How AI is Being Used by FP&A professionals & Implemented by Software Vendors with Vena CTO Hugh Cumming
In this episode of FP&A Tomorrow, host Paul Barnhurst, aka The FP&A Guy, sits down with Hugh Cumming, the CTO of Vena Solutions. They explore how AI and technology are transforming financial planning and analysis (FP&A) by discussing real-world AI implementations. With over 20 years of experience in fintech and digital transformation, Hugh shares his perspectives on AI-driven efficiency, the evolving role of FP&A professionals, and the future of Excel in financial modeling.
Hugh Cumming is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Vena Solutions, a leading FP&A platform for Excel users. Hugh has led global teams in engineering, UX, cloud computing, and AI-driven innovation at companies like Finastra, SecureKey Technologies, ADP Canada, and Manulife. Hugh talks about his passion for using technology to drive efficiency and smarter decision-making, and helping to overcome change resistance in finance teams
Expect to Learn:
How AI is reshaping FP&A workflows and automating financial reporting.
The role of AI-powered copilots in driving business efficiencies.
Why change resistance in FP&A is common and how to overcome it.
The future of Excel, Python, and automation in financial modeling.
Practical advice for FP&A professionals to prepare for AI-driven changes.
Here are a few relevant quotes from the episode:
“One of the biggest barriers to AI adoption in FP&A is simply finding the time to implement it.”
“AI-driven tools should feel like an extension of your team, not an external system you have to fight against.”
“When you start using AI for small tasks, you quickly realize how much time you’ve been wasting on manual work.”
Hugh Cumming provided incredible knowledge about how AI-powered tools like Vena Copilot are helping finance teams become more efficient, strategic, and data-driven. Excel isn’t going anywhere, but it’s getting smarter. AI isn’t replacing people, but it’s making their work more valuable. As Hugh emphasized, those who adapt and leverage these innovations will thrive in the evolving financial landscape.
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In Today’s Episode
[01:44] - Meet Hugh Cumming
[02:53] - What Does Great FP&A Look Like?
[06:27] - Hugh’s Early Start with Programming
[09:38] - The Rise of AI in FP&A
[14:44] - Vena’s Vision for AI in FP&A
[19:28] - Managing AI Hallucinations & Building Trust
[26:23] - Real AI Use Cases in FP&A
[29:13] - Advice for FP&A Professionals on AI Adoption
[32:42] - The Future of Excel & AI
[35:18] - Rapid-Fire Questions
[42:54] - Closing Thoughts & Where to Connect
Full Show Transcript
[00:01:16] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Hello everyone! Welcome to FP&A tomorrow, where we delve into the world of financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects. I'm your host, Paul Barnhorst, and I'll be guiding you through the evolving landscape of FP&A. Each week, we're joined by thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who share their insights and experiences, helping us navigate today's complexities and tomorrow's uncertainty. This week, we're thrilled to be joined by Hugh Cumming. Hugh, welcome to the show.
[00:01:49] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Thanks a lot, Paul. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:51] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, really excited to have you. So just a little bit about Hugh. Hugh comes to us as the chief technology officer of Vena, which many of you may be familiar with. The Toronto based FP&A platform for Excel users. He has more than 20 years of experience. He's enjoyed success as a proven product and technology leader, building and scaling some of the world's most successful fintech platforms. He has led agile, product, engineering, UX and cloud teams globally at companies such as Finastra, Securekey Technologies and ADP Canada. Most recently, he served as the Chief Information Officer and Head of Technology at Manulife Canada, where he led the company's digital transformation efforts and created two of the highest rated applications for banking and digital insurance claims in the Canadian market. Love the background there, Hugh, and excited to get to chat with you today.
[00:02:49] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Yeah, awesome. Thanks for the great intro.
[00:02:52] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You're welcome. So, you know, question. We like to ask every guest being an FP&A show. And I know I love when we get people that aren't in for the technical. They may work in it because they give us a different perspective, help keep us FP&A people grounded. So what does great FP&A look like for you? As I'm sure you've had to deal with budget and forecast a few times. Oh, and.
[00:03:10] Guest: Hugh Cumming: You know, and I have always had tremendous empathy for the FP&A teams and the people who get assigned to help me. And, you know, I've run large budgets and relatively smaller ones. And, you know, this role, these, you know, it's one of the most stressed out roles because it's constantly under demand to create answers, insights, reports, visualizations, presentations. And you know, so I think, you know, great FP&A is when the people and the team that are supporting a business leader are able to not have to spend so much time toiling over numbers and making sure that sheet A matches sheet B, and the other thing that I always like to think about is, is this concept of, you know, business day, right? Because that's part of the language. Is it B plus ten for forecast or plus 15 or maybe it's B BD plus 20. How do you make BD plus 20 equal BD plus five. And I think that's what we're trying to get at with great. FP&A is like because that elimination of that time window means there's way more time for the discussions that the business leaders want to have with their fans. No.
