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 Michael Dion on how FP&A goes beyond numbers and reports, focusing on collaboration and leveraging cutting-edge technology like generative AI to drive business success.

Michael, a seasoned finance professional and senior manager at a Fortune 100 company, is passionate about storytelling and presentations, transforming traditional financial reviews into engaging, story-based approaches. As a finance leader with extensive experience in media and entertainment, his innovative use of generative AI and dedication to continuous learning set him apart as a visionary in the FP&A field.

Key takeaways from this week's episode include:

Here is a concise summary of the key points from the discussion:

• Great FP&A emphasizes collaboration across departments, enabling informed decision-making rather than merely generating reports and numbers. This approach fosters a more integrated and strategic business environment.

• Future FP&A professionals need to be technically proficient with tools like Python and generative AI. These technologies are crucial for handling and processing large data sets efficiently, enhancing overall effectiveness.

• Implementing automation and AI can streamline FP&A processes, increasing efficiency and productivity. This allows FP&A professionals to focus on more strategic tasks, driving greater impact within their organizations.

• Moving from traditional, number-heavy presentations to story-based approaches that incorporate insights from various departments can make financial reviews more engaging and actionable, leading to better business outcomes.

• Strong relationships with business partners are essential for FP&A professionals. These relationships enable them to provide valuable support and drive strategic decisions, ultimately benefiting the entire organization.

• Continuous learning and adapting to new technologies are critical for FP&A professionals to stay relevant. Embracing technological advancements ensures they can meet the evolving demands of the industry.

• Proactively providing useful insights and well-prepared reports can make life easier for business partners and managers. This approach fosters better collaboration, enhances strategic decision-making, and supports career growth for FP&A professionals.

Quotes:

Here are a few relevant quotes from the episode 

• "We need to almost be pseudo IT professionals just like how you had to learn and transition into Excel 20 years ago”- Michael Dion

• “AI is going to make us in some ways more technical, not less.”- Michael Dion

• “I'm all about efficiency, and I've been using the generative AI to teach myself Python by learning its functionality by reviewing libraries of code.”- Michael Dion

• “My goal going in was to just engage people and make them, dare I say, excited about finance.” - Michael Dion

This discussion with Michael Dion focuses on the evolving role of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) in modern organizations. Key topics include the importance of collaboration, the integration of advanced technologies, and practical strategies for FP&A professionals to enhance their effectiveness and impact.

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 Michael:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dionmichaelc/

Website - https://www.f9finance.com/

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:

