We received a flood of FP&A and CFO questions from our audience (and FP&A Reddit). These and more are put to this this week’s finance headhunter special guests: Nick Gribbon,Senior Partner, Financial Officers Practice at Essenta, and Laura Streather, Consultant, Private Equity at Essenta, who run the finance headhunting section at the global executive search firm. Hear all the behind the scenes anecdotes and secrets to getting your next big FP&A or CFO job.

Connect with Nick Gribbon, Senior Partner, Financial Officers Practice at Essenta

• Shortage of Exit Private Equity CFOs and what you will need to fill the role  

• Will moving as CFO from a $100m to $1bn company automatically get you a higher salary?

Geetha Ramachandran is an FP&A change agent. She helped transform FP&A operations at GE Healthcare and Cummins (“When I walked into the FP&A at GE Healthcare, and I saw the close was eight days, my approach to things is usually I don’t take things just on face value or just because someone has been doing something a particular way).”

Geetha has since swapped supersized companies for startups, most recently leading FP&A at fast-growing businesses including SimpleTire. In  her current role as Head of FP&A at New Jersey decor company, Triangle Home Fashions, she continues to propel FP&A as a “co-captain” in the business.

In this episode Geetha reveals:

• Her career journey from PwC auditor to equity research to GE Healthcare 

Follow Geetha Ramachandran https://www.linkedin.com/in/geetharamachandran201/

A compelling FP&A story is essential. In this second (and final) session from FP&ACon 2024, Glenn hosts Soufyan Hamid, FP&A leader for 16 years who runs the Financial Storytelling Program, and Matthew Herbert, Chewy Director of Finance. 

• First poll: How confident are you in your ability to craft a compelling FP&A Story:?

Follow and connect with Soufyan Hamid: https://www.linkedin.com/in/soufyanhamid/

Follow and connect with Matthew Herbert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-herbert-6a56637/

Matthew’s training course at https://biztrix.us/

Soufyan (The Finance Circle) training www.thefinancecircle.com

In this special episode (part of Datarails’ FP&A Con 2024) Glenn hosts an all-star panel to debate AI and FP&A: Hype vs reality.

Join Nicolas Boucher, Christian Martinez, and Gabriela Gutierrez, alongside CFO Glenn Hopper, host of FP&A Today, and an AI thought leader and author. Delve into real-world applications, separating fact from fiction, and gain valuable practical insights into the present and future of AI in financial planning and analysis. 

The Guests:

• Nicolas Boucher, Keynote speaker on AI for Finance & FP&A

In this episode: 

How many FP&A pros are using AI in their work - how do you compare vs the results of our poll 

The main misconceptions + and what not to do in the  finance and AI era

The significance of ChatGPT 4o

The biggest barriers to AI adoptions 

Practical uses of AI to use today , including forecasting and practical ways to save time 

FP&A AI use cases that have shocked the panel 

Which FP&A processes could most use AI help?

How to get started practically

AI capabilities in existing tools  such as PowerBI

Why 2024 is about Python as the tool to learn to break the barrier of AI

Automation in finance’s relationship with other departments

Creating your own chatbot services

The importance of data maturity (before AI maturity)

How you will start to see AI inbuilt to all your finance techstack

Join the AI Finance Club: https://ai-finance.club/

 “Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models,”

FP&A professionals are the original business intelligence (BI) experts, says Len Mcfall, senior consultant, finance at Windstream Holdings, a $1billion US telecoms company.

“FP&A itself is synonymous with business intelligence,” he says. “And honestly, weren’t, weren’t we the first business intelligence? We’ve always been working with data. We’ve always been trying to simplify and present data in a  meaningful way to people who might not,otherwise be literate.”

In this frank and honest interview McFall, whose background is heavily influenced by BI, gives insights from a 20 year career including HCT Investments, Sitel, Crossroads Treatment Center and a minefield of data at Windstream. 