[00:04:12] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And that makes a lot of sense, right? Anything that can be done in an event is trying to do that, and a lot of other tools to shorten that time frame to be able to close the books, do the forecasts, do the analysis so you can spend the time on business partnering, decision making strategy, things that are going to create value versus, like you said, tying out sheet versus sheet B and trying to figure out why your net revenue doesn't look right for the month of February.
[00:04:40] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Yeah, I've seen people do that. And like I said, I have tremendous empathy for the role, which is one of the reasons I was drawn to Vena. I said, wow, this is an opportunity to help in a really meaningful way. These folks. Yeah.
[00:04:52] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So how's that been? Talk a little bit about that experience. You've been there, what, four years now?
[00:04:55] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Yeah, just just over three and a bit. It's been really great. We've been able to scale and grow the company really well and we've added quite a lot of really awesome customers. We have celebrated a big milestone recently where we surpassed $100 million of committed annual recurring revenue, which is a pretty significant milestone for us from where we started. We have now over 2000 customers that trust the platform to produce anything from the forecast and their annual plan, but also their financial close and their consolidated results. So we have a wide range of customers. So it's been great to see the company grow. It's been great to see the teams grow and, you know, to bring in the talent you need to scale a business at that, at that pace has been it's been a lot of fun and it's also been a lot of fun building out our the next level of our strategic partnership with Microsoft, particularly around being able to bring our AI product to market, which has been for me as a technologist who spent my whole life writing software since I was a kid. Actually, I started writing software to be able to be in the middle of this next wave of transformation and be building a product, leveraging the most advanced AI capabilities. It's been a lot of fun. It's pretty cool, actually. It's pretty. It's pretty cool to see what's possible. And of course, very exciting to see what's next.
[00:06:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, and we'll definitely jump into that. I'm excited to get your thoughts there. I'm sure as a technologist, there's something you said that kind of led me to a question. You said you've been coding since you were a kid. Did you code some games? Was there a language you used? How did that come about?
[00:06:32] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Yeah. Look, you know, the first computer that, you know, showed up at the house was a Commodore, and the only way to write games was to actually learn how to program, you know, in low level languages like machine and learn how to program the graphics. And it was a lot of fun. So, you know, me and my brother, who was a little older than me, we started writing our own video games and, you know, and my dad, of course, he really didn't understand why he had spent this money on this. And so we wrote him a word processor and said, hey, you know, like, here, here's something useful you can do with this device you just bought for your kids. And, you know, that sort of became the love of writing software and seeing how it, you know, people use it and then, you know, seeing that they can get more stuff done. And it's, you know, it's been sort of one iteration of that in a way after another.
[00:07:21] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I love that, and I like how you did the word processor. Right. Hey, here's something for you, dad, that helps. Now we're going to go play games, but we are coding, so we're learning now. That's great. I love that story there. So you know I know you haven't worked in the FP&A software space before Vena. You worked in a lot of other industries. And I'm curious, maybe what's something you've learned about FP&A or FP&A software that's surprised you since joining Vena, that you really didn't have any idea about?
[00:07:51] Guest: Hugh Cumming: The big observation that I think I've had is that there's a lot of tools in this landscape and teams, because they're under so much pressure. I have a very good understanding of this change resistance and why a company might be on, you know, a 10 or 12 year old version of what, whatever, like Hyperion or something that they implemented or Tm1 or something like that, that they implemented a long time ago. And it's because they're just so much work to just get the answers and the outcomes that they have to produce for the company. A lot of times, there's just not enough time to even think about making a change. And that's something that, you know, having been a senior leader in technology, you're always trying to push this change agenda. What can we do next? And then, you know, you run into these organizations and say, well, why? Why won't you change? It'll be way better. And yet you really just have to stop and think. It's like, what is it that they're doing every day that's keeping them from being excited about making a change? I think I have a deeper understanding of like the pressure that they're under being on this side within a company like Vanna, and having talked to lots of customers as opposed to being a consumer of FP&A, where I don't really see the work, the hard work they're doing and what's really how to make it easier for them, how to make them show up with, you know, less stress. The results are sooner and they're, you know, really excited about sharing the results. But instead of like, not quite done, we think there might be an error in here. But you know, here's what we got so far. And I think that's been really cool part of being here. I appreciate that.
