Revolutionizing Mid-Market FP&A with Advanced Data Solutions
Show Notes
Welcome to FP&A Tomorrow, where we discuss financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects, with your host Paul Barnhurst.
In today’s episode, Paul engages in an insightful roundtable discussion with Julio Martinez on how mid-market companies can harness the power of technology, data, and business partnering to drive performance and accountability.
Julio, a visionary in the finance world, currently serving as the CEO of Abacum. His passion for innovation and technology makes him a leading voice in transforming the finance sector. With over two decades of experience in finance, investment banking, and fintech, Julio brings unparalleled insights into the evolving landscape of FP&A.
Key takeaways from this week's episode include:
Here is a concise summary of the key points from the discussion:
Effective FP&A requires breaking down traditional silos in finance, fostering collaboration, empathy, and rapport to influence and persuade stakeholders across the organization.
Mid-market companies face unique challenges with data volume and complexity. They require tailored solutions that provide sophisticated capabilities without the long implementation times of enterprise-level software.
Clean, well-organized data is essential. Many FP&A teams still spend excessive time on data cleaning and assembly, limiting their ability to focus on strategic business partnering.
The CFO's role is evolving towards a Chief Performance Officer, integrating strategy, operations, and performance management to drive accountability and execution throughout the organization.
There is a growing trend for FP&A to take on revenue operations and data analytics roles, ensuring objective performance analysis and avoiding biases from other departments.
Despite advancements in technology, mastery of spreadsheets remains a critical technical skill for FP&A professionals, along with knowledge of SQL and potentially Python for data modeling.
Taking a sabbatical can be a powerful, life-changing experience, providing valuable personal and professional growth that can significantly impact one's career trajectory.
Quotes:
Here are a few relevant quotes from the episode
"FP&A will become the command center of the company's operational rhythm.”-Julio Martinez
“The mid-market is a very unique, complex, sophisticated, and underserved category.”-Julio Martinez
“I think professionals still need to master Excel and Google Sheets and that spreadsheet realm.”-Julio Martinez
This conversation with Julio Martinez offers an in-depth look into the current and future state of FP&A, emphasizing the importance of business partnering and the transformative power of technology. As the FP&A field continues to evolve, professionals can take inspiration from Julio's journey and the innovative approaches discussed in this episode to excel in their roles.
Exciting Announcement
I am excited to share my two new digital FP&A Courses with you FP&A Business Partnering, and Modern Excel. They just launched and I am excited to offer a 20% discount to my listeners using code PODCAST.
Link to courses:
FP&A Business Partnering (thinkific.com)
Modern Microsoft Excel (thinkific.com)
Follow Julio:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejuliomartinez/
Website - https://www.abacum.io/
Follow Paul:
Website - https://www.thefpandaguy.com
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguy
For CPE credit please go to earmarkcpe.com, listen to the episode, download the app, and answer a few questions. For AFP FPAC certification answer the questions and contact Paul Barnhurst for further details.