[01:20] - Introduction

[02:00] - Guest Introduction

[03:05] - Integrating Consumer Insights

[04:44] - Preparing for Technological Changes

[05:30] - How technology enhances the abilities of FP&A professionals

[11:30] - Media Industry Passion

[15:30] - Amortization of Film Costs

[18:00] - Response to F9 Finance

[24:00] - Transforming Business Reviews

[28:34] - Advice for Story-Based Reporting

[38:00] - Career Advice

[39:00] - Rapid Fire Session

[41:07] - Use of Generative AI

[45:00] - Business Partnership

[46:14] - Contact Information of the Guest

[47:00] - 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 are joined by industry experts, practitioners, and thought leaders who share their experiences with us and help us navigate today's complexities and tomorrow's uncertainties. Whether you're a seasoned FP&A professional or just starting your journey, this show has something for everyone. I'm thrilled to welcome our guests this week to the show. Michael, welcome to the show.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Hi, Paul. So good to be here today.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Excited to have you. So a little bit about Michael. Then we'll jump into one of the first questions we like to ask every guest. So he's coming to us from Orlando, Florida. He currently works as a senior manager of finance at a Fortune 100 company. He earned his master's in finance and his undergrad from University of Florida. So first question I want to ask you from your experience is, what does great FP&A look like? What is great FP&A?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: So to me, great FP&A is about bringing people together. It's not about the numbers. It's not about all the reports and forecasts we pull together. It's about bringing different departments and teams together to help your business partners make the best decisions possible for the company, and sometimes decisions that would not have come out if any one department was working on it by themselves.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Because you have an example of what you mean by that. Where all the departments led to a better result versus it kind of just one department doing it. So you could think of it there.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: That's a great one. So a big one we do a lot is, we integrate with consumer insights and marketing. I found a lot of value in taking their insights of what consumers say they want and what consumers are asking us for, and blending it with where we are or aren't seeing purchase activity. A lot of times the hidden opportunities are in things where we haven't put the product there, which is why people aren't buying. They're not buying because we didn't give them the opportunity to. If we purely looked at the numbers, we'd be looking at our biggest product lines, our fastest growing product lines, and we'd entirely miss that demand piece. Putting them all on one page allows our operators to see that and make the right decision.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: That's a great example. I love that. Being able to see that, market research data you've done says there's a change in trend, this is becoming more important or people are more interested in it. You can look at financials and say, okay, that's not being prefaced or pushed at the point of sale. Let's marry those two together and capitalize on that opportunity.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Exactly.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: So I'm curious about your thoughts. Over the last couple of years, FP&A has changed a lot. We've seen it go from being viewed as just back office to front office, a lot more to being much more strategic and commercial driven. As you remember, as you mentioned, it's bringing people together. It's not just dealing with the spreadsheet. So how do you see it changing over the next few years, especially, with generative AI and all the technology changes coming? Do you see FP&A being different five years from today, or do you think it will be pretty similar to what it is today?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: I think we still have some more transformation. I think you still hear a lot of people saying FP&A is about strategy. I think we've made that transition. The transition that I see is that still today, and especially when I started my career, we were very hands-on in the process. Getting the month-end reports out, physically sitting down and adjusting a forecast, and building models. I see the process work going away because that's what can be automated. But where I see the biggest shift is and it's already starting to happen, is we need to almost be pseudo IT professionals just like how you had to learn and transition into Excel 20 years ago, you're going to, I think in five years, need to know Python and need to know some of these generative AI tools that are coming out, because it's how we're going to work with our data. So and that's the biggest piece, is that our data needs are so great now that the IT organizations can't handle them and cleansing them the way we need them cleansed. That's where we as FP&A professionals, even at the senior manager level, need to be jumping into those conversations because these tools require great data, and rarely do we have great end-to-end data across our systems. I've worked at some companies where we had five different ledger systems on different platforms, feeding into one master data nightmare.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I can relate. I worked with a company that, I don't know, we had like ten different billing platforms and just the division I supported. I think we had four different billing platforms one of them and two in the other. So I get it. It's a nightmare when everybody spells Delta Airlines differently. That's the example I used when I worked at travel, Delta Air, Delta Air Lines Inc., Delta Airlines, Delta with a capital. All right, I'm done. Delta Group, which Delta are we using today? I totally can relate to that one a lot. One other question before I ask you, just tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. I want to ask one more question. You mentioned you think it's going to become much more technical Python. So I'm curious, what are you doing today to prepare for that, if that's your view, are you learning Python or where is your kind of head in that area?