[00:09:23] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And I'm sure you get a much greater appreciation for the work that's done by the FP&A people, why they're resistant to change, the challenges that go with that, because people don't like ripping out FP&A software.
[00:09:35] Guest: Hugh Cumming: That's right, that's right.
[00:09:36] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Just like people don't like ripping out ERPs. Most of us don't like change. And when the change also requires a lot of work, we like it even less. Let's talk. I know you're very excited about that. How is that? How is that, for one, just kind of changed the way you worked. How would that change things to see generative AI come about over the last few years?
[00:09:56] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Well, I think, you know, everyone is moving at a different pace, you know. For me, I would say two things. One is it's been, you know, very exciting to see what's possible and to see, you know, when you challenge ChatGPT for something or an outcome, it's amazing what it's able to produce. And it's like every time I use it, it's like, wow, you know, I didn't tell you anything else and you got it pretty close to being. Right. So I, you know, certainly like a lot of folks, I use it in my day to day correspondence and communications. Right. And it may just be, I need to it helps because, you know, one of the ways in which, you know, it's hard to be productive is, you know, sometimes if you have to change context between one task, you're working on something, and then all of a sudden you have to do something completely different. What's really cool is how ChatGPT is like, and I have to do this. Can you get me started. And, you know, all of a sudden you have the starting, right. So it's like, oh, and I need to, you know, write a press release for something else. And I need to look at this, you know, new design for this piece of software. And those two things are totally different. And what ChatGPT does is it sort of helps you get started with both of them.
[00:11:08] Guest: Hugh Cumming: And that's for me where the efficiency is, because in my role I have this dual duality or plurality of all the things that I have to do, they're just very different. And every one of them has this cognitive load of getting started. And I think that's what's been really cool is to how how efficiently, you know, it's like, I just could be in a meeting and ask it to get me started on, like, writing, you know, on a presentation for the board. And then it's like, okay, here's what we're going to talk about. And that's what's so amazing about it, because the ability to generate new content that's never been produced before, it doesn't get produced again for you. That's based on the inputs you provide, I think is pretty well. It's like a really, you know, our head of legal who is like our chief. She's so, you know, passionate about how AI is changing the way her profession is working. And she's our superstar of adoption internally. And it's just, you know, it's amazing how it's just able to just complete documents and add a clause and do that, research that. And she called it a really, it's like having a really, really smart but inexperienced intern on your team.
[00:12:24] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. And I've heard that analogy before and I like that one of the intern. But it's not just smart but an extremely large breadth of knowledge. Right. It's almost like a team of interns. That's right. If there's one intern that knows that many different areas, I want their brain. You know what I mean?
[00:12:43] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Because soon we'll have both, right? We'll have our brain. Plus, you know.
[00:12:48] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I love how I can kind of get you started or just help with things like today. I was trying to figure out this formula for Excel, something I don't do very often, and just threw it into ChatGPT gave an example of what I want and said, write the formula and it worked perfectly.
[00:13:01] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Yeah, that's exactly what we're trying to encourage people at, at our customers to really think about. It's not the big things. We're not asking it to do big things, but like ask it to do little things many times a day and you'll be really surprised at what's possible.
[00:13:15] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I really like that idea of, hey, using it for many little things. And I think the other thing is look at it. I love how you said get started, because I think so many people are like, well, but it only got me partway there. The answer wasn't right. It's like, yes, but did it get you started? Did it make it easier for the entire process? Well, then why are you focusing on the negatives? Right? And not thinking. I just saved 30 minutes.
[00:13:38] Guest: Hugh Cumming: That's right. And I think people underestimate the ramp. You know, the mental ramp up time to start something else is very high and, you know, that consumes, you know, maybe 30 or 40% of your day is just simply getting your head reoriented to do something else. And then we as humans, we structure our day around knowing that we have to focus on these set of tasks and then focus on these. And what's cool is that if you can eliminate that barrier to switching now, you can do multiple. It's not of course, we're not able to do multiple things at the same time, but you can kind of have a different way of organizing your day because you don't have to prepare as much to change your, you know, change modality, so to speak, into doing something different. Yeah, I.
[00:14:27] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Really like that. Right. Mental switching cost is high. It's expensive. Just like switching costs for products is expensive if you're constantly trying to restart and do different things. And I'd never thought of "hey, let me get let it help me get started on all these different tasks.” I really like that way of thinking about it, and I'd love to know. Kind of tell me about Vena vision for AI in the event of platform and kind of where are you at? What's it looking like over the next 12 months?