 “I’m not a bullet point guy. I’m a paragraph guy” says Len– warning he’s not one for short, snappy answers, but a storyteller who loves to dive deep,  as he reveals:

• Why 40% of my job is touching base with people to curate all the data we use across the organization

Connect with Len on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/len-mcfall-6274857b/

CFO Seth Zimmerman faced a triple blow of tests in his decades-long  real estate career. Firstly, he witnessed the Lehman collapse first-hand from within a real estate division of the famed bank (“We just got a call from our New York office, a guy in New York. He’s like, well, it’s done. We’re bankrupt.”). Secondly, being forced to blow the whistle when his CEO boss pocketed $1m into his bank account–the day after a $10m raise (the startup is now defunct). Finally, being the finance person when a developer absconded with $12m. “One of the things that I’ve learned is that when it comes to money, you never know what somebody’s going to do”.

In this episode, Seth Zimmerman, CFO at Invest with Roots, explains the core metrics in finance real estate and why things are never cookie cutter (“Every deal is, is different and you have to look at them individually”)

Zimmerman talks:

• Life as CFO at Invest with Roots, one of the hottest companies in Atlanta,the only real estate portfolio that creates wealth for renters.

Follow Seth on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethazimmerman/

As a lifelong gamer, David Fortin successfully landed  his dream job managing FP&A at Ubisoft – the $2.79 billion gaming company responsible for Assassin’s Creed, Driver, and Far Cry, For Honor. The former PwC auditor then decided to take on an even more daunting leap. He ran FP&A at  Saas Startup Polka “building the plane while we were flying” – cue  his boss leaving, learning how to fundraise, facing disinterested investors, budgets rejected by the board,  the CTO crying, before managing an eventual successful exit (in 2023 the company was acquired by Swedish enterprise software giant IFS). Now he is a full-time YouTuber teaching Excel and Microsoft Copilot – still using finance and analytics to build his business.

In this episode David talks:

• PwC CPA audit coming up that way to FP&A

Follow David on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-fortin-cpa-816b20b5/

Follow David’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@piggybankaccountant

From being the First kid in her family to finish high school, Swati Bagri began as a role as auditor at Deloitte (“I did what any 17-year-old smart kid would do. I just followed my friends”). At Deloitte she discovered a “love of finance” realizing it’s “what I want to do for the rest of my life”.

Swati cemented her FP&A career at some of the world’s biggest brands: Nestlé, Mars, Amazon, and Kraft Heinz. At these giants she absorbed and built a playbook to get from “good” to “great” FP&A. Behing the success of FP&A at these teams, she explains is 3 things: strategic planning and forecasting, technology and risk management.

In this episode Swati talks about:

• Finance transformation as a significant part of her role (the slippery term of “finance transformation” defined as the “effective use of technology to free up people’s time”)

Connect with Swati Bagri on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/swatibagri/

Book a mentoring session with Swati at https://topmate.io/swatibagri

We host our first ever FP&A guest from the US casino and gambling sector with the head of FP&A at Genting Americas, a world leader in casinos and lodging with luxurious loactions in Las Vegas, Bimini, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom.

Bill Singh is VP FP&A of Genting Americas, part of the world’s largest Destination Resort operator operating as Resorts World . Genting boasting five public companies capitalized at $45 billion and employing more than 50,000 people worldwide. This episode  reveals their inside FP&A game including metrics such as “win per unit per day” tacking the “hold”. Bill is strategic leader with more than a decade leading FP&A and providing insights on skills and budgeting management, to insider advice about gaming.

In this episode:

• Getting an unexpected offer of an FP&A role at a casino in Nevada

Follow and connect with Bill Singh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billsinghprofile/

What’s the connection between FP&A and Taylor Swift? To answer we are joined by Michael Stotland, Vice President of FP&A at AEG Presents.

AEG Presents is one of the largest live music companies in the world, and most famously the concert promoter behind the $1 billion dollar revenue Eras Tour by Taylor Swift: the highest grossing tour of all time.

In this blockbuster episode, we want to teach you how FP&A feels (apologies to Swifties):

• How growing up in Los Angeles the entertainment industry the entertainment industry was a natural choice, and starting my career at MGM

Connect with Michael Stotland Vice President, Financial Planning & Analysis at AEG Presents: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikestotland/

Further Reading:

Investopedia: Swiftonomics: The Economic Influence of Taylor Swift

Datarails Blog: How FP&A makes Huge Hollywood Hits