FP&A Today

Soaring Through FP&A: How Bruno Oliveira is Helping Swissport Take Flight

This year Bruno Oliveira got promoted to CFO, flying up the FP&A route at Swissport, the world’s leader in airport ground services and air cargo handling, active at 286 airports in 60 countries.
In this must-listen episode:
FP&A in the trenches from banks, to automotive, agriculture and aviation at Swissport
How to cope without control on demand in aviation
Financial planning three to six months ahead 
Structure of FP&A at Swissport 
Factoring in safety as the most important aviation metric, direct labor and fleet management costs 
How our FP&A Team works together with our data analytics team 
Cross functional relationships piloting Swissport success 
Walking through the business budget planning at Swissport  
Instead of  dreaming  of a new technology (such as AI) use the specific blade of a swiss army knife for your business  
Why PowerQuery is mandatory for FP&A
Getting to fifth place in Latin America in the Financial Modeling World Cup
Follow and connect with Bruno  on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bosilva/

IBM CFO’s powerful lessons for getting FP&A into Owner Mode

Forget “Founder Mode”. For those in FP&A your CFO expects Owner Mode. “In rugby, if you observe, a player often clings on to the ball, not letting it go out of his hands until the goal is scored. That’s how we need to handle things. Own it — cling onto it — achieve the goal,” says former IBM India CFO Ravikumar Ramanan, author of the brilliant book: The CFO Lens, how to Thrive in the Fast Changing World of FinanceHe tells Glenn Hopper: “The expectation of a finance partner is not to stop at the sign off and say, okay, I have now committed $10m in company money. You then need to get  involved in the execution of the strategy. I changed my role from just being the person who signed off and asked for periodic reports to actually going out into the field and starting to talk and feel like an owner.”In this masterclass episode Ravikumar reveals
The Bigger business context we are living through that finance cannot ignore
The failures when strategy projects are not being tracked by finance 
How to feel really that the results are yours
Storytelling and  influencing secrets from the finance seat 
Good and bad costs 
Balancing short term and long term in your finance role
My biggest advice for people to succeed in a finance role at any stage of their career 
My favorite Excel Function (even corporate legends get asked)
Further reading
Ravikumar Ramanan: The CFO Lens: How to Thrive in the Fast-Changing World of FinanceMade to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath:Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

Getting to big wins with AI in FP&A – Don Tomoff

“Not having the answer is no longer acceptable because you are 30 seconds from having the answer. You’ve just gotta ask.” – Don Tomoff 
Don Tomoff, founder of Invenio Advisors, is a finance rockstar and a trailblazer in AI adoption for finance. As a CMA his life’s mission is to make work easier for literally everyone he encounters. The CMA and finance expert  has more than 30 years of experience spanning accounting, being a CFO, and consulting. Don Tomoff is not just an expert in his field including AI. He’s a passionate advocate for using technology to drive efficiency and innovation.
In this episode, Don emphasizes how AI has transformed the speed at which financial professionals can access information and solve problems. “Right now, if you’re doing AI, you have a huge advantage against those that aren’t. But I think in the next year or so, you’re going to quickly shift to, it’s a liability for you if you aren’t doing it.”
In this episode 
Streamling finance tasks as an accountant and FP&A
Why efficiency is only a part of the finance AI revolution 
Biggest area ripe for AI FP&A Disruption?
Democratization of data science 
Retrieval augmented generation to analyze hundreds of documents (for instance filings)
Get the Paid Plan 
TwinzTalk Tips 
Why what hat you can do in two minutes gets done 
Distinctions between OpenAI and Claude
Finance in five years
Power Query  and UNIQUE
Follow and connect with Don Tomoff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dontomoff/