[00:14:53] Guest: Hugh Cumming: No. Awesome question. I mean, this is I mean, obviously, we're very excited about what we were able to deliver as part of our our big, big product release last year that we announced at our conference it was really focused on creating a copilot within the platform that's trained on the unique data set up for every one of the customers. So it's not using a general data set. It's using, you know, our specific customer's data set. And we trained it with, over 200, a library of 200 commonly asked, you know, FP&A type questions. And we train it against every customer's model. So it allows them to quickly get started at, you know, when to have business, a business user ask a question. Right. So, you know, what's my sales forecast or what's my sales plan? How am I doing this year? Like, and then it doesn't just give an answer, it actually produces an Excel sheet for them that allows them to then take that and do more. And the real wow moments come when you then say, that's great, but what if, you know, I opened up a new store, what would my sales forecast be for next quarter? And then it's like, oh, well, here's a version that I've added, you know, more information, you know, did I get it right? And then it's like, yes, that was thumbs up.
[00:16:09] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Or you know, that was not right. Oh, tell me why it wasn't right. And then all of a sudden you realize you're talking to this, you know, this system the same way you would be talking and engaging with your FP&A professional. And I think that's where we're starting to see. And that's where the real, you know, we get really excited about with our customers. We've had customers give us testimonials that say, you know, I thought I needed to to add a couple of extra people. And now with a copilot, I'm actually getting through my day. I'm actually being able to feel. Feel the responses. I'm actually seeing that efficiency, and that's what we're really excited about is like companies like seeing that efficiency gain, seeing that they can also transform their financial processes while still serving the business very well. Because this is taking real work away. So from a roadmap perspective, we're building multiple agents. So that was our first agent, the ability to do that analysis.
[00:17:05] Guest: Hugh Cumming: We're adding agents to produce reports so that you can say and produce my financial reports and financial statements boom. And produce me an ad hoc analysis boom. And where we're going with it is like and produce a PowerPoint presentation that I can send to the board. So just the ability to actually do real work on behalf of the team, that's put the effort into making sure that it's training and getting the right answers back. And then just letting it do that work. And as we look at our roadmap, we're one of the things we're super excited about this year is being able to embed the event, the copilot and agent experience directly into Microsoft Teams so that you can from teams. Just ask your FP&A team a question and it can be served right away by our copilot, and our and our agents can produce the outcome that you're requesting, which is, you know, it's really you know, you get excited and you see that I'm getting excited about it really. Like it's really, really, really looks like it's a lot it's going to I think it's going to create some. Wow.
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[00:19:22] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Well, that's exciting.
[00:19:24] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I mean, yeah, I could see, you know, within teams obviously that Microsoft stack. So two questions just kind of came to mind. One, you know Copilot are you training Microsoft's LLM kind of copilot. Is this your own LLM. How do I think about that. And the second is how are you managing hallucinations? Right? Yeah. Everybody.
[00:19:44] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Yeah. No, those are great questions. And I do get asked that a lot. So I mean, it is built on Azure, OpenAI. And we are using some of the advanced capabilities there like synaptic kernel to help with, you know, making sure that semantic kernel to make sure that the, you know, the deep understanding of what's asked is there. We're also using a, you know, an approach that is called request augmented generation, which is something called a vector database. So that, you know, just when you think about the vector database is pointing to where the data is. And then the third thing we do, we have feedback cycle, which is if the answer is not the best answer you can as the owner of the copilot, you can say, well, actually that field is not the right place to pull that data. You use these two fields together to get that answer. And then the next, any time it gets asked those questions, it'll come back with those answers. So I think those are all very important so that you can just curate and train. We don't use this is not the public ChatGPT. This is Savannah. This is our private Azure OpenAI subscription that is, you know, been security tested and, you know, is private and protects our customer data as, as they would expect. There's no sharing of data either publicly or with other tenants whatsoever in any way.
[00:21:07] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. And that totally makes sense. That's right. That's the standard we have to have with these products for people to have trust, especially in finance. Yeah.
[00:21:15] Guest: Hugh Cumming: And I think it's one of the barriers to adoption is, is just that trust. Like how do you how do you build that trust so that because you know, these this is not an organization that can have, you know, anything wrong with the answers. Right? I think the expectation is pixel perfect spreadsheets. And that's what is expected. And I think that's the standard our customers they have to set for us, because that's the standard being set for them by the businesses they serve.