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: I'm doing two things. So I'm working on Python, and I'm working on generative AI as it relates to automating processes. That's where I'm working, bringing those two together. I've married the two together by having me write my Python scripts. I know that'll be sacrilege to some who like to sit down and code, but I'm all about efficiency, and I've been using the generative AI to teach myself Python by learning its functionality by reviewing libraries of code and then having the bulk of the code written by AI tools, which I have found it does exceptionally well. I've had a lot of success with Python. With VBA, the code outputs are great because there's a right answer in there. It's not. It's not so much a grey area where I struggle. If you give it very specific instructions and tell it a task, there's code for that and it generates the code very well.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: No, I've seen a little bit of that. I haven't done much on the Python front I've used. It helped me with Excel. I see it often will give the code and I know it does a good job there. I've heard a lot of people talk about that, so I appreciate you sharing how you're doing it. I think it's exciting to see. You're not the first one who that said, AI is going to make us in some ways more technical, not less. A lot of people think it's less. But I've heard some say it's just different. There's going to be more of a need, kind of the data science side of things. Maybe that programming a little bit more in FP&A than there is today, as well as the strategic side that continues to grow. So it's an interesting mix if you think it all.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: I look at it as if it's like your superhero cape. I can't do the work by itself. It needs you to guide it. Part of guiding it is being extremely technical with guiding it, but once you guide it the right way, it can tenfold your abilities.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I wanted to joke about what I thought of. Have you seen The Incredibles?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: I have.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Edna, no capes. That's what I thought of when you said that. I said they're picturing it. Like capes get caught. Anyway, sorry. Total side note. But why don't you take a minute and just walk us through a little bit more of your background, how you got where you are today, and how you got into finance? Just introduce yourself to the audience. Then we have, some other questions we'll jump into here.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Sure, absolutely. So first and foremost, I have a wonderful wife that I met working at my first job out of college. So we've been together since then. We have two amazing kids, a two-and-a-half-year-old, and as I say, a half-year-old who are just, just so much fun and keep us so busy. Then my dog, who, when I'm working from home, is my supervisor, and he's sitting on my feet right now. I was fortunate enough to receive coming out of the University of Florida. I received an offer for a finance internship at kind of a dream company in the media space. I was able to develop my career there. big companies move fast, and in a period of six years, I had five positions and was able to kind of quickly learn a lot of different skill sets from different managers, was kind of looking for something new to broaden my skill set. So I took a controller role at a startup where I was the head of finance and accounting have phenomenal respect for accountants because that is extremely challenging work, especially in the construction space.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Quite honestly, I didn't know what I was getting myself into, but kind of learned as I went and there you go. I had an opportunity to follow my wife out to the West Coast and took another dream role at Lionsgate Entertainment, where I worked in their corporate FP&A function doing consolidations, and got cool exposure to the television production, streaming services, movies kind of right as streaming was, was coming to life. We spent some time in Verizon working in their Center of Excellence for FP&A, doing a lot of shared services, finance, planning, standardization some fun work there as they kind of transformed their finance organization, one of the biggest finance teams in the entire world, which was exceptional. now back at the company where I started my career, had an opportunity to come back, and kind of marry some of my media and entertainment experience together. It's just been a wild ride.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Fun. So speaking of media and entertainment, recently I had the opportunity to do some training, and one of the ladies we worked with there was 2K, the video game company and she just took the lead finance role, almost kind of like a CFO role. I think she's head of finance. But at, Ron Howard's company, I know he merged that with someone else. I can't remember the name of it. Now imagine Imagine entertainment. You mentioned Lionsgate. I can tell it's kind of like a dream for her. So I'm curious, media industry, why the media industry? What fascinates you about it? You've been at Lionsgate, other large companies, Verizon, etc. What gets you excited to work in that space?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: So there's two big things. The first thing is I love storytelling and presentations, and the media industry lends itself to that because first of all, you're working with people who are storytellers. They're a fun group to be around, very creative, and very passionate about their product. There was The media industry is made up of a lot of events. There's movies come out and TV shows come out, and there's all these big events that create cool stories to tell in the finances, and I end up tying into that. It's also challenging to forecast because you're working with products. When I was at Verizon, there was momentum in the subscription business. What we sold last month, we're not going to lose half of our customers overnight. It's just not going to happen. But in a media business, you put a movie out there like we would do at Lionsgate. If you got within 20% of the box office forecast, you were thrilled because you're going off of historical comps. You're looking at, well, if we're going to do Hunger Games 2, how much did Hunger Games 1 make? And you go from there and you're never going to be right. We always say you're never right in forecasting, but you're never going to be right. You're not going to be right on the timing, or the size. You have to make all of these cost decisions. How much you make the movie for, how much you market the movie for before you even know what your revenue is going to be. That interplay of building this kind of portfolio and hoping that the portfolio succeeds almost like venture capital fascinates me from a finance and forecasting standpoint. I like a good challenge.