FP&A Today

Breaking Bad: Getting to Beyond Budgeting

Bjarte Bogsnes has worked with companies, from IKEA, H&M,Pernod Ricard, Volvo and Equinor (Scandinavia’s largest company). His approach, “Beyond Budgeting” involves wholesale rethinking about budget approaches. In today’s episode, Bogsnes rails against the “misery” and “borderline unethical behavior” in traditional budgeting within companies, as he talks about the seachange happening in businesses. He talks to Paul Barnhurst as he publishes his new book, This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations (2023).
 
The episode covers
 
Definition of beyond budgeting as an antidote to “serious problems with traditional management”
How traditional budgeting gets “trust” and “predictability” wrong 
Your answer to “Why are you budgeting?” shows the problems inherent in existing process
How budget process are “borderline unethical”
Equinor (Scandinavia’s case study) change 
Making organizations more adaptive and human in the process of transformation
Don’t start with rolling forecasting 
How a Vinyl collection of 3,5000 is a unique musical passion 
How Beyond Budget “will happen” in the next decade 
 
Links 
 
Bognes Advisory bogsnesadvisory.com
 
FT (case study of Ikea): CEOs forced to ditch decades of forecasting habits
 
Bjarte Bogsnes: This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations
 
 
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YouTube video of the episode
 
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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.

How to improve your Excel skills

In this special FP&A Today episode, Paul is  joined by three Excel experts whom Microsoft has recognized as Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs). Learn why it is important to up your Excel game and how you can do it. Below check out offers (saving $$$) from our MVPs exclusively for listeners of FP&A Today.
Get all your questions about Excel answered by the expert panel:
George Mount, Founder Stringfest AnalyticsCelia Alves, CEO, Solve and Excel ConsultingMark Proctor, Excel Off The Grid
In this special episode:
Our MVPs on when Excel first emerged as a difference-maker in their lives
George Mount on the failure of finance to adapt to technology
The challenge of finance teams descending to the lowest common Excel skill set
The untapped power of PowerQuery and where to start
The power of prepping your data properly
Python vs Excel
Automating Excel reports using Python
How to deal with tricky Excel issues
Will Excel go extinct with the rise of AI
The thing that you absolutely could not live without in Excel
Connect with George Mount
Connect with Celia Alves
Connect with Mark Proctor
Special Offers Exclusively for FP&A Today listeners
1) George Mount
Subscribe to George’s newsletter to get access to his data analytics resource library and many other goodies https://stringfestanalytics.com/subscribe/
2) Mark Proctor
https://exceloffthegrid.com/fpa is an exclusive offer for our training academy to the listeners of FP&A Today - 30-day full access trial for $1, followed by a $100 annual discount. This is valid until 31 May.
Excel Off the Grid 
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ExcelOffTheGrid
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markstephenproctor/
3) Celia Alves
Celia offers an online course about automation of Excel Reporting procedures. Check out the special FP&A Today discount here https://snapreportschamp.com/course
DISCOUNT CODE for 20% OFF: FPA20
(valid up to June 4, 2023).
Subscribe to Celia’s newsletter https://snapreportschamp.com/subscribenewsletter
Celia Alves - Solve & Excel - on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/CeliaAlvesSolveExcel
YouTube video of today's episode
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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

Syed Nadeem: Learning from your Failure in FP&A

Syed Nadeem is a top finance leader in Saudi Arabia. But the director of Budgeting at listed telecom company, Zain KSA, says he considers his previous failures as pivotal to his position today.  He says: “When I was young [and experiencing failure] I felt so disappointed I thought my world was going to end. Sometimes  you don't get a promotion and you see other peers getting a promotion. I struggled after getting my CMA (Certified Management Accountant). Sometimes you are not getting good increments, or you are about to hire someone and they reject you. But what I learned is this failure actually makes you strong for the future role.”
Today, he shares his full breadth of experience-both good and bad and explains why he provides (free) mentorships to businesses on a daily basis and to his 15,000 followers on LinkedIn.  
In this wide ranging interview Syed explains:
Uncovering the power of FP&A in companies providing a “helicopter view of companies”.
The role and limitations of certifications in FP&A
How “selling”  is the core to getting a good job in finance 
The power of technology in FP&A and “unlearning and relearning every day”    
The secrets to effective communication with senior leadership
How bad experiences make strong finance business leaders 
The secret to talking to Investors in a Language they Understand 
 
Links 
Get a free one-to-one career session with Syed at https://calendly.com/syednadeem/connect
 
Read the full transcript and blog
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YouTube video
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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

“MoneyBall for FP&A”: Maura Feddersen on Winning in Forecasts

 
Maura Feddersen, behavioral research manager at Swiss Re, is an economist who previously worked in the economics team of two of the Big Four Accountancy firms: PwC and KPMG.
 
