When FP&A Meets Treasury with Mike Richards

“Spend 10 minutes a week on yourself. Nobody else is going to take charge of your career except for you. If you sit back, you are going to lose.”

Mike Richards, CEO & Founder of The Treasury Recruitment Company, has helped professionals in the US, UK and Europe find dream treasury roles at companies such as Chanel, IKEA and Porsche for two decades.  

Mike also hosts the popular podcast, The Treasury Career Corner Podcast which has seen  250 treasury guests and more than 120,000 downloads

In this episode: 

• Modern treasury defined

Links 

Upcoming speeches and conferences featuring Mike Richards - https://treasuryrecruitment.com/treasury-roadshow/ Including New York Cash Exchange, then EuroFinance – Barcelona & then AFP, San Diego

Listeners can connect with Mike here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrtreasury/

Head to Treasury Corner podcast here - https://treasuryrecruitment.com/podcast/

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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Datarails (www.datarails.com) is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

“You can throw me in any water. Stormy, cold, or hot and I’ll start swimming.” 

And swimming is exactly what Jenny Fuss did. 

Jenny Fuss, CFO of Boart Longyear, talks about the challenges of international experience, the importance of having a diverse set of skills in an FP&A team and  how to achieve storytelling and influencing in FP&A.

Originally from a small town in Germany, Fuss wanted experience of working and living abroad. When the opportunity to move to become a CFO of a joint venture in China presented itself she took it before relocating again to continue her global career in Houston Texas, and expertise as a finance leader walking the shop floor in manufacturing companies. 

This episode covers: 

• Jenny’s advice for an international-based career 

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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

Wassia Kamon built FP&A from the ground up at Intralot, a state lottery vendor behind the US Powerball lottery (as an insider she couldn’t play the lottery for nine years).

And Wassia knows something about winning against the odds.

She arrived in the US aged 17. As she points out “only 3% of people getting a CPA are black”.

Wassia says: “Growing up in the Ivory Coast I was not a minority. Coming to the US I had to learn what it was to be a minority.”

She started posting regularly on LinkedIn after “seeing that there’s nobody that looks like me that’s talking about finance. “I never had a black boss, I never reported to somebody that was black. So the fact that I’m in this role means that other people saw me for what I could bring to the table and hired me.”

Her rapid rise has seen her become a finance executive with roles as VP of Finance at Boehringer Ingelheim From there, she moved on to more FP&A-focused roles at Boehringer Ingelheim, a global pharmaceutical company, as finance business partner for different business units, to VP of Finance at Low Income Investment Fund (the company manages $2billion of investments). She was recently recognized as an up the 40 under 40 honoree by CPA Practive Advisor.

In this episode learn:

• Her approach to learning *on the go* in switching from accounting to FP&A 

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Full episode transcript

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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

Get in touch at www.datarails.com

For AFP FP&A Continuing Education credit please complete the course via the Earmark Ap, must pass the quiz with 80% accuracy and send the completed certificate to [email protected] for issuance of 1 hour of credit toward your AFP FP&A Certification. 

Today's guest is…Paul Barnhurst. Usually sitting in the presenter’s chair, this special edition sees Paul Barnhurst, aka The FP&A Guy (and host of FP&A Today), reveal the highs and lows from his storied career in FP&A at American Express, Solera, and DigiCert. Guest host  is Annette deYoung, FP&A Solutions Consultant at Datarails, herself an FP&A veteran at companies including manufacturer, JL Clarke.

Highlights? Discover a rookie error that saw Paul deliver bonuses to the worst performers (yes, you read that right), rather than the best. How he met Jimmy Carter. The inside story of FP&A forecasting for American Express’s (then) money-spinning Travelers Cheques business, and how his biggest FP&A tech accomplishment is still in place at a previous company.

Get to know your host as Paul reveals:

• The winding road to FP&A from his beginnings in government procurement contracts

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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

Get in touch at www.datarails.com

For AFP FP&A Continuing Education credit please complete the course via the Earmark Ap, must pass the quiz with 80% accuracy and send the completed certificate to [email protected] for issuance of 1 hour of credit toward your AFP FP&A Certification. 

Danielle Stein Fairhust  literally wrote the book on Excel and Financial Modeling. Well two books, actually. Using Excel for Business and Financial Modelling and Financial Modeling in Excel for Dummies. 

Here, the Excel MVP from Australia provides her secrets to financial modeling.