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I could see where that's a challenge, as you were mentioning that and forecasting and how, widely different they could be. I recently listened to a podcast where someone was talking about forecasting the errors tour, Taylor Swift. And I imagine that was probably one that was under-forecasted. I don't think anyone expected it to be that big. Right? It's like a movie that goes huge. Like Forrest Gump. I don't think anyone quite expected that to explode or you got the opposite. We spent 300 million on this movie. It bombed at the box office, and we're going to lose a ton because the rule of thumb I heard once from somebody, this was independent, so I don't think it may be as true for big, huge companies. But he was a small independent filmmaker and he goes, I need to make about three times what it costs me to get my money back. When you add in the marketing and how much the movie theaters get and all the costs along the value chain, often that doesn't happen until you release it on video.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: That's very true. Even TV shows typically don't make money for 3 or 4 years. Even going beyond kind of the box office for movies, it's a very challenging industry and you make a lot of bets and investments a long time before the revenue comes in.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I talked to somebody once who had to figure out what the value of perpetuity was of some of the biggest brands in the world in media. Talk like Lion King is an example. Like, what is the value of Lion King to all the toys in the future? All the shows, everything that happens. They had to do that for a number of big names like that, and they shared kind of that experience, and they had to do it 20 years ago and try to figure out what the value was into perpetuity. Do you think it's hard enough to try to forecast a year ahead now, try to look into the future, and also figure out what are the different streams that are going to be in the future? I'm guessing 20 years ago probably didn't think everything was going to be streaming like it is today. Right? So just very different economics and just amazing to hear her talk about that. So media I do think it's a fascinating industry.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: By the way, in media, finance is forecasts for revenue that determine how you amortize film costs. So you also get to explain them to the auditors.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: How does amortization work? Let's jump into that. I know I have some other questions here, but I'd never thought of that. I think I may have heard that once, but how does the amortization work? Like, what's the typical life that you amortize a movie over? What do you think?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: In the United States under GAAP, so you'll look at something usually over a three, 5, or 10 year life, kind of depending on the size of it. Ten years is the most. You build a curve of all of the revenue streams that can come in over that period, which of course floats. Because we're guessing what that is. Then each accounting period, once the actual results have come in, you adjust the remainder of the curve and then you take the percentage of the film cost and amortize it in that period. So it's a weird one where usually when we're doing any kind of accounting exercise, accounting could almost do it in a silo if they needed to. But it's one rare one where the kind of like somehow some insurance works. It's where the curve over the remaining life of it that finance provides determines the percentage of amortization in that quarter.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: It's kind of like when you're doing accruals for revenue at the end of the month. Often accounting needs finance help to understand that this is more complex than that. But I do know a lot of what you're talking about with accruals and amortization. because I supported traveler's checks and different situations. But you took breakage revenue. In the international markets in the US, it was all considered abandoned property and was turned back over to the States because you could identify the person. Not so much with gift cards. If you can't identify the person, you could take some abandoned property revenue, not a cash transaction, but. It makes your revenue look better on the PNL. so I had to forecast every spend-down curve for all the different countries and currencies and different products out 40 years. Then after 40 years, you took whatever was left over. Once you got to 40 years and assumed nobody was going to cash it after 40 years. But they still could because you had a liability into perpetuity. If they hadn't cashed it, you then had to adjust the books. So it was that was a monster model.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: 40 years, I can't imagine.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: There wasn't good the data was suspect in different periods and times. As you can imagine, going back 40 years. It wasn't like it was a nice clean where you could run a statistical algorithm and be like, oh Yes, this all makes sense. No, there is never good enough data. So you were making a lot of assumptions. I can relate a little bit different situation, but I get the challenge there and the questions with the accounting team. You run a website called F9 Finance and I know you've written a ton of articles on there. Tell me about that. What motivates you to write? So much?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: So this started as a passion project during Covid, and it's something that I was so passionate about. I felt the need to continue. The biggest thing for me is bridging the gap between kind of the academic and I mean that by kind of all like the current resources around finance and practically what's happening in the workforce. Part of that is that as people transition from college into the workplace, but another bigger part of that is that people already in the workplace with very busy leaders, with not a lot of time to invest in training and trying to develop their careers and become better finance professionals. A lot of the materials that are out there are today not translating into the real world of finance. You're not going to find great books about how to handle situations where a business partner just doesn't want to work with you. You're not going to find people who want to kind of transparently talk about these things. You're not going to talk about or keep up with a lot of the technologies that are happening. How do we think about AI coming in? How do we find visualization tools? More importantly, what I found, is how do we do these kinds of automations and visualizations and cool things if our company won't pay for them? What are the ways we can kind of find low-cost or even free ways we can do this and roll it out, even if it's just your own job? There's just not a lot of people kind of taking that personal approach to help the individual finance professional succeed the way finance is. That's something that I wanted to help people with, especially as technology just keeps taking off and going faster.

