FP&A Today

By Sarah SchlottBusiness Management

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Typical duration
59 min
per episode

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FP&A Today episodes

June 06, 2023Danielle Stein Fairhurst: Using Excel for Business and Financial Modeling
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
Budgeting and forecasting vs financial modeling
How she was commissioned to write her famous books
Difference between creating a LinkedIn course vs writing a book
Encouraging and raising the profile of women in financial modeling
Secrets to training and behind the scenes of the Financial Modeling World Cup
How to Become an Excel MVP
The biggest issue people face with financial modeling
The Financial Modeling Institute work and how to ace the test
Favorite Excel Function?
Biggest advice for someone starting in FP&A today?

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
YouTube video of the episode
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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.
52 min
May 30, 2023Breaking Bad: Getting to Beyond Budgeting
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”
How traditional budgeting gets “trust” and “predictability” wrong
Your answer to “Why are you budgeting?” shows the problems inherent in existing process
How budget process are “borderline unethical”
Equinor (Scandinavia’s case study) change
Making organizations more adaptive and human in the process of transformation
Don’t start with rolling forecasting
How a Vinyl collection of 3,5000 is a unique musical passion
How Beyond Budget “will happen” in the next decade

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

Follow Bjarte Bogsnes on LinkedIn

YouTube video of the episode

Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn

Follow Datarails on LinkedIn

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.
52 min
May 23, 2023How to improve your Excel skills
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
Celia Alves, CEO, Solve and Excel Consulting
Mark Proctor, Excel Off The Grid

In this special episode:
Our MVPs on when Excel first emerged as a difference-maker in their lives
George Mount on the failure of finance to adapt to technology
The challenge of finance teams descending to the lowest common Excel skill set
The untapped power of PowerQuery and where to start
The power of prepping your data properly
Python vs Excel
Automating Excel reports using Python
How to deal with tricky Excel issues
Will Excel go extinct with the rise of AI
The thing that you absolutely could not live without in Excel

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

YouTube video of today's episode

Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn

Follow Datarails on LinkedIn

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
43 min
May 16, 2023Syed Nadeem: Learning from your Failure in FP&A
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”.
The role and limitations of certifications in FP&A
How “selling” is the core to getting a good job in finance
The power of technology in FP&A and “unlearning and relearning every day”
The secrets to effective communication with senior leadership
How bad experiences make strong finance business leaders
The secret to talking to Investors in a Language they Understand

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

Read the full transcript and blog
Follow Syed Nadeem on LinkedIn
YouTube video
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
Follow Datarails on LinkedIn

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
53 min
May 09, 2023“MoneyBall for FP&A”: Maura Feddersen on Winning in Forecasts
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
How new forecasting methods improved accuracy at Swiss Re by 5%
The cognitive biases we need to be aware of that undermine accuracy (such as the dangers of groupthink)
Meryl Streep’s Oscar nominations and your forecast confidence levels tested
How to try and manage cognitive bias
The true economic impact of uncertainty in the global economy and in your business
The opportunities and limits of AI forecasting
Using RIO (Rational Impartial Observers)
The biggest failure in her career
Favorite Excel function
Her biggest advice for someone starting out to get really good at forecasting

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
Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan, the Impact of the Highly Improbable

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
YouTube video
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn

Follow Datarails on LinkedIn

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.
50 min
May 02, 2023Mikus Krams: Why We Scrapped Budgets At Chili Piper
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
The reason that budgets are bad for business
ROI mindset as core to his finance thinking
Managing incentive structure through a Rev Ops approach
How on target earnings are sometimes more mirage than reality
Managers as “powderkegs” and “snipers”
The path to moving to a continuous forecasting methodology
His biggest failure in his FP&A career
Banking as a powerful route to FP&A career success
The importance of lunch with business leaders and individual contributors in a business
Read the full transcript and blog
Follow Mikus Krams on LinkedIn
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
Follow Datarails on LinkedIn
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.
44 min
April 25, 2023CEO Scott Stouffer: Can FP&A Get your Go-to-Market strategy to work better?
“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 non profit 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.
This interview covers
Scott’s roadmap for growth leading fast-scaling companies
Why many CFOs are “glorified controllers” (and why that is a problem)
How FP&A can prevent sales and marketing teams “from winging it” by bringing the “analytical brain power” to the
The power of a good plan in a fast-scaling business
Should Rev Ops and Data be owned by the CFO
How FP&A should be the first port of call in building a companies Go-to-Market strategy
How finance teams can work better with sales teams and better modeling sales capacity
Why in 60% of cases companies have too many sales people by failing to do proper modeling
Why you need to hone self-confidence as a skillset
Read the full transcript and blog
Follow Scott Stouffer on LinkedIn
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
Follow Datarails on LinkedIn
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.
49 min
April 18, 2023Silicon Valley Bank: Finance teams in the eye of the storm
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.
The panel:
Josh Aharonoff (aka Your CFO Guy), CEO and Founder, Mighty Digits had many clients banking with SVB and had to make quick decisions as news broke. He shares Finance & Accounting Best Practices & Advice everyday to his nearly 85,000 LinkedIn followers
Follow Josh on LinkedIn