How to sell your report successfully- with Skip Kastroll

Skip Katroll is Senior Director, Insights and Analytics at AmPhil. AmPhil helps big-name nonprofits raise more money and advance their missions. This episode is packed with practical and honest insights and takeaways you can apply to your day job. Skip gives the inside story on creating and selling a report at Amphil, "Unlocking the Secrets of Lost Sales Opportunities", and the approach that he followed. Skip also reveals how a background leading finance at top universities alongside math, economics (and a love of sci-fi) informs his FP&A.
Prior to joining AmPhil, Skip was an associate vice provost at Liberty University responsible for the institution’s strategic planning and regulatory compliance. 
In this episode: 
My multidisciplinary journey (aka “confused youth”) - studying math, economics, educational leadership and religion  (and how it applies to my data insights) 
FP&A business partnering at a University Finance team - navigating functions from the Dean of Arts to the Dean of Engineering 
3 proven strategies for financial data and analysis getting management to informed decisions
Countering “so what, and "why am I am here” approaches from business partners
How to navigate ad hoc requestsWhen you don’t have enough access to data 
The power of benchmarking 
Leading vs lagging indicators 
Unlocking the Secrets of Lost Sales Opportunities - a big impact report and the challenges, impact and approach
My favorite Excel function
Connect and and ask questions to Skip over on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skipkastroll/
Further Reading:
Skip Kastroll: Bridging the Gap: Translating Finance Insights for Effective Decision-Making

The power of flexibility in your FP&A career - Laura Bloom

Laura Bloom started as as a contracts manager for an air cargo company. In a dramatic switch she moved to accounting, then finance and FP&A at top companies including Dotmatics, Salesforce Comcast, and is now senior finance manager at Icertis, a SaaS platform for AI-powered contract intelligence.
In 2023 she founded Impact FP&A specializing in Go-To-Market (GTM) finance strategy for companies. In this episode she reveals the importance of flexibility in her career and joining the dots in your story: “For example, with contracts management, you wouldn’t think that would translate into finance and accounting. However, as part of that role I was working with sales to build the sales bids for new business. I was also working very closely with accounting to give them revenue expectations for commercial contracts and OPEX expenses for our commercial properties.”
In this episode:
My passion for bringing order from chaos in finance
Examples from my FP&A including calculating the obsolescence reserve for almost a billion dollars worth of inventory on a biannual basis
Building a new model and updating assumptions (transforming the process from 6 months to 60 days and releasing $5m back to the balance sheet)
The importance of data minimalism
Monte Carlo analysis giving you a wider range of possible outcomes 
Tableau as a data visualization tool and digging into commissions
Importance of flexibility in a finance and FP&A  
Most important FP&A Skill? 
The ladder of abstraction
The most vital go-to-market finance metrics 
Connect with Laura on LinkedIn or email her at contact@impactfpna.com

The last frontier: Getting FP&A from Back Office to Brilliant - Daniel Paik

Former CFO Daniel Paik, turned founder and CEO of CuroWork is at war on back office functions. He vows to “transform back-office departments from cost centers to profit centers” with FP&A in their sights. He says: “I call the back office the last frontier. We are the only ones not measuring ourselves. Therefore we get crap given to us every single day."
Here are some of the ways that Daniel Paik, a former CFO, fixed the “back office” mentality in finance teams.
Salespeople at one company said that the hardest part of their job is the 4 hours of entering Excel sheets related to forecasts. After looking at the situation, Paik decided to hire a financial  analyst (at $80,000) to take away the pain for salespeople previously diverted away from the selling - bringing in $4m in extra revenue
Paik discovered and stopped a recurring report that hasn’t been read by the client in three years - giving back up to 5 hours a week to finance for strategic tasks
By analyzing  how a finance professional was performing next to her job description Paik found “she was 140% utilized just on her recurring work” (compared to ad hoc work or project work). “By reallocating a lot of our time to project work we can become a value center or a profit center.”
In this episode:
ERP SOS! How an  8 month ERP implementation turned into two years 
Moving from individual finance contributor to manager: tips and tricks 
What Peter Drucker actually said about measurement (and why it matters) 
The unmeasured country of Back Office functions
Managing finance buckets into recurring work, ad hoc work and projects
How to balance a million finance projects
The right metrics to measure the finance team
Average worker only productive up to 4 hours a day and how to get the most of that time
What is a business for?”
The real power of a project
The power of AI in the back office 
Connect with Daniel Paik on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielpaik/
CuroWork: https://www.curowork.com/

