Paul Barnhurst about his journey from private equity to SaaS mastery, and ultimately his CFO role. In this essential episode for anyone interested in SaaS for FP&A he discusses: 
 
His motivation for creating the fast-growing  finance newsletter Mostly Metrics, an irreverent and analytical spin on metrics which has crossed more than 10k subscribers (and growing!)
The best way FP&A can create impact for M&A activity 
 3 absolutely essential SaaS FP&A metrics based on his experience at rocket ships
The one thing he is most scared of in his new CFO role 
The painful FP&A  mistake that CJ made that changed his entire approach to financial presentation forever 
The differences between his roles in FP&A and investor relations  
His strategy for moving  from FP&A to CFO
His boxing  career 
His most inspiring advice for anyone in FP&A
About Mostly Metrics
Mostly metrics is a weekly business newsletter about finance and business models. It’s a collection of things I’ve learned and thought about in the trenches as an operator. 
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Follow DataRails on LinkedIn to find out about upcoming episodes and the latest FP&A news
Read the Blog and Full Program Transcript
Watch The Full Episode on YouTube
To suggest a great guest for the show, or if you would like to be the FP&A Leader being interviewed contact jonathan.m@datarails.com
 

Gabriela Gutierrez: Using AI to Predict Revenues within FP&A

Gabriela Gutierrez  is Financial Planning & Analysis Specialist at eBay Classifieds in Germany. 
 
Gabriela is one of our most international guests. Growing up in Ecuador, she did an MBA in Barcelona and studied in the US. She now works in Germany leading revenue forecasts for the core divisions of the online juggernaut eBay Kleinanzeigen.
 
At  eBay Kleinanzeigen (Kleinanzeigen is the German word for classifieds) she is responsible for revenue forecasting for 70% for the largest classified online ads portal in the country. She splits her days providing forecasts for the main business, advertising, subscriptions and classifieds. (After the sale of the eBay classifieds division it belongs to the Norwegian Adventina , in which eBay in turn holds 33 percent).
 
In this episode, Gabriela discusses the pivotal moment in her career: how she learnt to love coding and embraced data analytics and ML to deal with the vast amount of data at the company. 
 
She discusses spending hours and days and months learning Python (“I would spend hours trying to understand where I had made an error”) and eventually experimented with Meta’s Prophet - a forecasting procedure implemented in R and Python and her strong working collaboration with the data analytics team at the company. 
 
Originally choosing finance over a fashion career, she fell in love with FP&A as perfect for someone of her mindset, a natural introvert, who nevertheless comes alive when talking with others about numbers: “I love how you can see how any initiative in the business will influence the revenues or cost” and “tell the story using numbers.”
In this episode Gabriela talks to Paul about
Her path to FP&A 
Her secrets to balancing the metrics across the company’s advertising, subscription and classified forecasts
Her deep relationship with the analytics team
Whether analytics should be within the finance team?
Her journey from FP&A to data science
Using AI to predict revenues in FP&A 
Her passion for Germany and interests outside of finance 
Her biggest advice to succeed in FP&A
Her favorite Excel function
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Follow DataRails on LinkedIn to find out about upcoming episodes and the latest FP&A news
Read the Blog and Full Program Transcript
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
To suggest a great guest for the show, or if you would like to be the FP&A Leader being interviewed contact jonathan.m@datarails.com

