Episode 98 - From leading Data Science at Facebook to becoming a CEO: Kat Orekhova
In this episode Kat reveals:
The challenges of long range planning as Facebook scaled massively and trying to predict growth across countries from the US to India with more than 100 people contributing to the planing process)
Being at the beginning of data Science at Facebook
The move from data science and product into finance
When should companies start looking at FP&A
Being a Sequoia scout and what it entails and what she looks for in investment opportunities
How (now) Meta CFO Susan Li “an absolutely outstanding” mentor insisted on a finance team with data science skills led by Orekhova
The right blend between data science and FP&A who are “Living in Different Tools”
Her take on the amount of data science that FP&A teams need to boost their career
The impact of AI in finance
Episode 97 - FP&A Bliss from Pepsi to Lindt: Tolga Hocanin
In this episode:
Lessons from 20 years of budgeting and how my first budget was a nightmare
Why budgeting is not just a math exercise
The main metrics you need to know in CPG
Why mix management is crucial The 30-60-90 day plan to succeed in finance in CPG
Running both IT and finance as CFO and why this makes sense
Building a strong culture in a finance team
Starting with why in finance
A $1.5M reporting error and how I responded to it
Building cross-functional relationships with business partners
Episode 96 - How FP&A and Rev Ops Can work Together to Drive Value
In this episode:
How do revenue operations and finance operations need to work together effectively?
The challenges and worst stories when Rev Ops and Finance fail to click.
The worst “bad behavior” in a go-to-market org
Data and cultural issues with finance and Rev Ops
Moving career from FP&A to RevOps
How to ensure we are defining and reporting metrics in the same way
The importance of a “data dictionary”
How AI will impact the operations function
Favorite Excel function or feature
Episode 95 - Andrew Lynch -the SMB Finance Guy-on Mentors, Skill Stacking, and why getting Fired Saved my Career
In this episode, Andrew reveals:
The power of mentors in transforming his finance career from a “struggle to find someone who would take me” to high-profile roles at Anabas, Capital One, and Blue Light Card.
Starting a new budget from scratch and building an FP&A team at Blue Light Card
Negotiation and sandbagging with sales and how FP&A can deal with the challenges
How FP&A best practice saw Andrew deliver one SMB £10 million a year in revenue and from £8k in profit to £23 million
Being Fired by Four Times Bestselling New York Times author Tucker Max the day before Xmas Eve
Skill stacking – getting to be the top 25% in the world at four or five different related things – rather than trying to be the best
Being one of the few FP&A leaders on the comedy circuit
Episode 94 - FP&A at $5m to $50M Companies – Jon Allen and Duke Heninger
In this episode of FP&A, we meet Jon Allen Managing Partner, Finance, and Duke Heninger, finance partner at Amplēo. They provide a masterclass on the value of FP&A at fast-growing companies, revealing:
Our worst budget experiences
Our journey through finance to CFO
What we wish we had known earlier in our career
Restaurants in COVID Times – how we used FP&A to help businesses
The powerful value of FP&A in restaurants
Why FP&A is a superb career choice
Founding companies as finance leaders
Teaching FP&A at the University
Why great FP&A must lead to actions and decisions
How FP&A can become good business partners
Reporting vs forecasting
The importance of choosing a great finance leader to work for early in your career
Getting out of your chair and talking to people
The last things we asked ChatGPT
Episode 93 - AI: An extension of the FP&A Brain: Didi Gurfinkel Co-Founder and CEO of Datarails
In this episode Didi Gurfinkel talks about setting up Datarails, the FP&A the AI-powered Financial Planning and Analysis platform for Excel users and the multiple challenges and learnings along the way.
He reveals:
Starting his career at CISCO the biggest IT company in the world (“I imagined that everything will be automated end of month – I was wrong”)
Setting up Datarails in 2015 and the challenges of getting traction for an initial concept of “connecting organizational spreadsheets into one centralized database”
Four years of trying (and How he finally found product market fit)
Understanding the power of Excel as core to finance allowed us to focus on finance
How FP&A use cases are the classic consolidation challenge because every, every FP&A process starts from collecting data from multiple sources in different structures, different shapes, and different systems.
