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/

“I last came on FP&A Today before I started my new CFO gig, and I was pretty nervous. I was talking a lot in theory of what I thought it would be, and now I can tell you a little bit more of the reality. So it's been quite the ride.”

Returning guest CJ Gustafson–master of the hugely popular Mostly Metrics newsletter–delivers in his custom funny and frank style the lessons from his first year as CFO and the practical lessons for anyone in finance (and particularly FP&A).

• His worst budget experience - working six months on an operating plan  thrown away within a week during COVID (and the surprising conclusion)

Sign up for the Mostly Metrics Newsletter from CJ Gustafson: https://www.mostlymetrics.com/

Check out Run the Numbers hosted by CJ: a weekly podcast about financial metrics and business models, designed for ambitious people operating tech startups https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/run-the-numbers-startup-finance-strategy-and-operations/id1704418764

Follow CJ or get in touch with him on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/

Taylor Otstot is VP of Finance at Dashlane, and former Senior Director of Finance at GoDaddy. He joined GoDaddy a year before their IPO and was there for eight years as the domain registrar and web hosting company scaled from $1.5 billion to $4 billion revenue. “By the time I left I was supporting about a billion and a half of that revenue and I was running a team of about 14", Taylor says. "So not only was I part of a business that was going through a lot of growth, but personally had to go through a lot of growth.”

In this episode Taylor reveals the psychological skills and strategy he uses to win in his career.

Insights from this episode:

• Printing Excel files (aka the worst budget he has ever experienced)

Notes

Follow Taylor on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorotstot/

Creativity Inc, Ed Catmull

Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

Reflections from 8 Years at GoDaddy

We have an all-star panel getting into the Christmas and New Year spirit. Howard Tunnicliffe, Head of FP&A, The Economist, and Brett Hampson, Director of Finance, AllState, joinin host Paul Barnhurst, The FP&A Guy in this special edition of FP&A Today. They tackle the 12 most burning questions asked on reddit.com/r/FPandA in 2023. Mid-way we give you the end of year results of the top 5 Favorite FP&A Function for FP&A Pros, based on our 80 episodes!

Let us know your thoughts on your thoughts on these questions, what you want a panel to answer for 2024 (and of course any Excel Function shamefully omitted from our top 5). 

Special guests:

• Howard Tunnicliffe, Head of FP&A, The Economist https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardtunnicliffe/

12 Questions Answered on this special Holiday episode:

• How difficult is it for someone to switch industries in FP&A? 

• BONUS!!! The results of Favorite Excel Function (from 80 episodes)

• What advice would you give about management reporting in a turnaround situation?

Join Brett Hampson's new weekly email newslettter, Forecasting Performance at https://forecasting-performance-2.ck.page/62f28563e1