In today's episode:
[00:50] - Introduction
[01:48] - Guest Introduction
[03:54] - Blending of Operations in FP&A
[04:47] - Guest’s Background and Career Journey
[07:00] - The Value of a Sabbatical
[09:12] - The Impact of Community in Microfinance
[14:57] - Launching Fintech Startups and the Transition to Abacum
[18:16] - Why FP&A for a Startup- Motivation from Guest
[20:30] - Identifying Key Pain Points in FP&A
[23:34] - Mid-Market FP&A Challenges and Opportunities
[33:59] - Opportunities in Business Partnering for FP&A
[36:00] - Rapid-Fire Session
[39:50] - Get to Know Guest
[42:22] - Conclusion
Full Show Transcript:
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: This week's title sponsor is Plan Buddies, the number one planning community for planning professionals. Check it out at plan-buddies.com and join me in the community today. 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 Barnhurst, 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 uncertainties. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your journey in FP&A. This show has something for everyone. This week, I'm thrilled to welcome our guest, Julio Martinez to the show. Julio, welcome.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Thank you so much, Paul. Excited to be here.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Excited to have you. So Julio comes to us from New York via Spain. He is currently serving as the CEO of Abacum, which was our first sponsor on the show. They're an FP&A tool. They're in the third-gen market guide, and he has both a bachelor's and an MBA degree focused on finance. So, Julio, the first question we like to start with before we give you an opportunity to tell the guests a little bit more about yourself is, what does great FP&A look like to you? What is great FP&A today?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: What an awesome question. This is our dream. For us, FP&A is not longer about accuracy in the model or sitting behind the desk and building more and more models is mostly about how we manage to drive better decisions and faster execution through business partnering in our organizations. So it's that outcome that we can generate in companies.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I like how you said that outcome. It's about so much more than the model. I'm curious, with all the change in technology, and all the uncertainty, how do you maybe see FP&A changing over the next five years or so? Do you see any big changes coming?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Definitely. We are seeing the tectonic plates move around technology and artificial intelligence. The advent of this new software category is generating an impact. so, so much as ML did for quite some time. That, in my view, is only going to be reinforcing how strong and impactful FP&A teams can become. So what we think is going to happen is that FP&A will become the command center of the company's operational rhythm, and we have an opportunity for many companies. I don't want to talk about any industry and vertical, but for many companies, we tend to see even now a convergence of revenue, operations, operations, and FP&A data analytics. So there is a world with the new technology that we see in the market, I think FP&A teams are becoming more empowered and reinforced in their organizations, no doubt.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: We're seeing more and more of a blending, like some companies, some of the rev ops are done by FP&A or some of the sales ops might be an FP&A or vice versa sometimes. But you see a lot of that blending of the operations and where it belongs. I've asked a lot of people, okay, who owns Rev ops? And some people say, well, it really should be owned by FP&A. It should be owned by the marketing, it should be owned by the chief revenue officer. so you're surely seeing a blend of operations. To me, and I know you agree, it makes sense that that sits with FP&A as a neutral party in finance and owning that data and at least the definitions, not the technical back-end stuff, but making sure everybody is aligned across the company. Because Kak can be calculated as an example in a lot of different ways, and everybody has a different incentive to look at it differently. You want that consistency. I see you smiling. You've never dealt with that.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Never in my life.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: So why don't you tell our audience more about yourself, your background, and how you ended up where you are today?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I started my career as a corporate finance lawyer. spent a lot of time working with finance teams, and that was a short stint. Then a couple of years. I then transitioned into finance and investment banking. So this is where I spent many years, both in mostly investment banking roles and also some operational roles in finance. So basically, most of my career has been in finance. This is what I regard my the core of what I've done in my, in my life. I had I had the opportunity to transition into tech for some time around seven, or eight years ago. Then I moved into fintech. I was given an awesome opportunity as a venture builder to start building fintech products from scratch and launching them to market. So I had a great chance of gaining product and technology insights as well as company building. So this this is where I also identified the opportunity to give my past experience and the amount of time I had worked with FP&A with M&A teams. What if we deployed this product knowledge, and this technology knowledge to make a difference in teams where I belonged in the past and I know very well?