[00:21:42] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I think trust is a huge one. Definitely a barrier to adoption. What do you see as the other barriers? You know, it feels like a lot of departments obviously are struggling here, a lot of different things of either trying to find use cases or how best to implement it. What are you seeing as far as barriers?
[00:21:56] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Yeah, I mean, time is a big one. And we talked about that at the beginning. Right. The whole change curve of okay, now I have to do something different. I think that's what we're still working with. How do we est onboard customers so that they see it like we've done things that really over the last year have just really focused on okay, in ten minutes you can be using it and see it. And I think that's but getting customers that, you know, to find that ten minutes right is you know, it's part of that change curve of, okay, I'm in my clothes. This is our annual plan cycle. I'll get you know, I want to look at it. I'm really excited about it, but I want to do it. So I think that's part of it is just timing, getting it in front of customers, I think also overcoming sort of these industry broad narratives around hallucination. And, you know, I think that's probably the second big thing. And I think the third is adoption of AI generally across organizations, will also drive it within the FP&A because as the organization gets more comfortable with using AI, you'll just see people will just be inspired by other people, right? When you see the legal teams I asked, I asked for a French language version of the contract with equivalent clauses in like three.
[00:23:16] Guest: Hugh Cumming: You know, over the next 30s it spit out a 40 page document and it's like, wow, like that would have been days of work. And I think those narratives get told and the excitement starts building. I think that reduces the anxiety people have when they see, you know, particularly I use the legal organization often because, you know, obviously they also have a big responsibility to make sure stuff is right in a different way. But also, you know, I think critical, right? Like if you're seeing like, you know, asking ChatGPT to write a marketing blurb, that's if it's slightly off, it's not perfect, then, you know, there's no real penalty. But if your contract language is off, then that's bad. If your financial reports are off, then that's really bad. And I think that's just like, get that these things will all work together to build confidence. And I and I do believe right, that over this next horizon, you know, every company is going to be looking at ways to accelerate adoption and leverage of AI within how they run their business and drive competitive gains in whatever industry that they're operating in.
[00:24:27] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. And so how was your kind of engineering, your product, your tech team? How are you guys using it? Let's stop. Step away for a minute. And how is your team using it today?
[00:24:37] Guest: Hugh Cumming: I mean, we were early adopters of GitHub copilot, which is, you know, the copilot sits alongside the GitHub, GitHub repository. They've leveraged mountains of code data to train the most likely next part of this, you know, function call. And so we do it. You know, every developer uses it every day. We've had hundreds of thousands of prompts that developers, you know, we probably accept 30% of them where GitHub says, hey, this we think you should add this and here's how you would make this call better. And so they just slowly worked their way into our coding cycles. And you know, it probably represents now that of the lines of code generated over the last 12 months, there's probably 30% of it that's actually been generated by copilot. Now, of course, as part of the work the developers are doing. So not, you know, off to the side, but as part of the work, you can imagine that 30% of it now is is work that's being added and improved and generated by by copilot and accepted by the developer as part of the change that they're they're pushing into the system, which is, which is pretty cool. And of course, it all still has to go through all the testing and all the same cycles. But it's an efficiency gain, right? It's absolutely an efficiency gain. That's measurable. And, you know, I think it'll just get better over time as well as, again, as people get more comfortable, it's like ask it to refactor and to upgrade this library. Okay. Well, let's try that. And I think it's a lot of it's just like, okay, let's try that and see what happens.
[00:26:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It's so true. I mean, a lot of that value comes with just testing and playing. There's plenty of investing that time to learn how it can best help you. And I'm curious kind of on that front, is there anything you've seen, maybe an example where you've seen an FP&A department, you know, gain substantial value, where they're really saving some time or getting some big benefit from AI implementation, whether that's generative machine learning, whatever it might be. But love, if there's kind of a use case or example you could share with us.
[00:26:43] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Yeah. I mean we have some use cases that I don't know if they're all published, but we're certainly, you know, be able to share about some of my favorite stories are, you know, where we had a customer. He was one of our early adopters, you know, team of really a team of one FP&A, you know, smaller company, but, you know, completely underwater, you know, reached out to us and said, I want to do a video testimonial because after I adopted a copilot, I'm actually able to now serve the business. Right. I'm like, I'm, you know, I'm not a team of one anymore. I'm a team of one. Plus, you know, the agents within copilot. And I think, you know, that's what we're trying to see more and more of. And we are seeing, you know, examples of different levels of people. Everyone's at different stages of adoption. You know, some people have moved right into it and opened it right up. And other people are just trying to, you know, use it every once in a while to ask a question and see what the answer is. We've had, you know, we've serviced tens of thousands of questions and responses. And every one of those represents real work that an FP&A person would have, would have had to, would have had to do.