She got switched on to behavioral economics as “I always felt there was something a bit missing in economics. [Economics] assumes that people act quite rationally…and that was just not the case. Behavioral economics brings together the economics, as well as insights from psychology, to try to assess how humans really make decisions”.
 
This  fascinating episode with Maura, uncovers the lessons that FP&A teams can learn from behavioral economics to improve forecasting and the power of “knowing what knowing what you don’t know.”
 
This episode includes   
 
New research revealing that investors predictions are only slightly more accurate than a chimp
How new forecasting methods improved accuracy at Swiss Re by 5%
The cognitive biases we need to be aware of that undermine accuracy (such as the dangers of groupthink)
Meryl Streep’s Oscar nominations and your forecast confidence levels tested 
How to try and manage cognitive bias
The true economic impact of uncertainty in the global economy and in your business 
The opportunities and limits of AI forecasting 
Using RIO (Rational Impartial Observers)
The biggest failure in her career
Favorite Excel function
Her biggest advice for someone starting out to get really good at forecasting 
 
Further reading 
 
Actuaries magazine: So You Think You Can Underwrite [Maura Fedderson]
 
 Insurers, take heed of these 3 common forecasting fallacies [by Maura Feddersen]
 
 Recommended books
 
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction Paperback - Philip Tetlock, Dan GardnerNassim Taleb, The Black Swan, the Impact of the Highly Improbable 
 
Annie Duke, How to decide
 
Adam Grant, Think Again, The Power of Knowing what you Don’t Know 
 
Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
 
Read the full transcript and blog
Follow Maura Fedderson on LinkedIn
YouTube video
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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
 
For AFP FP&A Continuing Education credit please complete the course via the Earmark Ap, must pass the quiz with 80% accuracy and send the completed certificate to pbarnhust@thefpandaguy.com for issuance of 1 hour of credit toward your AFP FP&A Certification. 
 

Mikus Krams: Why We Scrapped Budgets At Chili Piper

Are you starting to think about your budget for the next year? Stop right now, argues Mikus Krams.
As a former senior director of strategy and finance at Chili Piper, he described budgets as a shackle — you’ll be held prisoner to the assumptions you make for the next year.
In this episode, Mikus Krums, the B2B Saas finance leader turned co-founder of Trace Space, says budgets are unlikely to be relevant for small agile companies. He tells Paul Barnhurst: “Let's say you're doing some activity and it's yielded you some results. If halfway through the activity you figured that it's not working, why would you still keep pushing it? But if you have a budget, that's exactly what you are doing…it just felt silly to be living that way.”
In this episode Mikus describes 
Bottoms up planning as the most impactful strategy for agile  B2B SaaS companies
The reason that budgets are bad for business
ROI mindset as core to his finance thinking 
Managing incentive structure through a Rev Ops approach
How on target earnings are sometimes more mirage than reality 
Managers as “powderkegs” and “snipers” 
The path to moving to a continuous forecasting methodology
His biggest failure in his FP&A career
Banking as a powerful route to FP&A career success
The importance of lunch with business leaders and individual contributors in a business 
Read the full transcript and blog
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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
For AFP FP&A Continuing Education credit please complete the course via the Earmark Ap, must pass the quiz with 80% accuracy and send the completed certificate to pbarnhust@thefpandaguy.com for issuance of 1 hour of credit toward your AFP FP&A Certification. 

CEO Scott Stouffer: Can FP&A Get your Go-to-Market strategy to work better?