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Awesome. Sounds like an amazing experience to work with the fintech and start a product and see that from the ground floor, so to speak.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: It was an amazing opportunity and not an easy transition, obviously, because I was hopeful I would run the finance professional. But you're far away from actually getting into the trenches of building products. That's a different discipline and understanding the technology. So I remember scratching my head a few times back in the day. But hey anybody can learn anything. I managed to start building that fintech technology, that financial technology, and launching them to market, which also gave me exposure to, of course, company building and go to market.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Sure and we'll come back to that. Here a little later, but I want to go back to what you mentioned when you started your career as a corporate lawyer. We won't hold that against you.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Thank you.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: But take a sabbatical. You did that for about a year, then you did a sabbatical. How did that come about?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: That is probably one of the best experiences I've had in my life. I was a a corporate finance lawyer, so a lot of corporate finance, but still a lawyer. I guess I'm still trying to redeem myself. It was 2005, 2006. I remember in 2006, Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for Grameen Bank and all his amazing work around microfinance in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and some other places in India. It was a point in time when microfinance was booming. Also in Latam. I was very interested in that movement. I had been following that for a long while. I remember in college, in some other places like very focused on microfinance, reading books, and trying to get exposure. So at this point in my life and my career, I realized, well, I don't want to be a lawyer anymore. Like I'm not this is not for me. Definitely. So I need to break with that. I want to move into finance. What a great opportunity to get into microfinance and understand this a bit better. Let's carve out a year and let's learn as much as possible. I found some projects and NGOs and some other multilateral organizations working in India. So I decided to spend a year in India, slightly 14 months working with several parties there around microfinance topics. Very interestingly, interestingly, that led me subsequently my career a few years later to work in the World Bank in the International Finance Corporation. However, I spent some time at the World Bank evaluating microfinance projects backed by private equities, which was extremely interesting. That was mostly African projects, but I was based in Washington, D.C. But long story short, that was an amazing sabbatical from a professional perspective. Of course, spending a year in India, a fascinating culture. It's also a life-changing experience. This is where I started meditating or journaling or many more things that I continue doing to this day.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: So I'm curious, you mentioned microfinance, winning the Nobel Prize there, pioneered that. Is there maybe an experience or a memory of something you saw that was impactful, that you look back and go, wow, that really kind of made a difference as you worked in that microfinance area? Maybe just a story you could share?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I think so. There what we saw was how strong communities can become. The core of microfinance is, it is not only getting that managing the risk of microfinance groups. what was a game changer for me was the community or opening the community aspect of it. So the stage prior to microfinance is self-help groups. So basically you go to rural areas, even in city places, in urban areas, and then you gather together a number of people that start building a community. So that is going to be from 6 to 10 people that will support each other. whenever somebody needs some resource, and oftentimes that can be money, but not exclusively money, then the rest of the group will be held accountable for that person paying back the loan. So I had been trained in risk management. I was interested in finance, I was learning finance. But the core of it was social pressure. So what you would consider an extremely risky loan category is very poor people like the delinquency and it was very low. So loans were paid back on time just because the group was putting the pressure or the support if you will, like you have the size of the of the of the conversation. So so definitely something that made me think a lot about community building and how important is your community in our society.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I love that, and it's amazing that community factor, support, pressure, whatever you want to call it can change the dynamics of something that normally would have a much higher default rate if there was no community. If you're just doing it individually, you would at least anticipate that something that all the model scoring, the algorithms, everything is going to tell you is high risk. It's amazing how when you incentivize correctly, you can completely change economics and help people. So I love Freakonomics, and others that talk about incentives and how when you get it wrong, how painful it is, and just how beautiful it is when you get it I can remember doing some sales commissions where I got some of it wrong and it was painful. we went through some real learnings with that. You know how it is if you don't if you don't incentivize it. There you're talking about people's lives. So thank you for sharing a community. It's amazing how many different ways that can help. Help us all be better when we help the community elevate together. So I'm curious to ask you one more question about the sabbatical. Then we're going to kind of move on from that. If someone's thinking of doing one like they want to do one. Any advice on how to go about it or any recommendations you would offer? Because I know it's a risk for most people. They think, oh, I got to leave my job for a year, how am I going to manage all this? Does it make sense? Will anyone hire me when I get back?