Jon Laudie: From FP&A and Chill, to CFO

Jon Laudie has managed FP&A at some of the US’s most iconic companies: Netflix, subscription streaming service, Ancestry, the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world) 1800-Contacts, the world’s largest contact lens store, and Lucid, the visual collaboration suite.
Building on his 15 years of experience in FP&A, in August 2022 Jon was announced as the new CFO of Zerorez, a $150M-revenue leader  in residential and home services (using non-toxic products) which operates in 70 markets.
Jon Laudie reveals his playbook for rising up the ranks from analyst to CFO and the methods he used to advance his career.
In this episode Jon speaks to Paul Barnhurst about:
His experience at companies including Netflix, 1-800 Contacts, and Ancestry
Metrics that mattered to FP&A in these roles and its importance for anyone in similar sectors
An analysis that led to winding down a company and delivering massive gains for Ancestry
The importance of raising your hand to get life-changing opportunities in your FP&A role
His role in Ancestry’s near-IPO and what he learned from the front seat experience
The biggest opportunities and challenges FP&A face including the requirement to use predictive analytics
His favorite Excel function
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Follow DataRails on LinkedIn to find out about upcoming episodes and the latest FP&A news
Read the Blog and Full Program Transcript
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
To suggest a great guest for the show, or if you would like to be the FP&A Leader being interviewed contact jonathan.m@datarails.com

Howard Tunnicliffe: How FP&A Drives Revenue at The Economist

Howard Tunnicliffe studied chemistry originally. Once he realized he “wasn’t the greatest experimental chemist ever” he made a switch to finance.
It was during an audit contractor role at US tech company Dell in 2007 that his eyes were opened to an unseen part of finance: the “rockstars of FP&A”. He saw FP&A as a  place which joined “psychology” with the “nuts and bolts of how companies actually make money”. 
Howard is now Head of FP&A in the subscriptions business at The Economist. The newspaper dates from 1843 and is consumed by 1,185,000 of the most highly influential subscribers in the world.
In this practical and frank episode, Howard reveals the inside story of his career in  FP&A and how a revamped FP&A function has driven growth at The Economist. 
Howard talks with Paul about:
How a relationship break up caused Howard to focus on soft skills that now define his career
How the FP&A team are told to find analysis and insights which contribute to paying back their salaries up to five-times
Moving core metrics from “volume” to “value” as a response to digitization of news 
The importance of moving from hybrid roles to “centers of excellence” in finance 
The key to successful business partnering with sales and marketing teams concentrating on drivers which bring sales
How FP&A managed a pricing strategy that increased total revenue by 15% and customer lifetime value by 20% 
Though “unglamorous”, how listening in finance is key to all good finance work
Book recommendations to enhance soft skills that have transformed his career
His favorite Excel function!
Book Recommendations from Howard 
Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism,
Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog
Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence
Howard’s Courses
Grab these courses offered by Howard Tunnicliffe  to improve your Soft Skills in Finance:
Become a Confident Networker
Leadership and Influencing
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
With Datarails  you get improved data integrity and visibility helping your relationships with your internal business partners and external stakeholders; real-time latest version of all your company’s data in one place, with version control, audit trail and records, ensuring errors and multiple versions are avoided; the ability to let your data tell your story through proprietary, built-in visualization of critical KPIs in real-down; and drill-downs to answer questions on underlying data on the spot.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Follow DataRails on LinkedIn to find out about upcoming episodes and the latest FP&A news
Read the Blog and Full Program Transcript
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
To suggest a great guest for the show, or if you would like to be the FP&A Leader being interviewed contact jonathan.m@datarails.com
 
 

Budgeting and Forecasting: All your Questions Answered

In this special LinkedIn Live/ FP&A Today, join Paul Barnhurst and our all-star panel to answer your questions for  budget season based on their decades of experience. 
1) The best piece of advice you give - or have been given for a successful budget process over your career?
2) Top Down or Bottoms Up Budgeting?
3) Should we move beyond budgeting?
4) The role AI can play in budgeting?
5) What do you do when leadership comes up with unrealistic numbers?
6) How do you incorporate and manage your finance tech stack during the budget process?
7) What does the budget process in a startup look like?
8)What impact did COVID have on budgeting?
 