 

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 plan-buddies.com and become a member today. Here's a special treat. Use the promo code TheFPandAGuy, the FP&A, and a guy for an exclusive 25% discount on your first-year membership. Kind of an example, a little bit different when you speak of technology and just not even knowing what's out there. So I did a presentation yesterday talking about FP&A tools and the market landscape because I don't know 100 tools now at this point. seen a lot of that market. we asked some questions about what's holding you back from implementing a tool. And the number one thing people said was just a lack of awareness of what's out there. That surprised me. I knew it would be on the list, but I didn't expect it to be number one. I figured it'd be the data integration or the ROI from the cost perspective or all those other typical things. You see change management, that kind of stuff. so it just goes to show people don't know where to go a lot of times, because there we are, awash in data unlike any time in our history. Its generative AI has substantially accelerated that. It can be overwhelming to even know where to start. So I think that's great you're doing it. What's kind of been the response? What do you hear from people or how's that side of it?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: I've gotten a great response on it. one of the biggest things I try to do is even though I'm speaking to a professional audience, try to use very simple and straightforward language. I write my articles I go through them, and I scan again for any technical jargon acronyms. I pull them out and put them in simpler language. Then I go in a third time, and I put in simple language and try to make it as funny as possible. People have found that it is just a lot more approachable because we're not only saying, here's this very simple guide, talking just plainly and hopefully humorously, and my jokes aren't always that funny if you ask anybody, but hopefully humorously and then and then giving you an Excel workbook and taking you through the Excel workbook and walking you through step by step how to approach it, and then going a step further and saying, and here's a couple of tools paid and free. Right. The paid one can do all of this. The free one can do this and bring this to your company and try to get this in your transformation roadmap or take this and implement it in your own job. So acknowledging the reality that you can't just take a page from a textbook, walk into your job, and do that and it works. All these nuances are so often forgotten in that entire process and so far people are loving it.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: So I have to ask for a full-time job, and two kids under three. I think you said writing lots of articles. I know you do other social media stuff. Do you sleep?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Rarely, but that's because that's usually because of the six-month-old waking us up. It's a lot of a lot of automation and process. I try to practice what I preach and everything is written by me, but I found some cool ways for AI to assist me in the processes of creation and to kind of speed up what I do. At the end of the day, I want it all to be me. Be human, be authentic. but I found a lot of ways to batch process, to automate things on the back end, to streamline things. That goes for both my day job and at home. I want everything to go fast. I want to get my team home at a reasonable time. I am constantly looking and constantly trying to find my processes wherever I can so that we can all get home and spend time with our families where it matters.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Love it. I may going to hire you as my process consultant.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Someday I will build you a process map all day. They're they're very clunky. I don't like software. I get an eight-and-a-half by 11 pieces of paper, and I just draw my process. That's my process map.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: There's something to be said for that. Sometimes just a great piece of paper is better than any system out there. All right. So in your resume, when I was looking on LinkedIn, you shared an experience I want to ask about. You talk about how you transform business reviews with your leaders into a story-based approach. Love to learn more about that. Talk about that process kind of how that came about, why you did it, and how it was received.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Sure. So we would do a lot of across my career, I've done a lot of financial reviews where the executives would want to bring in kind of all the team, the managers. Right. when I would take over these decks, they were page after page of just a wall of numbers. If we were lucky, there'd be a few bullet points in there. I would look around the room and nobody was paying attention at all. It was crickets. It was painful. It was painful for me because I didn't even have much, much insight to add. We just can't keep doing this. This was before anyone had even told me about storytelling. But my goal going in was to just engage people and make them, dare I say, excited about finance. Instead of dreading when it was our month our week of the month percent. So the way I started again, we had these decks that were just walls of numbers. The very first thing I did was the first page instead of an executive summary, instead of a wall of numbers, waterfall cause of change. One of my absolute favorite tools for analysis. I would bucket this in two ways. I would bucket it in kind of the technical and the noise. Think about accounting adjustments. Mich made an error in the forecast. All the stuff that doesn't isn't a business driver. It's just kind of the back end. It's important to point out, that it's not the business.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Not where you want to spend the time. It's not usually controllable. Sometimes you have to express it, but it's not a controllable item.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Exactly. Then from there, we go into not PNL line items or here's revenue and labor. We would go into buckets of stories of major things that happened in the business. Right. Something something closed, something open. There was an emergency. There's something that's not resonating with consumers. I would break down the business performance from those stories. Then the rest of the presentation would be digging into those stories to help everyone understand how the financial performance connected to the management team. We're seeing every day in the business to make it very tactical and tangible for them, and hopefully where I could, to give them some things that they could do to turn those red numbers if they were red to positive or to learn from the green numbers on the page, and then put all the walls of numbers in the appendix, because you still need those where finance people, we have to show up with our walls of numbers.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Yes, there have to be some numbers in there, but I really, appreciate that. Taking that story-based approach and thinking of it from the business perspective, because so often those reports just end up in the round file basket instead of being used. So I'm curious.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: I always say if you ever want to know if people are reading your reports, just take a month and stop sending them all and see what reports they ask for.