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: How to sense that, and I fully understand those considerations. That was top of mind in my case as well. But I did it over 20 years ago I guess so, or close to 20 years ago. So it was even worse back then. I can only say that that is just in your head. Like that doesn't matter at all. Right then to the market. I think sabbaticals have become more widespread. but in general, what I would say is life is short. Make sure you make the most out of it. A sabbatical, exploring deeply a topic that is of interest to you can be a very powerful and life-changing experience. So I would disregard any professional consideration, to be frank. just make sure that you get the most out of that experience. As I said, like I was working in microfinance in some rural communities in India and having a blast. Arguably those were very very strong professionals. Like I had a great experience. But a few years later, I fulfilled one of my dreams, which was spending some time in the World Bank, which is a world-class organization, and I was working with amazing people. They sent me to Africa, to different countries to evaluate private equity investments. Actually at an early point in my career. So you don't know what that experience that you get under your belt in the sabbatical can bring about subsequently at some point in your life and career. So things are way more complex. So just go liquid and take your sabbatical, that's for sure. Then you have different options. Like you can do only backpacking and have a blast. Like why not? but if you have a topic that is interesting to you, like go take a master's. Do something softer, like polish and skill maybe. Use that time wisely and that multiplies your experience.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Now I love that. we've had on the show Carl Seidman and he coined it the first retirement, did a Ted talk when he was 30, and he went and toured the whole world for a year. Well, you share some amazing stories. I asked him a similar question and he said, pretty much everybody I tell that to says, I wish I would have done that when I was younger. Almost nobody says, what a dumb idea. You hurt your career. When he was leaving, people were wondering what he was doing, but he came back, started his own business, and has been very successful. so I'm with you. I mean, it's something I look back and think, oh, that would have been great to do earlier in my career. So the next question I want to ask you is return. I know you worked for the World Bank a little bit, but you worked for the company in Ocells, which I believe is what it was called. You mentioned you launched multiple fintech startups in the tech space and helped with products. Can you maybe share a little bit more about that experience? We just love a little bit more, as I believe that's what you did before you launched Abacum. That was your last role before?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Yes, I was a co-founder and the CEO of that venture builder. It was a blast. It was fintech-focused. Our investors, sponsors, and shareholders of the venture builder were a financial institution. So therefore our sole focus and mandate was building fintech products and launching them to market. So fintech is a complex space. We have a B2B, SaaS. so from a compliance or regulatory perspective, it's it's pretty simple. Of course, you want to get security You have a few things there. But when you enter the fintech territory, it becomes very technical and very complex, very fast. So I remember one of the learnings thereof when you do hardcore fintech. So lending ethics, transaction, transactional, even treasury management, depending on what you need to do if it's cross-border and stuff. So when we were building those products, I remember like, hey, this is a properly complex space from a regulatory and compliance perspective. So I thought, I know finance I will get this But when you move into fintech that's an aspect that you need to be very careful. many of our customers are fintechs. we also see that reporting and planning complexity that specifically fintech businesses have. Then also, as I said, from a skill advancement perspective, yes, staying close to product, staying close to technologies, staying close to launching and failing. leaving aside some of the experiments we were doing set up a very good frame that I think I carry today about innovation, about thinking differently, about not. Being a follower, but being opinionated about what you want to build. Hey, if I fail, I fail. The thing is, I'm going to fail very, very fast. I'm going to realize soon I'm not going to course correct, but I'm carrying that experience instead of trying to replicate what others are doing. I think that was something that I remember I learned very specifically.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Hey there. It's your host, the FP&A Guy. Today I'm thrilled to talk to you about Plan Buddies, one of my passions. It's where professionals meet excellence. This isn't just any community. It is a community run by and for planning professionals. Our plan buddies were all about fostering connections, sharing knowledge, and providing mentorship among our members. Ready to elevate your career? Visit planbuddies.com and become a member today. Here's a special treat. Use the promo code "FPandAGuy", the FPandaguy for an exclusive 25% discount on your first-year membership. Makes a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing that. so you went from there to starting Abacum. So I'm curious about fintech to FP&A, I know you've done microfinance, obviously corporate lawyer and finance. You've worked in a lot of finance. Why FP&A for a startup? Why Abacum and why come into this space?