Listen to the expert advice of guests:
Michelle Govindsamy, FP&A Expert (former Barclays and Hollard Insurance)
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Aaron Sallade, CFO, BiggerPockets
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Zachary Rial, Director FP&A, Peek
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Annette DeYoung, FP&A Solutions Consultant, Datarails
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
With Datarails  you get improved data integrity and visibility helping your relationships with your internal business partners and external stakeholders; real-time latest version of all your company’s data in one place, with version control, audit trail and records, ensuring errors and multiple versions are avoided; the ability to let your data tell your story through proprietary, built-in visualization of critical KPIs in real-down; and drill-downs to answer questions on underlying data on the spot.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Follow DataRails on LinkedIn to find out about upcoming episodes and the latest FP&A news
Read the Full Program Transcript
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
To suggest a great guest for the show, or if you would like to be the FP&A Leader being interviewed contact jonathan.m@datarails.com
 

What Gen Z Wants in FP&A

What does Generation Z Want from FP&A?
 
Between them, college students Gabriel Valentin Navarro, Charlee Wambolt, and Derek Baker secured FP&A and finance internships at companies as diverse as Credit Suisse, Clark Construction, Amex, Expedia, Regeneron, and SavviLegal. In this special episode we explore the experiences of a Gen Z cohort experiencing work in FP&A for the first time. 
 
In this special episode we meet guests:
 
Gabriel Valentin Navarro , Intern at American Express (University of Washington)
Charlee Wambolt, Intern at Credit Suisse (Brigham Young University)
Derek Baker, Financial Analyst at Clientbook (Brigham Young University)
 
They reveal:
How to get an internship in FP&A and is it necessary?
The best advice for people seeking their first FP&A role?
Skills and tactics to maximize your internship experience?
How to take ownership of your internship experience?
What employers need to know about the approach of Gen Z in finance, and where employers  are failing.
The university classes which most prepared them for a career in finance
The values that Gen Z is looking for in their next finance role? 
Their biggest advice and takeaways for other college students taking their first steps towards internships and jobs?
Their favorite Excel function of the next generation!
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
With Datarails  you get improved data integrity and visibility helping your relationships with your internal business partners and external stakeholders; real-time latest version of all your company’s data in one place, with version control, audit trail and records, ensuring errors and multiple versions are avoided; the ability to let your data tell your story through proprietary, built-in visualization of critical KPIs in real-down; and drill-downs to answer questions on underlying data on the spot.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Follow DataRails on LinkedIn to find out about upcoming episodes and the latest FP&A news
Read the Full Program Transcript
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
To suggest a great guest for the show, or if you would like to be the FP&A Leader being interviewed contact jonathan.m@datarails.com

John King: Inside the Success of FP&A at Walmart

 
John King, Senior Manager, Analytics & Insights, Private Brands at Walmart reveals how the largest US retailer makes use of a “firehose” of data. This amounts (according to some estimates) to 2.5 petabytes of unstructured data from 1 million customers every hour. 
 
Walmart’s FP&A unit ensures this potentially limitless information provide instant business decisions for the US retail giant.
 
First John explains his path to being an FP&A leader, starting as a Geographic Information Systems (GIS analyst) at Tradewind Energy in Kansas. 
 
Here his love and appreciation for technology - which plays a central role at Walmart- was born. John's passion for technology saw him thrive at his roles at two of Walmart’s FP&A divisions: Realty Market Strategy, and now Private Brands. Private brands - a good that is manufactured for and sold by Walmart competing with brand-name products is a huge source of data and revenue. In fact,18 of Walmart’s private brands do more than $1 billion in sales and its largest name, Great Value does more than $27 billion a year globally.
 
In this interview John speaks about the intersection of FP&A and business-decisions at Walmart and his career.
 