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Very, very true. I've built dashboards in Power BI. We're like, okay, nobody's looking at this, hasn't been updated in three months, and haven't been asked a question. So it's not needed. So it's like, okay, what do we do now because nobody cares about it? Is it because of the report? Because they're not aware then you start asking those questions of what's the reason? And if it's something you're delivering every month, then nobody's reading it. it's because there's no value. Because if there is value, they find time to look at it, regardless of how busy they are. The average person knows where they should spend their time. What advice would you give to somebody listening who's thinking, where do I start? I want it to be more story-based. I know my business reviews are not very good. I have the same problem you do. I look around and everybody has that look of like, all right, when's this meeting over? And I'll give an example. So my partner and I do a lot of training. His name is Ron Monteiro and there's a craft commercial. Now if you remember it, he was working for Kraft at the time. It's a Philadelphia cream cheese. You see the one lady get all excited. She's all, Deb, there's a budget meeting and you see someone else budget meeting and you get everybody in the room. The guy's up there just boring with the char and this and this. You see everybody eating bagels with cream cheese. I can't wait for next month's budget meeting. Kind of that idea of like, oh, I get what I want and nothing to do. You can tell they're all bored to death with the actual meeting. so we kind of share that and talk about how you need to change things. So what advice could you give to people who are maybe going through that experience where it's pulling teeth, or you got to bribe them to get him into the room?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Yes. it's sad but true that that is what people think of our profession. One of the things a lot of us are trying to change, I'd say the biggest thing is the last thing you should do is touch your report. I'll just start there. The first thing you should do is not touch your reports at all. The first thing you should do is learn your business inside and out and build incredible relationships with your business partners. That is the first thing before you do any of this. That applies to any role in FP&A part two. We're still not going to touch the report. You're going to rebuild your forecasting process. You're going to learn from your business partners what drives the business. You're going to make sure you have the best, most effective driver-based forecasting model possible because it is impossible to report on something if you don't have a way of explaining why it changed and why you got to the forecast. Because as we all know who's been doing this for a while, sometimes the forecast itself is the reason you miss. Not that it was wrong, but the assumptions made were not the right assumptions. Now we know that, and sometimes it had nothing to do with the operation team. You need to have a very clear process of explaining what drivers changed in the business. Then you can start thinking about your reporting, but think about what the drivers are that are key.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Look at what drivers changed materially and structure your story around that. Then as you start to build your report, don't just think about finance. Almost all of our roles, not all, but in most of our roles, there are other partners who have great data. There's marketing, there's consumer insights. There's some of us are industrial engineers. If we have supply chains, we have supply chains, the sales teams. There are all these other teams with great data, depending on the part of the company you're supporting, even if you're in corporate, your investor relations team and you know there's the component of Wall Street's expectations. Get these other partners, get some of their data, and build a robust story around it, because financials are just numbers on a page. What matters is that we can do something about it. The numbers are not being produced in a silo. Then finally build your report and put it on paper, preferably automated with some cool stuff there if you can. But then build your report, put it on paper, present it with this story standpoint and you will have much happier business partners, and you'll probably be able to drive some strategic changes for your business because it gives you such a level of influence. When people listen to the words, you have to say.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: As I hear you say all that, I boil it down to building relationships, marrying the operations with the finance, understanding the operations, understanding your business partners, bringing that all together, and telling that business story with the operations supported by the financial numbers, not led by the financial numbers. Is that a kind of a fair summary?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: We are a support function. We're consultants. At the end of the day, we have to make sure corporate gets a good forecast and can keep cash in the bank. Yes, absolutely. All that has to happen. But that's not where we add value. That's where we're a cost center. We add value by supporting the operation and helping them do the best work by supporting them in their role. we need to remember that we're that support function and focus on where we can add value, while also making sure we get all the compliance and and key functions done.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Sure, the compliance is all that's important, but that's table stakes. That's not the value added. The value add, as you said, is in the relationships and helping drive the business forward and better. Telling the story and ensuring we're making good decisions. often so often it comes back to relationships. FP&A Guy here. Today I want to talk about the tool FP&A professionals use more than any of Microsoft Excel. If you're not learning modern Excel, you're missing out. Modern Excel includes dynamic arrays, Power Query, and so much more. That is why I'm excited to share my new Microsoft Excel course. In this course, talk about Excel tables and how they're the gateway to modern Excel. You need them for Power Query, you need them for co-pilot. Talk to you about copilot. I also talk about dynamic arrays. There are 50-plus videos in this course. Register today and go to the FP&A guy. Click on my courses Microsoft Excel and it will take you to the course. Use the code podcast to save 20%. Sign up today.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: I often find were the were the data practitioners in the room. Even if other people have data, they don't necessarily know what to do with that data. But because we're the data people and because we're used to taking a topic, not a lot of people want to talk about it and make it approachable. We can even help the other departments make their data approachable by incorporating it into our presentations because they don't necessarily always have the training or background to do it. But our teams, our analysts have that background to bring data together.