“I would like to see FP&A drive the planning process for go- to-market just because I think they will have a better natural understanding of what it means to actually build a plan.”
Scott Stouffer, a former engineer, is a serial entrepreneur and founder. Currently he is CEO and Founder at scaleMatters, the world’s first Go-to-Market Optimization Platform. Previously, he executed the sale of Salsa Labs, a non profit CRM to PE firm Accel-KKR at a period of $12MM annual revenue and 70 employees. In this wide-ranging interview he reveals the real impact he believes CEOs, such as himself, are looking for in choosing CFOs and building a finance team. He also argues for  a bigger role for FP&A – including leadership of a company’s go-to-market strategy incorporating how an organization can engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service. 
This interview covers
Scott’s roadmap for growth leading fast-scaling companies
Why many CFOs are “glorified controllers” (and why that is a problem)
How FP&A can prevent sales and marketing teams “from winging it” by bringing the “analytical brain power” to the 
The power of a good plan in a fast-scaling business
Should Rev Ops and Data be owned by the CFO
How FP&A should be the first port of call in building a companies Go-to-Market strategy 
How finance teams can work better with sales teams and better modeling sales capacity
Why in 60% of cases companies have too many sales people by failing to do proper modeling
Why you need to hone self-confidence as a skillset
Read the full transcript and blog
Follow Scott Stouffer on LinkedIn
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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
For AFP FP&A Continuing Education credit please complete the course via the Earmark Ap, must pass the quiz with 80% accuracy and send the completed certificate to pbarnhust@thefpandaguy.com for issuance of 1 hour of credit toward your AFP FP&A Certification. 

Silicon Valley Bank: Finance teams in the eye of the storm

The second-biggest bank collapse in U.S. history created a storm for CFOs and their finance teams during a panic-induced 48 hours in March. It only ended as regulators took control of Santa Clara, Calif.-based SVB and a dramatic intervention by financial regulators.
In this special edition of FP&A Today, meet those in finance and FP&A who saw the events at Silicon Valley Bank first hand. Understand how the banking crisis played out and how ongoing ripples continue to impact everyone in FP&A and how your finance teams can cope with the ongoing aftermath.
The panel:
Josh Aharonoff (aka Your CFO Guy), CEO and Founder, Mighty Digits had many clients banking with SVB and had to make quick decisions as news broke. He shares Finance & Accounting Best Practices & Advice everyday to his nearly 85,000 LinkedIn followers
Follow Josh on LinkedIn
 
CJ Gustafson is a CFO at a series B startup, PartsTech. He has been in the startup space within the  private equity sector and has helped to scale venture backed companies for the last 10 years. He also authors Mostly Metrics, an irreverent and analytical spin on metrics which has crossed more than 10k subscribers.
Follow CJ Gustafson on LinkedIn
Casey Woo is a seven-time high Tech CFO- turned investor. He has held finance and CFO roles at Silicon Valley companies including at WeWork and property tech companies before founding an “operators community” turned investment fund FOG ventures.
Follow Casey Woo on LinkedIn
 
What is covered in this episode:
Casey Woo explains being at the “heart of the storm” in Silicon Valley with a close personal relationship with SVB
The reasons that VCs put pressure to withdraw money from SVB in a classic “prisoner’s dilemma”
How the fallout from SVB continues to impact companies and particularly finance professionals 
The challenges for CFOs, particularly in tech, seeking to fundraise after SVB’s crash 
What are the differences between fractional banking and Ponzi schemes
The initial $250,000 ceiling on federal deposit insurance explained
How could KPMG have given SVB a clean bill of health with so many stored-up challenges? 
Why is the impact of raising rates so dramatically different than in the 1970s when no banks failed?
Strategic advice for Treasury and FP&A pros going forward post-SVB 
The importance for CFOs and FP&A leaders to understand “second order effects” beyond cash entering and leaving the building. 
How the SVB saga has emphasized the value of an FP&A function that can show everything that's happened, is happening, and is going to happen “and being in control of that story” - allowing you to take action quickly.
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.
Watch the full show on YouTube
Read the full transcript and blog
 

The FP&A’s Guide to Winning in the Fractional CFO Galaxy

“I am definitely starting to see more people with an FP&A background becoming fractional CFOs.”
 
Michael King, founder of The CFO Accelerator, coaches hundreds of  fractional CFOs and accountants in building “6 and 7-figure advisory firms”.
 
King arrives on the bustling fractional CFO scene at a time when demand for part-time finance chiefs working for several companies is  higher than ever. In King’s words in the next decade a small business having a fractional CFO will be just as common as bringing in a bookkeeper as hiring fractional CFOs becomes the “cost of doing business” at small and medium-sized enterprises. And according to King, those with an FP&A background have a significant advantage.
 
“FP&A really gets people ready for those CFO technical skills. So when I think about FP&A, I'm thinking about things like forecast projections, budgets and models, and data management, alongside communications across functional divisions within a business. And that's a huge part of what a fractional CFO has to understand”.
 