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I think that the CFO office was a space that I had known and followed for years. Given my background in working very closely with M&A teams, corporate development teams, and FP&A teams. So that was my job in the day-to-day. I witnessed some of these more private enterprises' software that they were using and the struggle. So I was directionally acquainted with that. When I was at the Venture Builder, I was also sitting on the board of actually a number of companies. Also, I sat on the board of some of the ones that we launched to market. I continued seeing the same finance teams struggling with reporting, struggling with immorality. So I became more and more interested in double-clicking and double-clicking further and further into into the space. until it became an obsession. So I started understanding very well the category, and I think I brought it with the product lens and also with the finance lens. given my background and some, hopefully, unique insights as to how to tackle that from a product and technology perspective. Obviously, what was instrumental there is also in my research and then I went crazy. As probably an entrepreneur would do, I went over 100 user research, interviews, scripted, recorded, and went very deep across industries, countries like verticals, and anything.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: One of those was with George, my co-founder and he was the CFO. He had spent over 15 years in operational finance roles, mostly head of FP&A, director of FP&A, also CFO, and ultimately COO. That connection and his insights as to how he would solve the same problem space made us think, hey, like we are super aligned here, so let's let's leave everything and launch the company. But this is the personal connection to the problem. I think when you launch a company and when you launch your venture, it's very important to be mission-driven and to care about what you're solving for. After many years in finance, like I couldn't find a better problem space to solve for given the product skills I had developed in the venture builder.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Okay, thank you for sharing that. So I'm gonna ask a question. You did 100 interviews. What did you see as the theme? That was the main problem that people were experiencing that you said, hey, we can solve with this new tool. If there were 2 or 3 things, what were those that the Office of Finance, and the CFO FP&A were experiencing as a pain point?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: This will not surprise you at all. because I think you know them very well, and I'm curious what you would think about it. But the vast majority of the pain was around data disparity, scattered data all over the place connected with than the manual tasks, and the day-to-day becoming very tedious in assembling the data, cleaning the data, and trying to make sure. So it's the classic topic. I think in every time we talk to FP&A teams. That's why the core of our value proposition typically starts with automation with having clean data. we all love talking about AI, and we all love talking about advanced planning and all that funky stuff. I love it. we've we've built it But the first step and the most basic at the, at the most basic form in all those conversations, right to this date is I don't have enough time to become a business partner. I don't have enough time to have an impact or to prioritize strategic projects. because I'm spending my time trying to clean data and make sense of data, how does that sound? I would love to hear your thoughts here. Um.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I agree I was thinking about that and I think the biggest problems FP&A needs to be solved as you mentioned is it's the data, it's the reporting, it's the manual tasks. When it's the data, it's the cleaning, it's the combining. Probably the biggest challenge. I worked for a company and companies where it felt like that's half my time was just cleaning data. It's so hard because you're like, how do you get to the business partnering? You either don't sleep or you sacrifice one or the other. generally bad reports are not going to go well. So often business partnering is what gets sacrificed to a certain extent to try to make sure the numbers are right.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I think I should have interviewed you as well back in the day.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: So I could relate to that pain that you mentioned there. I, as you said, that's the core problem I look at it and I look at these tools. You're trying to make sure you can bring in the data model, you can do good reporting, and you can calculate and manage the amount of data they need. Then as we said, all those things are nice. But especially generative AI right now is not solving the core problems of where FP&A pain is. It can help with certain things, but it's not there yet to solve, those core pains. That's really what any good tool should do. I'm curious, how has your view changed of FP&A since starting a tool focused on the space? I'm sure you've had many more conversations with CFOs, and heads of FP&A anything changed or anything that surprised you that was different than when you came into it?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: So that's a very good question, Paul. You made me think here. I think what has become over time, very core to our thesis at Abacum is that the mid-market is a very unique, complex, sophisticated, and underserved category. So I didn't see that coming when we were launching the company. But over time, we have seen this space in the market where you have companies in the mid-market and there are many ways of defining that. But how we think of it is typically companies with two, three, 200, 300 employees all the way to 2000, 3000 employees. So this is what we consider mid-market and sure. our definition. But we have seen in this market segment like this, this increasing complexity and more data volumes, more pressure to deliver fast more pressure from the board of directors, more pressure for sophistication, more data volume. So at the same time growing more pressure at the same time, more complexity. So these guys are at the crux of a very in a very tough spot. At the same time, you have typically more enterprise or upper mid-market maybe technology that you could explore.