His passion for technology and the tech stack used at Walmart 
The core metrics which Walmart judges FP&A on and what other retailers can learn 
How to get insights for the business “today or tomorrow” through dimensional modeling 
How to keep focus on the most important data in the face of potentially limitless consumer data
As both a Python and Excel expert, whether FP&A leaders need to know Python, Excel or both?
The importance of taking logic and analysis to the data - rather than the other way around
The most important advice for anyone starting in FP&A to succeed 
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
With Datarails  you get improved data integrity and visibility helping your relationships with your internal business partners and external stakeholders; real-time latest version of all your company’s data in one place, with version control, audit trail and records, ensuring errors and multiple versions are avoided; the ability to let your data tell your story through proprietary, built-in visualization of critical KPIs in real-down; and drill-downs to answer questions on underlying data on the spot.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Follow DataRails on LinkedIn to find out about upcoming episodes and the latest FP&A news
Read the Full Program Transcript
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
To suggest a great guest for the show, or if you would like to be the FP&A Leader being interviewed contact jonathan.m@datarails.com

Jamie Genge: Winning Big with Monte Carlo analysis in FP&A

More FP&A teams should take advantage of the secret power of Monte Carlo simulations, argues Jamie Genge, Head of Financial Planning and Analysis at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL).
Genge runs FP&A at the NPL which employs 775 scientists to provide research in science, engineering and technology to support scientific and commercial innovation in the UK. Some of the world’s most significant innovations have origins at NPL, including radar; packet switching, the forbearer of the internet; the ACE computer; and the cesium atomic clock.
Jamie’s start began studying Human Geography before moving to audit at PwC. Jamie went to work for the National Physical Laboratory in the UK where over 11 years he has held multiple roles, including his current role as head of financial planning and analysis for the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). 
In this wide-ranging interview Jamie provides his take on
Moving from audit to FP&A
How FP&A acts as bid support in governmental organizations such as the NPL
His passion for Monte Carlo analysis,  a mathematical technique to account for risk and upside in decision making
How Monte Carlo is used in the sales funnel, with examples from NPL
How NPL conducts its budget and forecasting
Bottom up vs Top Down budgeting 
The pride of building a team in FP&A as one of the greatest career achievements
The challenges and opportunities in FP&A at this crossroads
Jamie’s gardening project as an analogy for FP&A
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
With Datarails  you get improved data integrity and visibility helping your relationships with your internal business partners and external stakeholders; real-time latest version of all your company’s data in one place, with version control, audit trail and records, ensuring errors and multiple versions are avoided; the ability to let your data tell your story through proprietary, built-in visualization of critical KPIs in real-down; and drill-downs to answer questions on underlying data on the spot.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Follow DataRails on LinkedIn to find out about upcoming episodes and the latest FP&A news
Read the Full Program Transcript
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
To suggest a great guest for the show, or if you would like to be the FP&A Leader being interviewed contact jonathan.m@datarails.com

FP&A Today: Matthew Bernath, Host of The Financial Modelling Podcast

Matthew Bernath, based in South Africa, has been a financial modeler for 15 years. Such was his thirst to learn best practices in the field, he set up a podcast, The Financial Modelling Podcast. Eighty episodes and 100,000 followers later The Financial Modelling Podcast  is  now  ranked as one of the  top finance podcasts.
Matthew is head of data ecosystems at Shoprite. In  his previous role, Matthew steered the data analytics capability of Rand Merchant Bank, building a Rand-wide data ecosystem. He is also a startup investor.
In this special crossover edition between FP&A Today and The Financial Modelling Podcast Paul Barnhurst (aka The FP&A Guy) and Matthew Bermath, explore:
Why Many FP&A teams are missing a trick to perform real analysis (the “a” in FP&A)
How FP&A can better use financial modeling
Key skills you need to improve your financial modeling
The vital importance of understanding macro events in FP&A
Matthew then turns the tables asking Paul key questions such as
His take on the state of FP&A?
How non-finance people (who hate finance) should approach dreaded budgeting and finance?
 
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
With Datarails on your side for FP&A you get improved data integrity and visibility helping your relationships with your internal business partners and external stakeholders; real-time latest version of all your company’s data in one place, with version control, audit trail and records, ensuring errors and multiple versions are avoided; the ability to let your data tell your story through proprietary, built-in visualization of critical KPIs in real-down; and drill-downs to answer questions on underlying data on the spot.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Follow DataRails on LinkedIn to find out about upcoming episodes and the latest FP&A news