Covered in this episode
King’s path from being a navy nuclear engineer to a fractional CFO leader
The essential skills you need to be a fractional CFO
When should an SMB choose a fractional CFO 
Why budgeting and forecasting are “everything” 
The key to using the fractional CFO position to connect the strategic goals of a business
Why people in finance must learn to love sales
When to move away from a fractional CFO and appoint a full time finance chief 
Why cash flow is always “the first” and most important metric for any fractional CFO service
Why you only need a small number of clients to “make a killing” as a fractional CFO
How the Fractional CFO space will explode in the next decade “regardless of the economic picture”
Fractional CFOs need to be “operating as far away from the decimal as possible” to be successful
The process of adopting kids as the thing few people know about Michael 
 
 Watch the full show on YouTube
Read the full transcript and blog
 
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails, the FP&A platform for Excel users.
Episode links 
The CFO Accelerator podcast with Michael King
The CFO Report (Youtube channel)
The The 5-Minute Fractional CFO Newsletter

FP&A vs. Accounting: Let’s Get Ready to Rumble

“I must admit, when I was doing accounting, I never liked my FP&A colleagues. In fact, as a matter of at times, I hated them. I thought they didn’t understand accounting. They always push to reduce the number of days it takes to close the books when they have very little clue what's going on.”
Abdul Khaliq, Group Financial Controller, at Abu Dhabi National Hotels
 
In our 50th episode of FP&A Today, we bring together an all-star guest list who have had experience working as both accountants and in FP&A. Drawing on their experience they  look at the frequent clashes between FP&A and their accounting colleagues (be warned no one pulls any punches!). Plus, the secrets to a more harmonious relationship between FP&A and accounting.
Get ready for The Dual of Accruals, the Toe-to-Toe on Cash Flow….with all of your questions answered about the day-to-day realities of FP&A vs Accounting.
The panel:
 
Lyndi Porter is accounting controller at Solera, a  global leader in vehicle lifecycle management. She  has more than 16 years accounting experience and has managed FP&A teams
 
Follow Lyndi on LinkedIn
 
Abdul Khaliq, Group Financial Controller, at Abu Dhabi National Hotels. 20+ years of progressive experience in accounting for Real Estate Development and Hospitality industries.
 
Follow Abdul on LinkedIn
 
Josh Aharonoff (aka Your CFO Guy), CEO and Founder, Mighty Digits. He shares Finance & Accounting Best Practices & Advice everyday to his nearly 85,000 LinkedIn followers
 
Follow Josh on LinkedIn
 
Terrell Turner: Co-founder and fractional CFO at TLTurner Group (NY Times featured CFO | 40 Under 40 CPA). He also provide bookkeeping services to law firms to make accounting and finance less complicated.
 
What is covered in this episode:
The crucial differences between accounting and FP&A?
The 4 main reasons FP&A practitioners and their accounting colleagues clash.
The business fallout when FP&A and accounting fail to co-exist 
Best practices that have worked in your career to bridge the gaps.
Potential impact of AI in the FP&A-accounting relationship
The crucial role of a Tech stack
The importance of the chart of accounts in this relationship
Getting the 10Qs and 10Ks out and the impact on FP&A requests
The fastest way to get from accounting and FP&A and the qualifications 
Favorite Excel functions for accounting and FP&A pros
 
Read the full transcript and blog
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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
 

Alison Allsopp: Building the NHS back better and battling self-doubt

“It’s like a fuse being blown. You can push as much power as you want through the device, but if the fuse is gone, it isn't going to work. That's exactly how I felt.”
Alison Allsopp is Head of FP&A at NHS Supply Chain, a crucial cog in the UK’s National Health Service. Prior to this, Alison was promoted nine times in her previous role at credit card company, Capital One. Despite (or maybe because of) this rapid rise up the finance ranks, Alison faced prolonged self-doubt and feelings of “imposter syndrome”. One day she reached breaking point. “As much as it was a real low point in my life, it was a huge turning point.”
In this episode Alison reveals how she managed these challenges in her career and lessons for those facing a similar situation.
Other highlights:
Spearheading FP&A in the supply chain of the NHS just as COVID-19 hit throwing the NHS into crisis
The importance of building trusting relationships and being open and transparent
The secrets to getting nine promotions within a company
Differences between big business FP&A and  public sector FP&A
The untold role of FP&A’s strategic role at the NHS during the pandemic
The biggest opportunities and challenges for FP&A professionals today
The interesting fact that many do not know about Alison
Her favorite Excel function
The power of a good Waterfall
Her biggest advice for someone starting out in FP&A
Watch the full show on YouTube
Read the full transcript and blog
Follow Alison Allsopp on LinkedIn
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