Our capability to transform semi-structured data into structured data landed a very strong competitive edge,
Our “SaaS wake up call” – how we learnt to grow at the same pace with 50% less expenses
AI is either an extension of your head vs AI as an extension of your brain and why the latter is the real game-changer
From a good CFO to an amazing CFO with AI
My expectations as a CEO from my finance team
Why ChatGPT is amazing at text but the challenges come with replicating this with accurate numbers
My favorite Excel function
Surprising fact you wouldn’t know about me
Episode 92 - FP&A Vs Finance Business Partners – Tunc Tezel, VP Group FP&A at Ontex
This episode provides his takeaways from a career at the cutting edge of FP&A:
What do you do with your company’s budget when overnight interest rates hit 3000%. And the Turkish lira was devalued by 60% overnight
How FP&A powers private label manufacturing vs working at big brands
How we coped with the pandemic and the shift to economically challenged consumers trying private labels
Moving from brand ambassadors to product ambassadors
How FP&A is supporting ESG
Business supporting finance managers – should you call them FP&A Managers or
Finance Business Partners (and why it matters)
The challenges of data in FP&A work
FP&A as co-pilot in a rally car
Secrets of bringing the numbers to life Cooking and seafood
Why I would have loved to meet Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic
The last thing I asked Google/Chat GPT about my finance work Episode NotesConnect with Tunc Tezel on LinkedIn.Tunc Tezel: Banking CIO Outlook: FP&A Vs Finance Business
Episode 91 - A new roadmap for FP&A – with Jack Alexander
In this episode Jack talks:
Why my first budget was a disaster
From financial accounting manager to CFO at EG&GMentoring as a path to CFO and CEO
Financial Leadership in the 21st century inspired by the pandemic and post pandemic environment.
The essentials of value creation for a finance team
Return to the Principles of a “Top Gun” CFO
What’s changed - and what hasn’t in 45 years of FP&A
How audit and transaction experience got me first promoted to CFO
Health and finance
Episode 90 - Winning the Super Bowl of FP&A – with Cayla Pingel
In this episode:
Being at Fox Sports when live sports came screeching to a halt during COVID
Show me the Money – managing the superbowl of FP&A at Fox Sports, Warner Bros and 2K and the power of ratings for finance
How blowouts affect financial performance
Uncovering the differences between Accounting vs FP&A at Fox Sports
Why I chose the FP&A direction rather than a COO role
Most important metrics in sports businesses
Heavy fixed costs and the challenges of live broadcasting
Huge tech, streaming and viewership changes in media/sports and entertainment – and how to forecast the future of the game for finance pros
Metrics in game playing: and finance discussions about whether to put new features in a game
Leading the Los Angeles chapter for women in sports and events
Flying out to Prague six weeks into a new job at Warner Bros to fix a mess and the strategic resolution
March Madness ‘Budget Season’ Challenge at Fox Sports – and why the loser has to do the waterfall charts
Episode 89: My First year as a first-time CFO- CJ Gustafson, CFO, PartsTech
Returning guest CJ Gustafson –master of the hugely popular Mostly Metrics newsletter–delivers in his custom funny and frank style the lessons from his first year as CFO and the practical lessons for anyone in finance (and particularly FP&A).
His worst budget experience - working six months on an operating plan thrown away within a week during COVID (and the surprising conclusion)
Getting stamps on my finance passport getting me to CFO
The biggest lessons on being a CFO-as removing blockers and letting an organization go faster.
CFO as chief psychologist, chief contract signer, and chief risk officer
How I prioritized my finance hires
Views of FP&A as a CFO
How knowing numbers better than anybody else projected me to CFO
Why BI was put under the CFO function (“it’s like putting data insights on steroids and you combine FP&A and BI”)
Why ARR per employee is my favorite SaaS metric
CAC payback period as the golden SaaS metric
How I (painfully) learned about the power of the “meeting before the meeting”
Creating a category for yourself as CFO
Episode 87 - Your 12 Biggest FP&A Questions from 2023 Answered
We have an all-star panel getting into the Christmas and New Year spirit. Howard Tunnicliffe , Head of FP&A, The Economist, and Brett Hampson , Director of Finance, AllState, joining host Paul Barnhurst, The FPandA Guy in this special edition of FP&A Today .
They tackle the 12 most burning questions asked on reddit.com/r/FPandA in 2023. Mid-way, we give you the end-of-year results of the top 5 Favorite FP&A Functions for FP&A Pros, based on our 80 episodes!
12 Questions Answered on this special Holiday episode:
How difficult is it for someone to switch industries in FP&A?
Do you need a CPA to get an FP&A job?
How easy is it for someone or hard to break into FP&A that has a non-traditional background?
Any advice on how you run/lead the annual budgeting process?
