Bjarte Bogsnes has worked with companies, from IKEA, H&M,Pernod Ricard, Volvo and Equinor (Scandinavia’s largest company). In today’s episode Bogsnes rails against the “misery” and “borderline unethical behavior” in traditional budgeting within companies, as he talks about the seachange happening in businesses. He talks to Paul Barnhurst as he publishes his new book, This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations (2023).

In this special FP&A Today episode, Paul is joined by three Excel experts whom Microsoft has recognized as Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs). Learn why it is important to up your Excel game and how you can do it. Below check out offers (saving $$$) from our MVPs exclusively for listeners of FP&A Today.

Syed Nadeem is a top finance leader in Saudi Arabia. But the director of Budgeting at listed telecom company, Zain KSA, says he considers his previous failures as pivotal to his position today. He says: “When I was young [and experiencing failure] I felt so disappointed I thought my world was going to end. Sometimes you don't get a promotion and you see other peers getting a promotion. I struggled after getting my CMA (Certified Management Accountant). Sometimes you are not getting good increments, or you are about to hire someone and they reject you. But what I learned is this failure actually makes you strong for the future role.”

Today, he shares his full breadth of experience-both good and bad and explains why he provides (free) mentorships to businesses on a daily basis and to his 15,000 followers on LinkedIn.

This fascinating episode with Maura, uncovers the lessons that FP&A teams can learn from behavioral economics to improve forecasting and the power of “knowing what knowing what you don’t know.”

Are you starting to think about your budget for the next year? Stop right now, argues Mikus Krams.

As a former senior director of strategy and finance at Chili Piper, he described budgets as a shackle — you’ll be held prisoner to the assumptions you make for the next year.

In this episode, Mikus Krams Krums, the B2B Saas finance leader turned co-founder of Trace.Space, says budgets are unlikely to be relevant for small agile companies. He tells Paul Barnhurst: “Let's say you're doing some activity, and it's yielded you some results. If halfway through the activity, you figured that it's not working, why would you still keep pushing it? But if you have a budget, that's exactly what you are doing…it just felt silly to be living that way.”

“I would like to see FP&A drive the planning process for go- to-market just because I think they will have a better natural understanding of what it means to actually build a plan.”

Scott Stouffer, a former engineer, is a serial entrepreneur and founder. Currently, he is CEO and Founder at scaleMatters, the world’s first Go-to-Market Optimization Platform. Previously, he executed the sale of Salsa Labs, a nonprofit CRM to PE firm Accel-KKR at a period of $12MM annual revenue and 70 employees. In this wide-ranging interview, he reveals the real impact he believes CEOs, such as himself, are looking for in choosing CFOs and building a finance team. He also argues for a bigger role for FP&A – including leadership of a company’s go-to-market strategy incorporating how an organization can engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service.

The second-biggest bank collapse in U.S. history created a storm for CFOs and their finance teams during a panic-induced 48 hours in March. It only ended as regulators took control of Santa Clara, Calif.-based SVB and a dramatic intervention by financial regulators.

In this special edition of FP&A Today, meet those in finance and FP&A who saw the events at Silicon Valley Bank first hand. Understand how the banking crisis played out and how ongoing ripples continue to impact everyone in FP&A and how your finance teams can cope with the ongoing aftermath.

“I am definitely starting to see more people with an FP&A background becoming fractional CFOs.”

Michael King, founder of The CFO Accelerator, coaches hundreds of fractional CFOs and accountants in building “6 and 7-figure advisory firms”.

King arrives on the bustling fractional CFO scene at a time when demand for part-time finance chiefs working for several companies is higher than ever. In King’s words in the next decade a small business having a fractional CFO will be just as common as bringing in a bookkeeper as hiring fractional CFOs becomes the “cost of doing business” at small and medium-sized enterprises. And according to King, those with an FP&A background have a significant advantage.

“FP&A really gets people ready for those CFO technical skills. So when I think about FP&A, I'm thinking about things like forecast projections, budgets and models, and data management, alongside communications across functional divisions within a business. And that's a huge part of what a fractional CFO has to understand”.

What is covered in this episode:

• The crucial differences between accounting and FP&A?

• The 4 main reasons FP&A practitioners and their accounting colleagues clash.

• The business fallout when FP&A and accounting fail to co-exist

• Best practices that have worked in your career to bridge the gaps.

• Potential impact of AI in the FP&A-accounting relationship

• The crucial role of a Tech stack

• The importance of the chart of accounts in this relationship

• Getting the 10Qs and 10Ks out and the impact on FP&A requests

• The fastest way to get from accounting and FP&A and the qualifications

• Favorite Excel functions for accounting and FP&A pros

“It’s like a fuse being blown. You can push as much power as you want through the device, but if the fuse is gone, it isn't going to work. That's exactly how I felt.”

Alison Allsopp (she/her) is Head of FP&A at NHS Supply Chain, a crucial cog in the UK’s National Health Service. Prior to this, Alison was promoted nine times in her previous role at the credit card company, Capital One. Despite (or maybe because of) this rapid rise up the finance ranks, Alison faced prolonged self-doubt and feelings of “imposter syndrome”. One day she reached a breaking point. “As much as it was a real low point in my life, it was a huge turning point.”