CJ Gustafson is a CFO at a series B startup, PartsTech. He has been in the startup space within the private equity sector and has helped to scale venture backed companies for the last 10 years. He also authors Mostly Metrics, an irreverent and analytical spin on metrics which has crossed more than 10k subscribers.
Follow CJ Gustafson on LinkedIn
Casey Woo is a seven-time high Tech CFO- turned investor. He has held finance and CFO roles at Silicon Valley companies including at WeWork and property tech companies before founding an “operators community” turned investment fund FOG ventures.
Follow Casey Woo on LinkedIn

What is covered in this episode:
Casey Woo explains being at the “heart of the storm” in Silicon Valley with a close personal relationship with SVB
The reasons that VCs put pressure to withdraw money from SVB in a classic “prisoner’s dilemma”
How the fallout from SVB continues to impact companies and particularly finance professionals
The challenges for CFOs, particularly in tech, seeking to fundraise after SVB’s crash
What are the differences between fractional banking and Ponzi schemes
The initial $250,000 ceiling on federal deposit insurance explained
How could KPMG have given SVB a clean bill of health with so many stored-up challenges?
Why is the impact of raising rates so dramatically different than in the 1970s when no banks failed?
Strategic advice for Treasury and FP&A pros going forward post-SVB
The importance for CFOs and FP&A leaders to understand “second order effects” beyond cash entering and leaving the building.
How the SVB saga has emphasized the value of an FP&A function that can show everything that's happened, is happening, and is going to happen “and being in control of that story” - allowing you to take action quickly.
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.
Watch the full show on YouTube
Read the full transcript and blog
47 min
April 11, 2023The FP&A’s Guide to Winning in the Fractional CFO Galaxy
“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”.

Covered in this episode
King’s path from being a navy nuclear engineer to a fractional CFO leader
The essential skills you need to be a fractional CFO
When should an SMB choose a fractional CFO
Why budgeting and forecasting are “everything”
The key to using the fractional CFO position to connect the strategic goals of a business
Why people in finance must learn to love sales
When to move away from a fractional CFO and appoint a full time finance chief
Why cash flow is always “the first” and most important metric for any fractional CFO service
Why you only need a small number of clients to “make a killing” as a fractional CFO
How the Fractional CFO space will explode in the next decade “regardless of the economic picture”
Fractional CFOs need to be “operating as far away from the decimal as possible” to be successful
The process of adopting kids as the thing few people know about Michael

Watch the full show on YouTube
Read the full transcript and blog

Follow Michael King on LinkedIn
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
Follow Datarails on LinkedIn

FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails, the FP&A platform for Excel users.
Episode links
The CFO Accelerator podcast with Michael King
The CFO Report (Youtube channel)
The The 5-Minute Fractional CFO Newsletter
55 min
April 04, 2023FP&A vs. Accounting: Let’s Get Ready to Rumble
“I must admit, when I was doing accounting, I never liked my FP&A colleagues. In fact, as a matter of at times, I hated them. I thought they didn’t understand accounting. They always push to reduce the number of days it takes to close the books when they have very little clue what's going on.”
Abdul Khaliq, Group Financial Controller, at Abu Dhabi National Hotels

In our 50th episode of FP&A Today, we bring together an all-star guest list who have had experience working as both accountants and in FP&A. Drawing on their experience they look at the frequent clashes between FP&A and their accounting colleagues (be warned no one pulls any punches!). Plus, the secrets to a more harmonious relationship between FP&A and accounting.
Get ready for The Dual of Accruals, the Toe-to-Toe on Cash Flow….with all of your questions answered about the day-to-day realities of FP&A vs Accounting.
The panel:

Lyndi Porter is accounting controller at Solera, a global leader in vehicle lifecycle management. She has more than 16 years accounting experience and has managed FP&A teams

Follow Lyndi on LinkedIn

Abdul Khaliq, Group Financial Controller, at Abu Dhabi National Hotels. 20+ years of progressive experience in accounting for Real Estate Development and Hospitality industries.

Follow Abdul on LinkedIn

Josh Aharonoff (aka Your CFO Guy), CEO and Founder, Mighty Digits. He shares Finance & Accounting Best Practices & Advice everyday to his nearly 85,000 LinkedIn followers

Follow Josh on LinkedIn

Terrell Turner: Co-founder and fractional CFO at TLTurner Group (NY Times featured CFO | 40 Under 40 CPA). He also provide bookkeeping services to law firms to make accounting and finance less complicated.

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

Read the full transcript and blog
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
Follow Datarails on LinkedIn

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
59 min

About FP&A Today

From the publisher's feed

FP&A Today is the podcast for Financial Planning and Analysis. The weekly show dives into the challenges and opportunities within the world of FP&A, interviewing FP&A leaders, CFOs and…