How do you get your first VP of FP&A role?
How do you develop KPIs from scratch?
How do you decide on when you should upgrade to an FP&A tool?
BONUS!!! The results of Favorite Excel Function (from 80 episodes)
What advice would you give about management reporting in a turnaround situation?
Can you explain how the headcount process works for budgeting? How have you typically seen it work?
If someone knows nothing about FP&A, any advice you’d offer on how to teach it or learn it? Where do you start?
Is FP&A certification actually worth it?
How do you de-stress, especially during budget season?
Episode 88: How to win at FP&A with Psychology, Strategy and Tradeoffs with Taylor Otstot
In this episode Taylor reveals the psychological skills and strategy he uses to win in his career.
Printing Excel files (aka the worst budget he has ever experienced)
Why every conversation in finance is really a conversation about tradeoffs?
Letting go of what “made you great” when managing an FP&A Team
Psychology learnings that have transformed my finance career and how you can apply them to your career
Eight Lessons Learned the Hard Way, Reflection from Eight Years at GoDaddy.
How a hard experience showed him that in finance, “ titles unlock doors, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be invited in”
Why I am a big fan of decision frameworks and breaking out of your “normal default positions”
Burritos vs tacos and finance decision-making (with lessons for business reviews and business partnerships)
Why the “safe choice” isn’t normally the right choice in finance
Secrets to building a high performing team
The big Sales comp revelation
Episode 86: How CFOs build a Goldilocks “just-right” budget – Jeff Epstein ex-CFO of Oracle
In this episode:
From Wall Street to first-time CFO
Running finance at Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy and Oprah-TV hitmaker King World
The skills needed to be a top CFO
The 3 routes to CFO: Auditors, Wall Street or FP&A
What Andy Gove OKR setting can teach us about budget setting
What is the right percentage of time to hit budget goals?
Balancing between Elon Musk (Papa Bear) and Charlie Munger (Mama Bear) in setting targets
Giving people the opportunity to overachieve
Best case/worst case/base case at Oracle
The delicate balancing act of Wall Street guidance
Using a stagger chart
Why FP&A is so critical; how the biggest strategic decisions involve FP&A adviceRevisiting the processes as Oracle bought Sun Microsystems
Merger integration strategy worked on our sales compensation
Truck drivers and sales commission – a must-listen-to story
How in 1983, at the Washington Post, I learned from Warren Buffet and ended up scrambling to buy 4 shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Guess how much it’s worth now?
Episode 85: Why and How I built an FP&A Center of Excellence at Verizon - Ed Hyer
Ed Hyer, CPA , as VP FP&A at Verizon , built one of the most ambitious centers of excellence (COEs) undertaken in finance.
Put simply, a center of excellence centralizes similar types of work into a single entity. While relatively common for payroll functions or “back-end transactional work”, FP&A presented an altogether bigger challenge for the COE concept.
The creation of Verizon’s Center of Excellence at the $134 billion revenue 118,000 employee company counts as one of the most audacious challenges undertaken in FP&A–ultimately comprising 175 professionals, took more than a year to complete and fanning through 24 different waves of transformation to take effect. Though the impetus from the beginning was to prove the concept could work, Verizon's FP&A COE has now transformed the business in impactful and unexpected ways.
“I remember one case, where someone showed there were 16 different processes here. He said he could get it down to two, and I've just saved myself six hours on workday one. It didn't require any new tools or technology.
In this must-listen to episode Hyer reveals the secret of Verizon’s FP&A transformation.
Episode 84: All about Not for Profit FP&A - Amy Omand
One of the myths I'd love to dispel is that nonprofits are not strategic. People think we aren’t forward-thinking or just scrapping for change and trying to get things done. I've had the honor of working with organizations where we really focus on our mission in a nonprofit context in a very strategic way.”
You don’t want to miss this masterclass with Amy Omand . Omand is Fractional CFO, at 7 Seat Consulting, working with not-for-profits getting from early to mid-stage growth. In this episode, she reveals her journey from managing FP&A at Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream (bought by Nestle) to former CFO of New Schools Venture Fund and setting up her business focused on not-for-profits.