In this episode, Alison reveals how she managed these challenges in her career and lessons for those facing a similar situation.

What we covered in this episode:

• His rapid career rise at Kraft Heinz attracted by the ketchup maker’s “culture of ownership.”

• The principles of finance transformation and the core lessons learnt

• How Kraft Heinz manages its annual budget cycle (and what he would do differently next time)

• The role of integrated business planning at the world’s fifth-largest food and beverage conglomerate

• The importance of being a “mini CFO’ in a sales finance partnership role

• FP&A as Guardians of the P&L

• Why he doesn’t have an ambition to become a CFO

• His perfect retirement dream

• His favorite Excel function

In this episode, Glenn Hopper discusses

• His unusual transition to CFO, moving from journalism in the Navy to product manager.

• How a passion for writing helps to formulate projects and challenges in finance

• His experience with financial transformation in finance companies and the lessons he learned from the experience – as set out in his book Deep Finance

• How having a mathematical and analytical mindset is crucial for anyone in FP&A

• How his biggest corporate failure (missing a $1.5million invoice in budget preparation) was essentially his “origin story” to becoming a transformative CFO

• How he wrote a feature film – a low-budget horror movie, The Hanged Man which streamed on Netflix

• His favorite Excel function

Nicolas Boucher has a simple message to anyone who wants to move from audit to FP&A.

The Head of Finance and Controlling at Thales says: “You can do it. I am an example of that.”

He says many skills are transferable from audit to FP&A. “Looking at financial statements from different companies in different situations and different industries” is one. Another is understanding “the figures compared to the past or compared to trends to give assurance to the figures. This is actually what you are doing as FP&A when you are analyzing the actuals against the budget or against last year.”

After seven years in audit at PwC which took him around the world and saw him get “battlefield promotions” Nicolas didn’t want to remain in audit forever and wanted “something more operationally close to the business.”

In this week’s podcast he explains how he made the move from audit to FP&A and the skills he has learnt in his 15 years as a finance leader.

In this week’s podcast, Carmen provides insights into how FP&A teams can give businesses the appropriate insights to deliver great decision-making.

This episode covers:

• Carmen’s definition of FP&A as a primary educator in the business

• How doing an MBA switched her on to FP&A as a passion

• How she built the first FP&A certification more than a decade ago and how it helped her understand how processes differ across industries and companies

• Putting her finance-first thinking to the test when starting her FP&A consulting business

• Her five-step approach to mastering sales-FP&A business partnerships

• How to effectively build a sales compensation strategy that works

• Why she advocates for rolling forecasts

• The importance of adopting a risk and opportunities approach in budget and forecasting

• The importance of a buffer in place when it comes to budget deadlines

The VC behind buzzy startups Calm, GoFundMe, Udemy and Gong is bullish on FP&A. Ryan Abdullah an Investor at Norwest Venture Partners tells FP&A Today there are four reasons why VCs rely on FP&A, particularly during a downturn.

• First there is a huge increase in appetite for forecasts.

• Second FP&A must take account of labor shifts in startups (not least caused by large layoffs).

• Third, ( investors who are all about growth) see FP&A as an ally and “profit center” to help businesses “grow and do better”.

• Fourth FP&A is delivering an agenda with other departments to define budgets “rather than just entering numbers in a spreadsheet.”

Join me as I chat with Ryan Abdullah about this and much more.

Asif Masani has an inner belief that has guided his entire career.

“Wenever I learn something, I don't feel good if I don't share it”.

This ethos has taken Asif on a journey to become an FP&A leader and author.

This episode is essential for anyone seeking to move from finance or FP&A to the top finance position. Kevin Appleby explains to Paul.

• How GrowCFO was founded and how it is identify skills launching CFOs you into the next phase of their career

• The core competencies of highly successful CFOs

• The importance of budgeting and zero-based budgeting and the increasing power of FP&A for CFOs

• Why the value of your business is a multiplier of the bottom line (not the top line)

• Why every business (not just manufacturing) must engage with activity analysis

• His biggest FP&A Failure

• His best advice for FP&A professionals

First the good news.

FP&A hiring is not slowing down.

In fact, FP&A is considered even more crucial in challenging business circumstance, according to FP&A recruiters and hiring managers brought together in this special edition of FP&A Today.

Aviv Canaani, VP Marketing, Datarails, and Christian Wattig, Head of Training at Datarails and founder of FP&A Prep, join Paul Barnhurst for a conversation about marketing vs finance in a business.

In the world of business it sometimes feels like finance and marketing are talking a different language. Christian Wattig has been the FP&A leader at some of the highest profile marketing teams on the planet at P&G and Unilever where campaigns for brands such as Dove, Skippy and Hellman’s saw marketing spend hundreds of millions of dollars. In this episode he talks about some of the biggest challenges, misconceptions, and opportunities between FP&A and marketing and actionable insights when partnering with creatives in a business.

A slightly different episode this week, featuring not a finance chief, but a CEO talking about the power and impact of FP&A on business strategy. Jeanette Dorazio, CEO of Leadpages, joins Paul Barnhurst to discuss the daily impact FP&A is having on her company, a leading SaaS no-code website and landing page builder.