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: But you know the drill. So long implementation times probably you need to hire people to maintain the software. Mid-market companies cannot afford those nine months implementation 12 months implementation period. They don't have that bandwidth. They don't have the headcount to hire. At the same time, some entry-level solutions are too simple. They don't handle the multidimensional modeling that they need to deliver vast volumes of data. They break those solutions. So honestly, I didn't I was not aware I had worked more at the enterprise side, to be honest, in finance, when I was in finance and when I was building fintech companies, probably it was more at the other side, right on the entry-level. Some of those would help us. So this middle space was a little bit unknown. But hey, we've identified this as a very unique category. Very unique category. You need to be very, very intentional in building products for these folks.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: For a guy here, one thing I hear again and again as I interview and talk with FP&A professionals is that learning business partnering is key to being a good FP&A professional. That's why I'm excited to share my new course material developed by Ron Monteiro and myself, who teach us about business partnering. We talk about building, relationships, and managing. Conversations and holding the business accountable. This material is the same material that's used in the new Harvard Online FP&A certificate. Go ahead, go to the FP&A guide. Click on my digital FP&A Business Partnering course and use the code podcast to save 20%. Your career will thank you. Got it. Now I appreciate that and I want to get your thoughts. we've talked a little bit about mid-market. We've talked about kind of the platform's challenges faced there and some things in FP&A in general. You look at FP&A today, I know you very much think of it as an operational center. So what's your take? How should companies think about FP&A and data analytics and rev ops and sales ops, and who owns what? Do you have any thoughts on how people should go through that? Because I get people asking me, well should rev ops or FP&A should it? Should marketing, should the CFO have data analytics? There's a lot of different opinions and there's not a right answer. I think we can all agree to that. There are some wrong answers for sure. There's no right answer, but any thoughts or guidance on how you think of that kind of structuring it and should more of it sit under finance or should it be more of a coordination just to kind of as we move forward and try to make FP&A more operationally focused, not just financial? How do you think of that?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Well, thank you so much. I love this question. we are very vocal about it. I get here very thrilled because of how we think of finance. So taking a step back how we think of the CFO is more it's his role becoming closer to operations. So CFO slash COO or some companies with very heavy operational operations maybe that is not possible. So I'm not claiming this applies to every company, but for many others, this is a huge opportunity for CFOs to become more operational. Cfos becoming the chief performance officer, and not only for reporting, but also to make things happen, having strategy teams, and corporate development teams under them to drive also performance and accountability in the company at the granular level, not only at the high level ball reporting, but also in the day to day in the management team meeting reviews like understanding how the marketing funnel is going, how the sales conversions are going, like going deep into what matters for the business. So basically what we're thinking is how do you equip finance teams to drive performance in the organization and hold their peers accountable to what they need to deliver? This is critical. Traditionally, some of that was done in a strategy. Some of that was done in rebotes, in ops, in marketing. It was scattered. What we fundamentally believe is that, hey, FP&A teams have great sophisticated professionals, extremely smart AI willing to thrive, willing to make a push to make the effort. Still struggling and syncing with the data messiness that they have.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: So we have we have a huge opportunity in front of us to empower these guys. Then, therefore, I believe revenue operations could easily be done by FP&A in many companies I work with, they could easily sit with the CFO. I think that your earlier point about incentives will set up incentives in a better way. If you want to leave revenue operations under sales or marketing, that could make sense. More on the technical side of managing sales, Salesforce, or HubSpot, or more on the technical pipes. But when it comes to understanding the performance of the business, it's very easy to spot. How is that how people reporting are the ones that want to protect their own so it's very difficult to then have smart conversations about what happened without receiving, as the CEO, for instance, or as the management team, a cosmetic approach to data. breaking that and having FP&A that is more objective. Running the performance analysis is going to be way better. The same happens with data. Data should sit under finance. Modern finance teams need to have full ownership of data analytics and engineering probably in many cases also makes sense and it's also an independent way of managing data and having a better way of prioritizing projects. So I can extend here, but I don't want to acknowledge\ my excitement. So I'm going to leave it there unless you have more questions.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: No, I can see the excitement. I think we could just cover this subject as a series, not one podcast, but a whole series. I've had a lot of conversations. I'll share two things that kind of resonate with what you said I had Scott Stoffer, he's been a CEO multiple times. He runs a Rev ops think company right now. Start up go to market. He mentioned he's like, if you want technical and you want number focused, it makes sense that your rev-up sits in FP&A, which I kind of what you were getting at. If it's more about managing the tools, then it probably makes sense under your CRO. More of that technical. I also had Casey Wu on. You may know who he is the Operators Guild and he commented, that he almost called it the chief business intelligence officer instead of the finance officer and said you could tell you have a modern CFO because they're taking an ownership in data. Often the analytics team sits under them. I still remember I got a new CFO at a company I worked with, and the first thing he did was move analytics under finance. It was interesting to watch. I always thought of that when he mentioned that. So you're seeing that shift. I look at it, you can align it however you want, but the key is your FP&A should be serving as a nerve center to help hold the operations and the business accountable to those targets, and you need to make sure incentives are structured right regardless of who sits under who. so I think that's kind of what you were getting to. It's fascinating to watch that change because definitely finance is becoming more and more front office versus the old back office. Cf know just give us our reports type of mentality.