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Agreed. So that makes a lot of sense when we talk about data and data-based insights, how do you make sure you're delivering insights to the business? Everybody talks about? We need to drive insights, and we need to be data-based and review our data. But any practical tips you can offer to get insights out of your data versus data paralysis or looking at them for the sake of looking at them?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Absolutely. So I think, first of all, I tie everything back to the drivers. I like to personally for my area, whether it can be in our system or offline, have kind of my, my single source of truth or my key drivers are the things that I know I need to care most about the drivers that move the business. I have those quickly, easily, and readily accessible. I probably know them off-hand and they're my whole team has the same KPI calculations, and so on and so forth. But what's important then is as we look at the drivers and as we look at variance, I ask why and why and why. Until you get to a point where the operators can do something because those five whys work.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: The five whys work. So you you follow the whys until you get to an action the operators can take. Right. If we're just saying a variance, there's nothing they can do with it. If we're saying the variance and we get down to the PNL line item. Okay, well, we're getting closer. Well then the PNL item changed. Why do they change? It changed because this specific thing happened in the operation. Why did that thing happen? Okay. How do we prevent said thing from happening? Or if it was good, how do we make it happen again? Then I've gotten to a point where I've taken the data and gotten it down to a level. The operators can do something with it. Otherwise, they walk out of the presentation with a bunch of numbers, feeling good or bad about their performance, and no action to take. So you should always walk in with data to incite action from the business.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I agree, it's about driving insights into action and something you said. There are five whys and other frameworks I like that are kind of along the same line is, now what? So often the month end is just we tell them to what? Like I remember being in a meeting one time, I was like one of the leaders. If I have to hear one more thing about what we missed because of accounting stuff, it's like, I'm going to lose my mind. Tell me about the business. Unfortunately, we had a lot of accounting issues going on at the time, and we had one business where they were driving hundreds of thousands or millions, and it wasn't that big of a business changes each month. I thought he was. He just about lost his mind. I felt bad for him because he's like, I have no control here. My numbers are terrible and have had stuff happen years ago because there's a major bunch of accounting and control issues with this one department. That was not fun. But anyway, I digress a little bit so that makes a lot of sense to me. What you said there digging into the whys, focusing on always driving action or at least making recommendations. Are they all going to be accepted? Of course not. Maybe only a small percentage will, but they're going to appreciate that you're always coming up with ideas and not just saying, well, here's the problem. You guys tell us how we're fixing it. The PNL EBITDA is down 10%. Go figure it out. Thanks. You're just a cost center. versus a partner. That's what I love about kind of what you've talked about here with the storytelling, the insights, and the different stories you shared, it's about being a partner. So I want to shift gears here as we kind of move toward the end of our, podcast here, before I jump into what's called a rapid-fire section, I want to ask you one question. What is the best advice anyone's given you during your career? What's the best advice you received?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: The best advice I've ever gotten is to make your boss's life easy. I think that's been the most transformational because, you know well, my core job is focused on taking care of my business partners. From my career standpoint, my boss drives your career. And your bosses will sometimes pull you along to new opportunities and are your biggest advocates. what that, for me, has looked like is, is being very proactive on their behalf. Right. A lot of us will share calendars. Do I see big things coming up? And I can make sure that the deck is on their desk just as they like it. Before they go into a meeting, I make sure that if they're taking something to their boss or the CFO, that is some of the best work that they've ever been able to take, because I want to make sure that they look good going into that meeting. After all, if I make their life easy and I make them look good, then they have every reason to advocate for me and help me grow. So aside from building the relationship with them just found this very good, very good career hygiene and career advice to kind of help help propel things forward.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Yes, I think that's great advice is make your boss look good. You'll look good at the end of the day. meet their needs. So here's how our rapid-fire section works. I have a few questions for you, and the idea is to keep them short no more than 30s or so to answer these, and I'm going to start with the first two. That should be kind of easy to answer. Short answers. What is the number one technical skill for FP&A professionals to master?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: For me, driver-based financial modeling, it's not something we talk about as a separate skill, but I think if you're working in a corporate setting with FP&A, that is very undervalued, and the average person I come across doesn't know how to identify good business drivers.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Love it. That's a good one. What's the number one soft skill or human skill they should master?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: It's a little broad, but relationship-building.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I thought that's what you were going to say.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: We're not the function of a number. We work with numbers. But 90% of our job is building relationships and getting people to talk to each other and to trust us.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: What's the one app at work that you can't live without?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Oh, boy, that's a good one, I think Excel. I am obsessed with waterfalls, and I pay for things myself because I just absolutely love the ability to build waterfalls that quickly.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: All right, so I'll ask you one other question. When it comes to Excel, what have you most excited about the future of Excel?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: I'm a big fan of Copilot and some of the other add-ins coming. I think we're going to see the add-ins start talking to each other in the near future. you think about kind of bringing together and it started to happen, but bringing together like the ecosystem of copilot and all the power software. from a data management standpoint, that gets me very excited.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: So you don't think Excel is going to die any time soon? All these people are saying AI is going to kill Excel.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Never, never in a million years when you take Excel from us.