[00:27:52] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Love the example you shared there. Someone being able to, you know, get from being underwater to being able to manage because they had the assistant there with them. It's really cool.
[00:28:01] Host: Paul Barnhurst: FP&A guy here and I want to tell you about the Planning and BI showcase. Gone are the days of juggling multiple platforms. Now with business intelligence tools, you can integrate planning directly into your BI system, the same system your entire company already uses. Join me on March 20th for the Planning and BI showcase, where industry leaders will demonstrate how top BI tools are reshaping strategic planning. See firsthand how modern FP&A solutions can drive real value across your enterprise. The event features live demos from leading BI solutions. Whether you're a CFO or an FP&A professional, you'll discover the tools that can help you deliver more value across your enterprise. Don't miss out! Register today at www.accelevents.com/e/Planning-in-BI-Showcase and take the first step towards smarter, data driven decision making. I'm curious, what advice would you give to FP&A professionals to prepare for the changes that AI is bringing? Right. It's changing a lot of jobs. It's going to have an impact on FP&A. Any kind of recommendations you can give?
[00:29:27] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Well, I think, you know, for all of us, it's going to change all of our jobs in a way. I mean, it's not it's, you know, it's not something that's just, you know, it's not a fad. It's, you know, it's a point and change, right? If you look back in time over these, what people call industrial revolutions, they were big, right? Like, the steam engine wasn't just 1.3 times stronger than, you know, a worker. It did the work of a thousand workers. And so transforming industries and making you know so and of course it went from steam to electric and diesel and all these other generations. But the core innovation is like is a massive lift in what, you know, humans can get done productively. And I think, you know, we're just at that start right where we're seeing it as an incremental improvement. But over time, as people more, it gets more and more adopted. We should expect to go through that same cycle of it being a massive change, beneficial change in terms of how much capability and capacity that every human has to, to, to create value and to however they define it. And so I think part of it is just you have to, you know, when you're in the middle of this, it's like the famous Henry Ford quote that was like, if I ask people what they wanted, they would have said, faster horses.
[00:30:48] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Right. And he went and actually, he didn't invent the automobile. He just made it possible for everyone to own one. Right. And that, you know, and of course, like, this is really about, you know, thinking about your role as something that is just going to evolve and change over time and that AI is going to play a role. When we hire co-op students, they come in and they are the most excited to dive right in. They've already been using it to help them finish papers, to help them in their exams, and they show up in our software teams and they're like, oh, I'm using copilot. I used copilot to actually tell me what the APIs were for word, because I didn't want to read the Microsoft document. I just asked copilot to build me the test stubs for it. And that's, you know, just trying those things like, like you said, with the Excel formula, just ask copilot to write the Excel formula for you.
[00:31:40] Guest: Hugh Cumming: And I think what that does is it creates that, you know, that confidence that like, okay, those are the kinds of things I can ask, like, what are the other things I can ask it for? I'm going to ask it for something else. And I think, I think, I think it's the getting started with getting started, which is the, the hurdle. Right? And I just always encourage people to do small things. Don't think about like, oh, here's this big task I want copilot to do. Just like, what are you going to do in the next 10s? And instead of doing it yourself, ask copilot to get it started for you. And I think, you know, that's why I would just encourage everyone to just that gain that experiential knowledge so that you can gain a perspective for your organization about how it's going to create value, because every organization is different. But I think just every one of us needs to gain that, you know, that experiential perspective that we can bring back to our organization. I think that, you know, helps us with our own growth and development, you know, within the companies that we're working with.
[00:32:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. Yeah. No, I love the kind of get started experiment, you know, learn to use it. And, I'm curious, how do you see this impacting Excel? You know, I always laugh on LinkedIn when I see people that say, I will kill Excel. You don't need it anymore. And I don't know, Microsoft is doing a pretty good job of using AI from my perspective. But how do you see things changing within Excel with AI?
