FP&A Today

Most CFOs don’t build  models where 1% of their company’s net sales (not profits) are given away instantly “right from the top” to help alleviate poverty. But then Cotopaxi is not like most companies. In this episode Cotopaxi CFO, Gary Bowen, explains the pivotal role played by finance and FP&A in “doing capitalism better” while also seeking to become a billion-dollar brand - alongside other outdoor names such as Patagonia, North Face and Columbia. This includes an ambitious new strategy explained by Bowen to move beyond digital sales and into retail–and FP&A’s central role in making this happen.

In this episode Gary Bown CFO of Cotopaxi reveals:

• Starting as operations in customer service and lessons for finance 

Follow Gary Bowen on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-bowen-769a7/

Kat Orekhova is Co-Founder & CEO of Vareto, a planning and analytics platform for enterprise teams. In her own words Kat has an “unusual backstory” leaving the world of math academia to build Facebook’s first-ever data science team within FP&A. At the social media giant she was Responsible for financial reporting, forecasting, and planning activities for Facebook’s core business. This was followed by stints as Head of Product at IronClad, a $3billion legaltech company, Sequoia Capital Scout, General Partner at Darkmode Ventures and co-founder & CEO of Vareto.

• 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) 

Follow Kat on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katorekhova/

Tolga Hocanin, CFO & Vice President, Finance & IT at Lindt & Sprüngli (Canada) gives a masterclass in CPG FP&A from his experience at PepsiCo and chocolatier, Lindt.

• Lessons from 20 years of budgeting and how my first budget was a nightmare

Follow and connect with Tolga Hocanin on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tolga-hocanin-cpa-cma-2958008/

Talking about the connectedness of FP&A and Rev Ops working together are all-star revenue leaders: Jeff Ignacio, Head of Go-to market Growth and operations at Regrow Ag, Arvind Chahal VP, finance and ops at autotrader Canada, and Drew Noel, VP Revenue, SCS Cloud.

“Rev Ops is the discipline of aligning go-to market strategy and execution through four key pillars: process enablement, advisory and systems excellence” (Webster dictionary definition submitted by Paul Igancio).

In this episode:

• How revenue operations and finance operations need to be working together effectively?

Our guests:

Drew Noel, VP Revenue, SCS Cloud

Andrew Lynch,  Head of FP&A at UK card discount scheme for public service employees, Blue LIght Card, is known to his nearly 11,000 Twitter followers as The SMB Finance Guy.

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.

Subscribe to Net Income at https://www.netincome.co/

Follow Andrew at https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewglynch/

Jon Allen and Duke Heninger, of  Utah-based Amplēo, have brought their finance game to fast-growing companies which are between $5m and $50m in revenue. They are “fractional CFOs” – that is experienced finance professionals advising these companies on a part-time basis. For instance, one business they work with, Korean barbeque restaurant Cupbop, appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank and got $1million from Mark Cuban in 2022. Other companies they advised include Burt Brothers (a tire and services company). Collectively Amplēo helped more than 3000 companies.

 “It’s always the data”, says Duke Heninger, Financial Partner at Amplēo. “It’s getting things put in a way so that people can understand what they’ve even spent. Most of my clients are on a very simplified accounting system. They aren’t classifying anything in separate departments. So it’s breaking it out, trying to understand who owns what, where should it go, and ultimately everybody just sandbags just so that they don’t trip a budget”.

• Our worst budget experiences

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dukeh/

Amplēo provides business professionals, such as CFOs, CMOs and CHROs, to companies on a fractional basis in order to help them achieve their full potential. https://ampleo.com/

There are two different directions for AI in finance, says Didi Gurfinkel, Co-Founder and CEO of Datarails.

Or, your brain. 

He says: ”Using AI to extend your hands involves automating processes, making everything faster, reducing headcount shortening time to deliver, which is amazing. But it’s not a life changer. In this situation maybe you can reduce the gap between 10 employees to five employees but this will not be what will save your business or ultimately make it successful.

“The more interesting part is to look at AI as an extension to your brain. Here, I think this is a life changer. Letting the CFO or the FP&A manager have a tool that can be like an extension to the FP&A brain. If you take your analysis or approach to analyze your business, the AI can run it at scale with all your historical data, internal data and external data.”

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”)

Didi was previously a GM at Cisco. He has extensive senior management experience with a focus on growth and innovation. Didi oversees business, strategy and operations. He holds a B.Sc in economics and computer science, and an MBA in business management.

Follow Didi Gurfinkel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/didigurfinkel/

Tunc Tezel has managed FP&A at companies including Ontex, Pladis, British American Tobacco, Procter & Gamble, and Gillette. He has lived and worked in 11 different countries including the UK, Iran, Sub-saharan Africa, Turkey, Latvia, Belgium

• What do you do with your company’s budget when overnight interest rates hit 3000%. And the Turkish lira was devalued by 60% overnight 

Jack Alexander was our second ever guest on FP&A Today and it remains one of our most downloaded episodes. Here he returns to exclusively launch his new book (published January 2024): Financial Management: Partner in Driving Performance and Value (Wiley Finance)

His new book is a  post-pandemic and typically practical take on performance management, planning, forecasting, business valuation, mergers, acquisitions, and capital investment.

“Most people hadn't really been through some of these experiences before. Scenario analysis and planning, business transformations and restructuring liquidity management and scenario planning through various liquidity scenarios. There was a need for FP&A and finance to look outside the organization at major external forces and events that are happening around the world as the greatest threats and opportunities emerged from outside such as hyperinflation and  geopolitical events.”

In this episode Jack talks:

• Why my first budget was a disaster

Follow Jack Alexander at https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-jack-alexande

Cayla Pingel has led FP&A in sports, gaming and entertainment at companies including Warner Bros, Fox Sports and most recently, 2K Games, a global video game company. At Fox Sports she financially quarterbacked the full P&L for the biggest sporting events including the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the NFL Baseball World Cup.

In this episode:

• Being at Fox Sports when live sports came screeching to a halt during COVID

Follow and contact Cayla Pingel on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/cayla-pingel-410a1a73/