FP&A Today

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/

For the Love of FP&A: Christian Wattig

Only our second ever returning guest, Christian Wattig, a veteran former leader of FP&A at P&G, Unilever, and Squarespace, reveals new skills he has learnt as he created the recently-launched 8 week Wharton Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Certificate Program, one of the most comprehensive FP&A training courses on the market. He describes highlights from his career, new strategy, and analysis, and how he sees the future of the profession.
In this episode: 
The common bond between FP&A educators such as Christian and former host Paul Barnhurst and Glenn
FP&A at multinational consumer goods companies P&G and Unilever 
Startup FP&A vs Big FP&A
Creating FP&A Prep  to the  new Wharton (University of Pennsylvania FP&A) 8 week Online Course 
Two great books I recommend The CFO Lens, Ravi Kumar, and Future Ready by Steve Morlidge and Steve Player 
Two Fascinating FP&A Things I hadn’t come across in 14 years previously: Business Driver Tree Analysis + Differences-in-Differences Analysis 
BI, financial analysis and data science vs FP&A
Building an FP&A Team through four phases explained-data focus, story focus, and proactive value creation
The importance of FP&A tools and choosing the right one 
Key insights and trends for finance we will see this year 
Practical uses of AI in FP&A
8-WEEK ONLINE COURSE Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Certificate Program https://wallstreetprep.wharton.upenn.edu/financial-planning-and-analysis-certificate/
Sign up to Christian’s weekly (free) newsletter with tips and practical FP&A advice: fpa prep.com/newsletter
Connect with Christian on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-wattig/

The Art of Finance: Joe Knight on Demystifying Numbers to Empower Businesses

When any finance business partner–a CFO or an FP&A professional–wants their counterpart across the table in marketing, sales or HR, to understand the essentials of numbers, they hand them the business classic, Financial Intelligence, A Manager's Guide to Knowing what the Numbers Really Mean.
First published in 2006, the book has been named in the Top 100 Business Books of all time and remains a word of mouth sensation and continues to sell rapidly nearly two decades on. The classic was authored by former CFO, Joe Knight and Karen Berman. Until her untimely death 10 years ago, Karen, was also a force in engaging all employees in improving a company’s finances
Based on the principles of the book, Joe Knight, Partner and Senior Consultant with the Business Literacy Institute,  trains execs at some of the biggest companies in the world including NBCUniversal, Electronic Arts, and McKesson on business partnering and the importance of getting a business to understand and embrace their numbers and works. He has also been a guest on Bob Brinker’s Money Talk show on KABC ratio and CNBC’s Morning Call program.
In addition his engaging keynote addresses, include "The Love affair with EBITDA" and "The Secrets of Finance Revealed". As CFO of Setpoint Companies, he spearheaded the financial education of engineers in this automation and roller coaster company and tells us some of his adventures from this journey and secrets to finance business partnering at the highest level.
In this episode 
The origins of the writing one of the most famous business books  
Why I hated my time in finance at Ford Motor Company and how it shaped my thinking and journey
Busting the fallacy you shouldn’t share your numbers with your business
Why actuals are not actual but just a guess (accountants close your ears). 
How business partnering has changed 
The metric of Financial literacy has stayed at 38% in companies for large companies nearly 20 years on
Why it hurts operators if they don’t understand the numbers 
Focusing on three to five numbers 
My experience with GE and NBC 
The art of using limited data in finance 
Harry Potter roller coasters and what it taught me about the ridiculous focus on EBITDA 
Having seven Kids
Not being a “numbers” person but a accretive person with numbers 
Business Literacy institute: https://www.business-literacy.com/
Contact: mail@business-literacy.com

When AI Outperformed Financial Analysts – Alex Kim

In this episode Glenn Hopper talks to the researcher responsible for the groundbreaking study which found that AI is better at conducting financial analysis than humans. Alex Kim, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, provides a full overview of his findings, methodology and the impact on FP&A, CFOs and finance from the attention-grabbing study “Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models”. The analysis, which made headlines across the world, found AI produces a 60% rate of accuracy in predictive financial performance. Human experts’ accuracy tends to fall between 53% and 57%.
In this episode Alex Kim reveals the implications for finance professionals: 
Alex’s finance background – from a Master’s degree in Business Administration to a Accounting and a dual Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Business Administration- to his doctoral and PHD career
How he self taught himself coding and AI
Practically how do finance pros take the insights from this paper and use them in their day to day?
Why the model didn’t do so well with loss-making or startup companies 
Improving on the performance models using a startup company data
How can you combine AI and Human Intelligence 
What humans can do better than AI in financial forecasting 
Future research projects into information processing for investors 
How to keep up to date on the latest ground breaking research in AI and Finance
My military experience stationed with US soldiers in South Korea
My favorite Excel feature ( and why one thing about Excel still cannot be rivaled).
Read the full paper here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4835311
Check out the analyzer for yourself here: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-9P3sIn487-financial-statement-analyzer
Follow Alex Kim on Linkedin Ph.D. Student at the University of Chicago: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgunwookim

How to get on CFO headhunters’ radars and win your next role

We received a flood of FP&A and CFO questions from our audience (and FP&A Reddit). These and more are put to this this week’s finance headhunter special guests: Nick Gribbon,Senior Partner, Financial Officers Practice at Essenta, and Laura Streather, Consultant, Private Equity at Essenta, who run the finance headhunting section at the global executive search firm. Hear all the behind the scenes anecdotes and secrets to getting your next big FP&A or CFO job.
Connect with Nick Gribbon, Senior Partner, Financial Officers Practice at Essentahttps://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-gribbon-37349b1/Connect with Laura Streather, Consultant, Private Equity at Essentahttps://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-streather-451966137/
Shortage of Exit Private Equity CFOs and what you will need to fill the role  
How to go from Director FP&A of a large public company to CFO of a PE-backed company
The importance of demonstrating “behavioral competencies of leadership” to pass the first screening 
Getting exposure to the right industry – how important is it?
Getting to understand where you are going to have most impact in your next role
How important is the CPA?
What is the best way to get on headhunters’ radars? 
What the headhunter interview looks like and is designed to accomplish for you and the recruitment firm?
The importance of referrals and how to play them to your advantage 
How slow is the CFO job market?
Is being the CFO at a private equity-backed company right for you?What can candidates add to CVs to stand out?
Salary bands and how to negotiate the most money
Salary inflation and how that impacts senior role
Will moving as CFO from a $100m to $1bn company automatically get you a higher salary?