[00:33:01] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Well, I mean, you know, we of course love Excel. It's part of been part of the history of DNA is like you can build a great Appian platform centered around Excel. It doesn't have to be a barrier. So I think that's, you know, that that's our, so to speak, Kool-Aid that we we all, we all. It's our green Kool-Aid at Vena. And, you know, and I think that what Microsoft is trying to do constantly with Excel is just lower the bar to expertise. You need to actually do really advanced things. And what some of the things we're super excited about is bringing Python. People didn't love VBA macros. They were kind of clunky and wow, that's like really old technology that exists for a very long time. And not everyone picked it up and figured out how to do it. And, you know, so they had things that would auto generate the VBA code, but it was still there. And I think, you know, with the shift to Python and what we're seeing with those kinds of easier to get your head around languages is, is greater adoption. And you know, I think that with copilot and with Python, what Microsoft is trying to do is say you can do really advanced things on your own now and don't need to be an Excel guru, right? You don't need to hire a macro developer to do that next cool thing. You can actually do it. Just ask copilot to help you write a Python script that actually connects these two things together. And that's, you know, why I don't think there's going to there is a better solution to be that planning canvas to use the language that we like to use within your FP&A process, then then then Excel. I mean, it's, you know, I think it's withstood the test of time. I read the statistic. There's 750 million users globally on Excel. So it's going to be I don't think that's something that's unplugable.
[00:34:48] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. No it's definitely not unplugable in the short term that's for sure. You know in the long run we're all dead I think so but yeah I mean it's amazing the ecosystem and just everything that's built around Excel, add-ins, training product, the list goes on and on. I mean, that's right, spreadsheet isn't going anywhere. It even happened to Excel.
[00:35:12] Guest: Hugh Cumming: University college training all starts and ends with Excel.
[00:35:17] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. All right. So we're going to move into our next section where I ask kind of some standard questions that are kind of get people's perspectives. So the first one is what do you think the number one technical skill FP&A professionals should master.
[00:35:32] Guest: Hugh Cumming: I mean, excel, of course. Yeah.
[00:35:34] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I'd be disappointed if you said anything else.
[00:35:38] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Well, and I think also, like I would say, starting to play with the more advanced new capabilities like Python and like copilot, of course. But definitely, you know, Excel mastery is key.
[00:35:52] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. No, that's a common answer we get for sure. Spreadsheets. Excel financial modeling. What about that softer human skill. What do we need to master?
[00:36:01] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Oh, it's a great question. I mean, I think, you know, the ability to embrace the, you know, the principles of servant leadership, right? Like, how can I help you be more successful is just a core part of the role. And I think, as you know, engineers and finance professionals have something very much in common, which is, you know, maybe those are the numerical logical skills get more developed and the soft skills get maybe underdeveloped. Certainly through your professional education you have to figure those out. So I would say like really just embracing that servant leadership mindset of, you know, this is a role where your success comes by helping other people be more successful. And I think just, you know, you know, being seen as that type of individual will help those folks in those kinds of roles actually be seen as someone who's, you know, always the person there in the room with them that's going to help them succeed.
[00:37:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I've never had anyone give that answer of the servant leadership. I love the way you explained that of right being that servant leader and helping your business partners succeed. Because really, what we're helping to do is help them make better, faster decisions and be successful. But I love the term servant leadership because I think there's so much value when you think of leadership as serving others, helping others versus, you know, I'm in charge. That's right. That's a great, great way to think about it. All right, this is your softball. You'll like this question. What's your favorite thing about Microsoft Excel?
[00:37:35] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Oh, that's a great question. Well, I think my favorite thing about Microsoft Excel is that you can use it to do just about anything, right? It could be your kids softball team, you know, scorecard. And it can also do your, you know, billion dollar company financial plan. And you know, it's amazing with the breadth of utility that and problems that can be applied to. And you know you can start anywhere with very little knowledge like building a spreadsheet for your kid's softball team to, you know, having obviously deeply experienced fan knowledge. I think that's pretty incredible.
[00:38:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I agree, it's really amazing that you could do everything from so basic to so complex in Excel and so many different areas. Anytime I hear someone use the term advanced Excel, I'm always like, what does that even mean? Advanced in what? There's how many different programing languages in the tool alone. All right. So this next section is a get to know you section where we ask you some personal questions to get to know you a little bit. Yeah, sure. So what's a favorite hobby or passion. What do you like to do when you're not working?
[00:38:40] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Well, I'm an avid skier, so I love to do that. That's why I'm buried in snow right now north of Toronto. So that's something I still love, you know, creative pursuits. I love playing piano. And, it's just always been part of my part of my life. Love it.
[00:38:57] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Piano skiing. Those are both. Those are both great ones. I've done a little bit of piano. My wife would relate to you on both the skiing and the piano. So what is one book you could recommend to our audience? If there is a book you're going to recommend? What should we read?