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Totally.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: So great. Have a couple more questions before we move into our last couple of sections where we get to know you a little bit of a rapid-fire section. So I'm curious and I have a feeling I probably know what the first answer is. What do you see as the biggest challenge right now for FP&A?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I think the biggest challenge to this date is let me share a couple. The first one continues to be at least in the segment of the market that we know the most, which is the mid-market. As I said, getting your data basics and foundations Like, to be honest, I continue seeing people struggling with this and you know we get very visionary. You know what if DNA needs to go and how we want to drive performance and accountability and we dream on all that. But when I talk to most people on the ground today, they are still not taking enough action to change the reality of their data systems, and their data scatter. They, spend too much time trying to make sense of it. Therefore time for analysis for business partnering is not there. So I think I continue seeing that as the biggest challenge.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Okay. What's the biggest opportunity moving forward? We talked about data as the biggest challenge. What's that opportunity?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Well, then the opportunity is, of course, what do you do then with all this time and energy and insight to back. To me, it's always business partnering. This is what as professionals, we need to be doing. You want to be that partner to the business, that partner to the product, that partner to the different stakeholders. That brings to that conversation a lot of insight, a lot of Intel from the market, from industry, from your own data, from insights and then you are enabling them to make better decisions, data-driven decisions. You bring that challenge and you bring also that accountability and that performance. I mean, when we talk about performance and accountability, I don't want to portray FP&A as the policeman. Like, it's not that it's about business partnering of course, for the management team, and for the CEO, and for the board is driving performance and accountability in the business that that's what matters. But what's happening on the ground is a true business partnering approach where you bring data, you bring value, add insights into those conversations, and enable people to make better and faster decisions. So business partnering is the most of the opportunity and we keep on talking about business partnering. But when you look at it like done effectively, it doesn't happen so often. especially in the mid-market like maybe enterprise organizations, they have a different setup. But especially in the mid-market, that's by far the biggest opportunity.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: The way we've managed data is perfect for a world that no longer exists. Over half your team's time is spent cleaning data. Imagine a notebook that does the work for you. Turn dirty data into a powerful asset with analyst intelligence. Join modern FP&A teams at Analyst intelligence.com today. no. speaking to that, your business partner and I just released a couple of modules for a course on business partnering. A lot of the training I get asked to do with my partner's business partners. We're going into one of the largest retailers in the world here in a couple of weeks to do training, and one of the big areas is business partnering. How do we more influence, how do we communicate? Like, this team is great technically, but we need them to be more involved with the business. So it's a common conversation I have all the time. So I'm with you on that one. So we're going to move to the rapid-fire section. The idea here is you get about kind of 20s to answer each question. You may be a little longer if you need it. Some of them will be even shorter. Well, four of those. Then we go into a little bit of a section called Get to Know You or ask you some more personal questions. So you're ready here.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I'm ready to go.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: What's your favorite generative AI platform? Do you have one you like to use either work or personally?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: But personally, I found it pretty amazing. Some of the ones I use with my children where you can create your own stories and characters and it creates a great family experience and then you can turn them into small video animations of the same story. There is one called Bedtime Story AI that is that is pretty cool. So definitely, I'm finding that I'm using.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I'll have to check that out. My daughter creates her stories with ChatGPT. She's always coming down and asking me for my phone and asking it to create different tropes and new storylines for her favorite characters. It's I like it being there because I can go look at whatever she's done and I'm like, okay, I need to train the AI a little bit. I don't like those answers, you know? But so it's kind of fun. So spreadsheet, are you a Google Sheets or Excel guy?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Google sheets.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Why?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Collaboration.