In this episode:
Dreyer's ice cream Budgeting Experience - the problems that can melt financial analysis with a new ice cream line launch
Passion for K12 education and the finance factor in education
The differences-and similarities- between nonprofit and "for profit" FP&A
Why cash is (still) king at nonprofits
Restrictions placed on how money is spent by nonprofits
Taking Revolution Foods, a Healthy School Lunch Company, through their first B Corporation certification
Why Metallica works best for budget and modeling
Episode 83: Christian Martinez - When FP&A meets AI, Python, and Excel
Christian Martinez, Finance Analytics Manager at Kraft Heinz is an in-demand Conference Speaker and specialist who teaches a top-rated course, with (previous guest) Nicolas Boucher. In this episode discover the secrets about game changing uses of AI and Python for your FP&A career.
“We’re in the same era as when Excel was first invented,” says Martinez “There were people still using calculators and pens while others shifted to Excel and dramatically improved performance.”
In this episode:
Why Python and Excel together at long last as a “game changer” for FP&A
“Explainable” AI in FP&A
How AI is improving overall budgets and forecasting
Can non-data science people jump right in with AI?
Getting comfortable being uncomfortable
His path to a “boutique” course teaching practical application of AI in FP&A
Why the best way to fully learn something is to teach it
The most awesome uses of AI in FP&A
How Gen AI is going to change FP&A in 2024
Waterfall charts in Excel
Episode 82: FP&A and product-led growth at Adobe w/ Parth Kulkarni
In this episode:
Kulkarni’s path from Data analytics to FP&A as Senior Manager of FP&A at eBay – business partnering with the Merchandising / Shipping & Logistics Business and Product Teams. Followed by his career at Adobe.
Moving from analytics to FP&A and why it is a perfect route
Four proven pillars to become a successful FP&A professional
The tested formula to get a seat at the table in finance
My framework for analyzing data to get the juiciest insights – SCQA framework explained
My aha moment in FP&A automating ecommerce/holiday space reports
Tabla playing and love of Indian classical music
Steve Jobs and what we can learn about his relentless desire to understand the consumer
The SCQA framework explained by Parth
Episode 81 - All your Budgeting & Forecasting questions answered: the sequel
This follows one of our most popular ever episodes (episode 19: Budgeting all your questions answered). In this sequel episode, new and returning guests answer all your new burning budget and forecasting questions and challenges. Joining us in the budget and forecasting war-room are:
Alejandra Boggione , FP&A Manager and Senior Business Controller, FASTA
Andrew Childress , FP&A Solutions Consultant Datarails (ex finance at Accupac, One Inc and Flint Group)
Annette DeYoung MBA 🇮🇱 , Senior FP&A Solutions Consultant, Datarails (ex finance at JL Clark, Berner Food & Beverage, Fairbanks Morse Engine)
Some of the questions tackled in this LinkedIn Live episode of FP&A Today (November 2023):
What’s budgeting and forecasting good for?
How do you approach budgeting in consulting firms?
Which type of budget process works best (top down or bottom up?)
How can FP&A be the bridge between the two?
How does the budget work in a startup?
What is the linkage between forecasting and the model?
How can finance best prepare for the budget ahead of time to avoid crazy late nights?
Revisiting the previous year’s budget – (what can be cut)?
How can you ensure alignment between the financial plan and operational plan?
Static annual budget versus a rolling forecast?
How do budgets help with inflation challenges?
How do you kickstart scenario planning?
How often should you reforecast?
Episode 80- This is Audible FP&A (with Frank Aburto)
From Camp Taji in Iraq, to Will Wheaton’s narration of Ready Player One, this is the story of Frank Aburto who helped build Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) at Audible .
Frank Aburto, senior Director of Finance, leads strategic finance and FP&A at Audible the audio storytelling subsidiary of Amazon.
In his role, Aburto supports more than 150 partners across marketing and product where the FP&A function has been central to Audible's success in reaching millions of listeners around the world and becoming the largest player in the audiobook market (sales of audiobooks hit $1.8 billion in the US alone in 2022).
Episode 79 - How to never be left out of the conversation again in FP&A - with Airbase CFO Aneal Vallurupalli
Airbase , a spend management company currently processes over $5 billion of annual payments on behalf of finance teams. It is a pain point Vallurupalli is all too aware of. "Moving to Airbase solved a challenge I had personally experienced at previous companies were there were 65 or 70 physical [credit]cards in a 300-person company and spend was not controlled. There was no way to forecast when someone was thinking of using a physical card, which was for anything at that time".
CFO Aneal Vallurupalli joins Paul, on Datarails ' podcast FP&A Today , to talk about what CFOs increasingly require from the best-in-class FP&A, based on his experiences in finance and financial planning and analysis at previous companies, stretching from series A companies to public companies.