[00:39:09] Guest: Hugh Cumming: I, I love that book Outliers by Malcolm Malcolm Gladwell and he's done ones I just you know, it just really feeds my analytical side of my brain and just, you know, in this need to understand things. And I love the idea that the underlying data may tell a different story from what people kind. Of observe. Right. And I think of the examples he gives around, you know, of what? You know, just around the differentiation between what makes someone successful and like this 10,000 hour bar. That's like the difference between an orchestra, you know, performer and a music teacher is like 8000 hours of training, right? It's not, you know, oh, this person got really lucky. And it's just like. And I think those kind of like, you know, it's just gaining an understanding of that, just the appreciation of how hard these people have worked to achieve that kind of whatever that pinnacle is actually it's in a way it's freeing because then there's not this burden of like, oh, why is there's this person this different and better? Well, they just happen to have done 8000 more hours of music training than you did. And that's okay. Right. Those are choices we make.
[00:40:19] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. There's generally a reason why someone is good at what they're doing as they are, right in the passion.
[00:40:27] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Drives that need. Doing it in practice four hours a day, right? Of course.
[00:40:33] Host: Paul Barnhurst: If you're going to put in 10,000 hours, I sure hope you enjoy it. Otherwise, you're probably a masochist.
[00:40:39] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Yeah. That's right. So yeah. So definitely like I love that. I love the idea like Freakonomics as well. Like all those kinds of books. That really, really, really gets my attention.
[00:40:50] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Great, I like it. You know, those are some good ones. Curious as a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
[00:40:55] Guest: Hugh Cumming: If it has to be one thing. I mean, when I was a child, I wanted to be an NHL goalie. I was like a candidate.
[00:41:03] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That doesn't surprise me.
[00:41:04] Guest: Hugh Cumming: It's Canada. Ken Dryden was like the goalie for the Montreal Canadiens, and I just wanted to be like that. I wanted to wear the Montreal, you know, see and play in the NFL. And it's just, you know, it's just maybe I didn't practice 10,000 hours, but just, you know, these things are not things you can create for yourself. There's just a massive combination of things that have to happen for you to get there. And it was, you know, it's certainly fun trying. And that was what I wanted to do. I just pictured myself doing that and it was fun. As a kid. You have to dream.
[00:41:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You do. I wanted to be John Stockton as a kid, you know, a jazz fan, but yeah.
[00:41:44] Guest: Hugh Cumming: No, I, I pivoted, I found music when I realized I wasn't going to be an NHL hockey player. I went deep on my music.
[00:41:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I know, I understand that one. All right. So this is just kind of a fun question. I'm curious to see how you answer. If you could have any superpower, which one would you pick?
[00:42:04] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Oh my God, any superpower. Well, I think it would be really cool to be able to breathe underwater because there's this whole I mean, people always say they want to fly, but of course, like, you can go on an airplane and fly. And of course it's not the same, but but, you know, there's this whole other like two thirds of the world that is so undiscovered and unexplored because we just can't survive underwater. And we left the water, you know, long ago. And, you know, we live close to water always. But I think it would be really cool.
[00:42:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I'm with you. That'd be fun. If we could both have that superpower, I'll go scuba diving with you. With being able to breathe forever.
[00:42:45] Guest: Hugh Cumming: That's right. Yeah.
[00:42:46] Host: Paul Barnhurst: We'll see what we can find. Maybe we'll go check out the Titanic, see if we can get some rewards or something. Yeah.
[00:42:51] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Sorry. My phone. Yeah.
[00:42:53] Host: Paul Barnhurst: No problem. So kind of last question here. You know, our audience is listening to this, and they'd like to learn more about you or potentially get in touch. What's the best way for them to do that?
[00:43:02] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Well, I think just visit VenaSolutions.com to explore everything we're up to. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active there. And, you know, let's go from there. Perfect.
[00:43:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Hugh. I enjoyed chatting with you. And, you know, love what Ben is up to. I've seen the product before and I know you guys have a great team there and doing good work. We always need good FP&A solutions and things to make our lives easier. So thanks for all you do.
[00:43:29] Guest: Hugh Cumming: Oh thank you, I really enjoyed the conversation. Enjoy the rest of your day and week. Thanks.
[00:43:34] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Thanks. Thanks for listening to FP&A tomorrow. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating and a review on your podcast platform of choice. This allows us to continue to bring you great guests from around the globe. As a reminder, you can earn CPE credit by going to earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app, taking a short quiz, and getting your CPE certificate to earn continuing education credits for the FPAC certification. Take the quiz on earmark and contact me, the show host for further details.