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: That doesn't surprise me. I figured you say Google Sheets, 95% of the time we get Excel. So I had to ask that question to get a contrarian view.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Absolutely. So, of course, I think to this date I still master Excel better than Google Sheets, to be honest. So I even my training. So I think I'm still better at Excel. But I, I cannot I cannot collaborate like I cannot take that pain anymore. So I just and I'm done with copy-pasting and input ranges, like Google Sheets is just like for, for what I need to do today, which is not super advanced modeling because we do that in our own platform. So like for my ad hoc quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, Google Sheets, and then I share that. Easy.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I understand. So I'm going to ask you a question here. What is the number one technical skill FP&A professional should master?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I think it's still a spreadsheet. What can I say? I think professionals still need to master Excel and Google Sheets and that spreadsheet realm. Still the lingo. I think increasingly, given what we spoke right about data and about like, of course, mastering SQL or some user understanding of SQL, I would say even Python, I see more and more sophisticated professionals that are expanding towards data modeling and languages to their own success. They definitely can advance their career faster that way.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I'm not surprised to see spreadsheets. I get that one. Financial modeling, analytics, it's is usually one of those three. What's the number one soft skill?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: Influencing people. I spoke about business partners. So you would not be surprised at influencing people, convincing, persuading, building empathy, and building rapport. getting and giving. This is we need to break the silo where we used to live in finance.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I like it. I do not often get to hear empathy on a podcast, but I agree with you. It's a skill and a lot of other things in there. You said that we need. So here's the Get To Know You section. So do you have a favorite hobby or passion? What do you do when you're not working for Abacum?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I would say it's sports. So mostly mixed martial arts, passionate about it, and also surfing. I love surfing with the family. and I love playing chess. So those would be the three ones that besides reading, which is a classics.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Got it. Great. So speaking of reading, what's a book you'd recommend for our audience? What's that one book you're going to tell them to read?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I'm thinking of recommending AMP It Up by Frank Slootman. He used to be the CEO of Snowflake and also the CEO of ServiceNow. I think I like his shoot-from-the-hip approach of company building and, and driving value in companies. So obviously he's, he's he's not a founder, but he's been a professional CEO that has created billions and billions and billions of shareholder value. I think he's very vocal about raising the standards, driving more and more focus in the organization, how to align people. So I found that book very refreshing. It's two, or three years old.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: That sounds like a good one. I haven't read that one but sounds like it'd be good. Favorite travel destination if you could go anywhere in the world, where are you going?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: That's going to be Panama these days. I have some other places, but Panama, we are repeating this summer with the family. It's great surfing. It's great surfing. I think it's underrated. Everybody goes somewhere like great surfing in Panama and also a great culture.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Got it. So, Panama, I haven't been there. I'll have to add it to my bucket list. So if you could have dinner with one person in the world alive, who are you going to pick?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I'm going to pick a classic. I'm going to pick Warren Buffett.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: We get that one from time to time. Why Warren?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I've been a huge fan of value investing for forever. Actually, prior to getting into into finance, I was reading books on value investing and his shareholder letters at date and from from the 60s. What I value the most is human values slash common sense, like this approach to common sense that is almost embarrassing that you don't as a finance professional. How they think of a BDA, how they think of depreciation and amortization like some of this basic knowledge that we get so caught up in our finance kind of thing that then there comes this white businessman and sets this straight like this is nonsense and of love, that eye-opening those eye-opening reflections.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I hear you. Well, I think we're at that point where we'll go ahead and wrap up here. I've enjoyed having you on the show. Appreciate you sharing a little more of your story and how you came to start. Abacum and FP&A tool for the mid-market out there, how do you do your sabbatical? A lot of great lessons in there. I hope everybody enjoys this episode as much as I did. I've enjoyed the interview. So thanks for joining me. Last question here. If anyone wants to get a hold of you, maybe learn more about you. What's the best way for them to do that?
Guest: Julio Martinez:: I think these days I'm very active on LinkedIn. I like to share with the community some thoughts, and some reflections and also engage with others like you, of course. So look for me on LinkedIn, Holly Martinez, Abacum. You'll find me there.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Great. Well, thank you so much. We look forward to giving the audience an opportunity to listen to this. So thanks for joining me, Julio.
Guest: Julio Martinez:: It was a blast. Thank you so much, Paul.
Host: Paul Barnhurst:: 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.