 

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 analystintelligence.com today. So I'm going to have to pry it out of your cold dead hands is what you're telling me.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Absolutely.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: All right. I know you're currently using generative AI. What's your favorite use case?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: My favorite use case is writing code. just as an easy example, it was never the best VBA coder as much as I like to use it, but a couple of quick VBA prompts specific to the workbook I'm working on. Tell it the intersections of your data, tell it where you want to output, and I have yet to have to correct a single line of code for VBA. It's probably been the best, most reliable output from ChatGPT.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: So you're saying it's a lot better than going to Google and trying to find somebody else's code and copy it?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Oh, so much better. For some reason that just never works for me.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: You run it and you're like, all right, where's the error? So this next section is the Get To Know You section. We want to learn a little bit more about you. What's your favorite passion or hobby you do outside of work?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: I mean, I've said to my wife that it's modes of travel. I am passionate about cruise ships and airplanes. So kind of kind of a big cruise ship and airplane nerd have been on 46 cruises across almost every major cruise line. I can look up in the sky. We live right by the airport. I can look up and point out airplanes and say exactly what type of airplane it was. Down to the series, my nerdy side hobby. I'm going to say congratulations.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: You are officially not just a finance nerd.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Yes. I'm Mich, the finance nerd, and Mich the nerd. you can just take the finance word out.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I'm a nerd as well, so it could be Paul the nerd and Mich the nerd. Maybe we'll title this episode that.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: That sounds great, I love it.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Paul and Mich, nerd out on numbers. There we go. You got it.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: There's your new podcast, right there.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Yes, that could be a fun name for a podcast. Gotta have a little bit of fun. Maybe I'll change it, the beard, weirds out on numbers or something. We'll come up with something. What is a book you can recommend that you've read to our audience? If you give them a book recommendation. Where are you going?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: So I go old school with this to Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: I knew, as you said, old school. That's where you were going.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: It's very cliche, but sometimes cliches are cliches for a reason. It is unmatched. I've never read another book that is as effective and as timeless as that book. There are a lot of other ones I've read recently, a lot of newer titles with some sure cool insights, but it's just the fundamentals of how people are. I think it's things that will never change.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Treat people the way they want to be treated. People love to hear their own names and show interest in them. So basic. If I were to sum up the book, those are probably the three things I say. There's a lot more advice to it. writing people's names down, just little things that anyone can learn to do. Nothing in. There is one of those things that you have to be overly talented to do.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be nice and treat people with respect.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Yes, the Golden Rule, it's pretty simple, but we so often forget it. So you you love planes. You love cruises. If you're going on a trip tomorrow, you can go anywhere in the world. Where are you going?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Hawaii. My wife and I went there for our honeymoon. We have a Hawaii-themed, living room. It's just a lot. A lot of great memories there. Plus, you can fly there and take a cruise ship once you get there. So there you go.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: Got it. So you're going to fly and do it all together. I like it. If you could have dinner with any person alive in the world today, who are you taking to dinner?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: I would take Steve Martin. First of all, I just think he's hilarious and it'd be a funny dinner, but also. From everything I've seen and read and learned about him. He just understands people and how people tick, and then he uses that to make them laugh. I would just love to hear more about that straight from him.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: That's the first time we've got Steve Martin. That would be a fun one. I want to be the fly on the wall for that dinner. Just don't squash me. That's all I ask. All right, so if you could offer one piece of advice to our audience to be a better business partner today, what's that one piece you're going to tell them?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: So just as I said about making your boss's life easy, make your business partner's life easy. Make them look good. Because again, we're in a support function and our job is to help grow and propel their businesses. Our job is to make their lives easy, to give them the information they need to make decisions and to be responsive, accountable, and very collaborative with them. If you just focus on making sure they are very happy and taken care of. You will be better than 99% of the business partners out there.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: A simple example I give is I was in a role where often commissions and forecasts would come due at the same time. I get this call. Why isn't your forecast loaded? Because I chose to pay our employees. Never once did I get this. Well, why didn't you put the forecast first? I pretty self-explanatory and so. You get some people that wouldn't do that. Oh, no. I got to take care of my boss. Always put those fundamental needs. Forecasts can wait a day. But those first. Make your business partners happy, make them look good, and they're going to appreciate you. Agree. So if someone wants to learn more about you, get in touch with you. What's the best way to do it?

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: So you can find me on all the social media platforms as well as our website, f9finance.com, where we have a bunch of email addresses. But to give me the fastest, I'm most on top of my LinkedIn inbox either Mich's F9 Finance or Michael Dion.

 

Host: Paul Barnhurst:: All right. Great. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I've enjoyed chatting with you. I think it's been a great episode and hope the audience loves it as much as I did. So thanks for joining me. We should do this again sometime. Thanks, Mich.

 

Guest: Michael Dion:: Absolutely. It's been a pleasure speaking with you.

 

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.