Maria del Dado Alonso Sanchez, a recognized and respected Board Member and Chief Financial Officer for large & mid-cap companies has been a finance leader in sectors including e-commerce, technology, gaming ad tech, and online hospitality. She says: “Each sector really presented its unique financial challenges and strategies.” 

Learn invaluable lessons about FP&A from Maria who has served more than 20 years at blue chip companies:

• How I grew as a finance professional at Amazon and the launch of Amazon Prime and Amazon Europe was created

Connect with Maria del Dado Alonso Sanchez on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariadeldadoalonsosanchez/

Only our second ever returning guest, Christian Wattig, a veteran former leader of FP&A at P&G, Unilever, and Squarespace, reveals new skills he has learnt as he created the recently-launched 8 week Wharton Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Certificate Program, one of the most comprehensive FP&A training courses on the market. He describes highlights from his career, new strategy, and analysis, and how he sees the future of the profession.

In this episode: 

• The common bond between FP&A educators such as Christian and former host Paul Barnhurst and Glenn

8-WEEK ONLINE COURSE Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Certificate Program https://wallstreetprep.wharton.upenn.edu/financial-planning-and-analysis-certificate/

Sign up to Christian’s weekly (free) newsletter with tips and practical FP&A advice: fpa prep.com/newsletter

Connect with Christian on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-wattig/

When any finance business partner–a CFO or an FP&A professional–wants their counterpart across the table in marketing, sales or HR, to understand the essentials of numbers, they hand them the business classic, Financial Intelligence, A Manager's Guide to Knowing what the Numbers Really Mean.

First published in 2006, the book has been named in the Top 100 Business Books of all time and remains a word of mouth sensation and continues to sell rapidly nearly two decades on. The classic was authored by former CFO, Joe Knight and Karen Berman. Until her untimely death 10 years ago, Karen, was also a force in engaging all employees in improving a company’s finances

Based on the principles of the book, Joe Knight, Partner and Senior Consultant with the Business Literacy Institute,  trains execs at some of the biggest companies in the world including NBCUniversal, Electronic Arts, and McKesson on business partnering and the importance of getting a business to understand and embrace their numbers and works. He has also been a guest on Bob Brinker’s Money Talk show on KABC ratio and CNBC’s Morning Call program.

In addition his engaging keynote addresses, include "The Love affair with EBITDA" and "The Secrets of Finance Revealed". As CFO of Setpoint Companies, he spearheaded the financial education of engineers in this automation and roller coaster company and tells us some of his adventures from this journey and secrets to finance business partnering at the highest level.

In this episode 

• The origins of the writing one of the most famous business books  

Business Literacy institute: https://www.business-literacy.com/

Contact: [email protected]

In this episode Glenn Hopper talks to the researcher responsible for the groundbreaking study which found that AI is better at conducting financial analysis than humans. Alex Kim, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, provides a full overview of his findings, methodology and the impact on FP&A, CFOs and finance from the attention-grabbing study “Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models”. The analysis, which made headlines across the world, found AI produces a 60% rate of accuracy in predictive financial performance. Human experts’ accuracy tends to fall between 53% and 57%.

In this episode Alex Kim reveals the implications for finance professionals:

• Alex’s finance background – from a Master’s degree in Business Administration to a Accounting and a dual Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Business Administration- to his doctoral and PHD career

Read the full paper here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4835311

Check out the analyzer for yourself here: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-9P3sIn487-financial-statement-analyzer

Follow Alex Kim on Linkedin Ph.D. Student at the University of Chicago: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgunwookim

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/