• Her road to financial modeling after traveling for seven years, and leaving investment banking Why Excel is so crucial for businesses 

Links

Danielle Stein Fairhurst: Using Excel for Business and Financial Modeling 

Danielle Stein Fairhurst: Financial Modeling in Excel For Dummies

Danielle’s LinkedIn course (new), Excel: Financial Functions in Depth.

 Follow Danielle Stein Fairhurst on LinkedIn 

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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

Get in touch at www.datarails.com

For AFP FP&A Continuing Education credit please complete the course via the Earmark Ap, must pass the quiz with 80% accuracy and send the completed certificate to [email protected] for issuance of 1 hour of credit toward your AFP FP&A Certification. 

Bjarte Bogsnes has worked with companies, from IKEA, H&M,Pernod Ricard, Volvo and Equinor (Scandinavia’s largest company). His approach, “Beyond Budgeting” involves wholesale rethinking about budget approaches. 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).

The episode covers

• Definition of beyond budgeting as an antidote to “serious problems with traditional management”

Links 

Bognes Advisory bogsnesadvisory.com

FT (case study of Ikea): CEOs forced to ditch decades of forecasting habits

Bjarte Bogsnes: This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations

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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

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.

Get all your questions about Excel answered by the expert panel:

George Mount, Founder Stringfest Analytics

In this special episode:

• Our MVPs on when Excel first emerged as a difference-maker in their lives

Connect with George Mount

Connect with Celia Alves

Connect with Mark Proctor

Special Offers Exclusively for FP&A Today listeners

1) George Mount

Subscribe to George’s newsletter to get access to his data analytics resource library and many other goodies https://stringfestanalytics.com/subscribe/

2) Mark Proctor

https://exceloffthegrid.com/fpa is an exclusive offer for our training academy to the listeners of FP&A Today - 30-day full access trial for $1, followed by a $100 annual discount. This is valid until 31 May.

Excel Off the Grid 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ExcelOffTheGrid

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markstephenproctor/

3) Celia Alves

Celia offers an online course about automation of Excel Reporting procedures. Check out the special FP&A Today discount here https://snapreportschamp.com/course

DISCOUNT CODE for 20% OFF: FPA20

(valid up to June 4, 2023).

Subscribe to Celia’s newsletter https://snapreportschamp.com/subscribenewsletter

Celia Alves - Solve & Excel - on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/CeliaAlvesSolveExcel

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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

Get in touch at www.datarails.com

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.  

In this wide ranging interview Syed explains:

• Uncovering the power of FP&A in companies providing a “helicopter view of companies”.

Links 

Get a free one-to-one career session with Syed at https://calendly.com/syednadeem/connect

Read the full transcript and blog

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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

Get in touch at www.datarails.com

Maura Feddersen, behavioral research manager at Swiss Re, is an economist who previously worked in the economics team of two of the Big Four Accountancy firms: PwC and KPMG.

She got switched on to behavioral economics as “I always felt there was something a bit missing in economics. [Economics] assumes that people act quite rationally…and that was just not the case. Behavioral economics brings together the economics, as well as insights from psychology, to try to assess how humans really make decisions”.

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.”

This episode includes   

• New research revealing that investors predictions are only slightly more accurate than a chimp

Further reading 

Actuaries magazine: So You Think You Can Underwrite [Maura Fedderson]

 Insurers, take heed of these 3 common forecasting fallacies [by Maura Feddersen]

 Recommended books

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction Paperback - Philip Tetlock, Dan Gardner

Annie Duke, How to decide

Adam Grant, Think Again, The Power of Knowing what you Don’t Know 

Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

Read the full transcript and blog

Follow Maura Fedderson on LinkedIn

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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

Get in touch at www.datarails.com

For AFP FP&A Continuing Education credit please complete the course via the Earmark Ap, must pass the quiz with 80% accuracy and send the completed certificate to [email protected] for issuance of 1 hour of credit toward your AFP FP&A Certification. 

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 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.”

In this episode Mikus describes 

• Bottoms up planning as the most impactful strategy for agile  B2B SaaS companies

Read the full transcript and blog

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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

Get in touch at www.datarails.com

For AFP FP&A Continuing Education credit please complete the course via the Earmark Ap, must pass the quiz with 80% accuracy and send the completed certificate to [email protected] for issuance of 1 hour of credit toward your AFP FP&A Certification.