Selling the Stack: Tyler Caskey, Partner at TheBeanCounters

CFO and Partner, Tyler Caskey loves hunting down and automating manual processes, installing better systems, and redesigning how information is gathered. He adds: “On average I can cut 40% of the time cost out of most finance and payroll teams within 12 months. And with the 40% saved time they can significantly reduce error rates and start to show their true value.”
In this episode Tyler talks to Glenn about some of his experiences working with teams from New Zealand, Australia, the US, UK and Europe.
This episode covers:
Getting dropped into audit in KPMG New Zealand before discovering a  “love for helping messy clients”
Nonprofits and the finance of Movember getting up to 3000 transactions per day 
How to sell the change of system stack 
SAP vs Xero vs QuickBooks 
Tech upgrades ahead of a liquidity event
How I have seen PE destroy the culture of the business (and some good experiences)
Sharing scars and war stories from PE 
My finance horror at a restaurant business and why I walked out 
CFOs and sniff testing the budget
How we are using AI in finance and budgeting  
My experience being a CFO in the wild recruitment business 
How finance can prepare themselves to make informed tech decisions
Involving junior team members on projects
Basketball meditation and wellness  
Connect and chat with Tyler on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylercaskey/

Getting to an amazing FP&A Data story – Brandon Wilson

Continuing our “Masters of FP&A Data” series, we have the privilege of hosting Brandon Wilson, Founder and CEO of Steady Dynamic. Brandon works with clients from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies giving expertise to those who lack experience building digital solutions. He encourages big ideation, assuming technology can solve any problem, and works to prioritize and constrain scope relative to business objectives. “FP&A has to some degree implemented predictive analytics” he says. “Whether that’s custom or bespoke modeling or just using tools. The next generation is unlocking prescriptive analytics. That is not just presentation or data for the purpose of extracting insights, but insights that come with recommendations and, and the ability to run multiple scenarios. “Real time data acquisition and analytics is also empowering us to do things more on a daily, if not hourly basis, and see things way sooner, uh, from, from an analytics and forecasting perspective.”
In the second week of data-nerding-out we have a treat:
AI’s transformation of finance and financial modeling
Predictive analytics to prescriptive analytics 
Moving from cost center to “value add” in finance through the data
How best to deliver and integrate your data to enhance financial functions
Studying sentiment analysis in your CRM to investigate pipeline 
Complex models in FP&A including clustering and Naive Bayes
SQL vs no SQL and FP&A
The Panama papers
What the data environment looks like for FP&A in the next two years 
Zero shot prompts and chain of thought prompting 
Reverse engineering to get the best AI finance results 
Connect with Brandon Wilson on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bkwilson/

Getting more wins from your data - with Nicholas Mann

Nicholas Mann, founder and CEO Stratos Consulting, has got the best out of the data for hundreds of companies. He has helped data and analytics leaders go from siloed, heterogeneous data source to a  modeled data warehouse and analytics platforms. In this awesome analytics episode he shares some of his experiences:
Getting companies on their data journey
The importance of FP&A not just staying in their lane 
Inner workings of how data is impacting the rest of the business 
From deep finance domain expert to understanding the business
FP&A Data Maturity Assessment 
When Business Grows – how do FP&A teams grow with them?
Data Stewards and how they work 
Creating a finance and FP&A Center of Excellence 
Why I favor the Snowflake ecosystem 
What you should hire consultants for – and not hire them for when it comes to finance and data strategy
People in data: change management challenges
Using AI for variance analysis 
About me: rare eye condition achromatopsia and how I have overcome the limitations 
Notes
fpatoday.scoreapp.com (answer 15 questions to discover where you are in your data data journey)
https://stratosconsulting.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-mann-80855a1a/

20 years of top FP&A (from Amazon to Siemens and everything in between)

Maria del Dado Alonso Sanchez, a recognized and respected Board Member and Chief Financial Officer for large & mid-cap companies has been a finance leader in sectors including e-commerce, technology, gaming ad tech, and online hospitality. She says: “Each sector really presented its unique financial challenges and strategies.” 
Learn invaluable lessons about FP&A from Maria who has served more than 20 years at blue chip companies:
How I grew as a finance professional at Amazon and the launch of Amazon Prime and Amazon Europe was created
Acquiring of Booking.com by Priceline 
Azerion growth from 200m Euros to 500m Euros in only two years to IPO and Belin’s Brand Group ended up with a leveraged buyout 
From law to finance and my finance career  
Core KPIs and metrics across diverse businesses 
Getting the “finance footprint” from a CEO before I join
Flexibility and adaptability in fast-growth companies
Customer obsession at Amazon vs the 80/20 principle at Booking.com
My approach to financial modeling 
Levering analysts with historical data at C&A
Implementing BI tools and justifying the investment 
Why AI in finance is a phenomenal opportunity and my role as Board Member for Women in AI Netherlands
Kickboxing and karaoke 
Connect with Maria del Dado Alonso Sanchez on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariadeldadoalonsosanchez/