Lindsey Martens, VP Finance at fintech company, Valera (Formerly PSCU/Co-op Solutions) talks about her transition from accounting to finance- and how she manages a remote FP&A team that has business partnering and storytelling at its heart. “Business partnering is my favorite thing about FP&A” Martens says, “I love being the translator. I think of myself as taking all this data, accounting data, and then all these other sources that come into it, and I’m packaging it up in a way that is ...
Dec 17, 2024•36 min•Ep. 139
In more than 12 years at PepsiCo Tariq Munir, has held roles including FP&A Manager, Head of Integrated Business Planning, Head of Finance Supply Chain, and more recently APAC Finance Transformation Lead (based in Australia) delivering Financial Planning process simplification. This included founding the first-ever APAC Finance Digital Academy to build a digital mindset and culture. Tariq is sought out as an international keynote speaker and is a regular columnist for CFO Magazine ANZ, shari...
Dec 10, 2024•57 min•Ep. 138
Laurynas Zabulis, CFO at Nord Security, is playing a starring role at one of Lithuania’s most famous success stories. Cybersecurity unicorn, Nord Security, went from being bootstrapped to a $3billion valuation in 12 years. Laurynas became CFO after a stint at Surfshark (which merged with NordVPN in 2022). His achievements at NordSecurity include leading the first funding round for $100m – technically a “seed” round he says (unusually the bootstrapped enjoyed revenues of over $100m when it approa...
Dec 03, 2024•48 min•Ep. 137
Nate Kaemingk is Chief Forecaster for BetterForecasting.com, where he has built a financial forecasting AI for mid-market finance teams. Previously he has been a Fractional CFO for two Montana based companies. Nate started his career as a mechanical engineer using inferential statistics to model chemical reactions in Diesel engines! Later, during his MBA, he applied an inferential statistics background to forecasting and scenario analysis. Nate has had the opportunity to apply these methods in r...
Nov 26, 2024•54 min•Ep. 136
In this episode we are joined by Brent Dykes, the bestselling author of Effective Data Storytelling (Wiley, 2020), founder of Analytics Hero, and Forbes contributor. He has helped thousands of finance leaders at companies including Microsoft, IKEA, Nike, Sony, and Pfizer, enhance their data storytelling, visualization, and interpretation skills. “I strive to ensure analytics is always aligned with business priorities and maximizing business value.“ In this episode Brent Dykes says: “One of the t...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 135
Anna Tiomina has faced multiple FP&A challenges in a 15-year finance career. This has included budget nightmares, all-nighters, and the stark realization that “politics” is central to any FP&A or finance role. The former CFO of Sandoz, a huge pharmaceutical company, describes her move to finance chief at Softeq, a smaller IT and consulting firm. Most recently she has pivoted to become a fractional CFO with a passion to help finance professionals bridge the gap between “curiosity and conf...
Nov 05, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 134
Saaya Nath is a partner of Jump Capital, a VC firm specializing in investments in software and infrastructure (their portfolio includes treasury software to products helping companies visualize and understand their cloud bills). In this episode talks to Glenn about: How the CFO’s Office can automate workflows around finance and AI The most common complaint talking to finance teams Main focus of AI for finance teams we are seeing and rates of adoption Spend management, finOps, cloud cost manageme...
Oct 30, 2024•57 min•Ep. 133
Christian Franz Hansen is a seasoned management consultant and finance thought leader. He’s made it his mission to bridge the gap between strategic decision making and data analysis with a background that includes roles at EY and a finance consultant helping big-names including General Motors, Lego Group, and Maersk. He’s now a member of the Business Partnering Institute, where he’s revolutionizing how finance professionals approach their roles. In this episode: From Excel Wizard as a stepping s...
Oct 22, 2024•45 min•Ep. 132
Tobias Zwingmann is an ex-Senior Data Scientist-turned managing partner of RAPYD.AI - which is empowering companies from B2B SaaS startups to leading financial institutions towards a unified AI strategy. His data insights are shared in his books including “AI-Powered Business Intelligence” (O’Reilly 2022) and “Augmented Analytics” (Co-author, O‘Reilly 2024) as well as weekly newsletter “ The Augmented Advantage ” read by 4,500+ business leaders from brands like Amazon, Mercedes-Benz, Gucci, and ...
Oct 15, 2024•58 min•Ep. 131
George Mount is an Excel MVP and author of Modern Data Analytics in Excel (he describes it as a guide to becoming a data analyst in Excel). His latest book, Advancing into Analytics: From Excel to Python and R could be subtitled “becoming a data scientist in Excel. As founder and CEO of Stringfest Analytics, he provides analytics education and upskilling including works with finance departments at the top ten banks. In this episode he answers how someone in FP&A – killing it in Excel – can g...
Oct 08, 2024•46 min•Ep. 130
This year Bruno Oliveira got promoted to CFO, flying up the FP&A route at Swissport, the world’s leader in airport ground services and air cargo handling, active at 286 airports in 60 countries. In this must-listen episode: FP&A in the trenches from banks, to automotive, agriculture and aviation at Swissport How to cope without control on demand in aviation Financial planning three to six months ahead Structure of FP&A at Swissport Factoring in safety as the most important aviation m...
Oct 01, 2024•43 min•Ep. 129
Forget “ Founder Mode ”. For those in FP&A your CFO expects Owner Mode. “In rugby, if you observe, a player often clings on to the ball, not letting it go out of his hands until the goal is scored. That’s how we need to handle things. Own it — cling onto it — achieve the goal,” says former IBM India CFO Ravikumar Ramanan, author of the brilliant book: The CFO Lens, how to Thrive in the Fast Changing World of Finance He tells Glenn Hopper: “The expectation of a finance partner is not to stop ...
Sep 24, 2024•56 min•Ep. 128
“ Not having the answer is no longer acceptable because you are 30 seconds from having the answer. You’ve just gotta ask .” – Don Tomoff Don Tomoff, founder of Invenio Advisors, is a finance rockstar and a trailblazer in AI adoption for finance. As a CMA his life’s mission is to make work easier for literally everyone he encounters. The CMA and finance expert has more than 30 years of experience spanning accounting, being a CFO, and consulting. Don Tomoff is not just an expert in his field inclu...
Sep 17, 2024•54 min•Ep. 127
Skip Katroll is Senior Director, Insights and Analytics at AmPhil. AmPhil helps big-name nonprofits raise more money and advance their missions. This episode is packed with practical and honest insights and takeaways you can apply to your day job. Skip gives the inside story on creating and selling a report at Amphil, "Unlocking the Secrets of Lost Sales Opportunities", and the approach that he followed. Skip also reveals how a background leading finance at top universities alongside math, econo...
Sep 10, 2024•55 min•Ep. 126
Laura Bloom started as as a contracts manager for an air cargo company. In a dramatic switch she moved to accounting, then finance and FP&A at top companies including Dotmatics, Salesforce Comcast, and is now senior finance manager at Icertis, a SaaS platform for AI-powered contract intelligence. In 2023 she founded Impact FP&A specializing in Go-To-Market (GTM) finance strategy for companies. In this episode she reveals the importance of flexibility in her career and joining the dots in...
Sep 03, 2024•55 min•Ep. 125
Former CFO Daniel Paik, turned founder and CEO of CuroWork is at war on back office functions. He vows to “transform back-office departments from cost centers to profit centers” with FP&A in their sights. He says: “I call the back office the last frontier. We are the only ones not measuring ourselves. Therefore we get crap given to us every single day." Here are some of the ways that Daniel Paik, a former CFO, fixed the “back office” mentality in finance teams. Salespeople at one company sai...
Aug 29, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 124
CFO and Partner, Tyler Caskey loves hunting down and automating manual processes, installing better systems, and redesigning how information is gathered. He adds: “On average I can cut 40% of the time cost out of most finance and payroll teams within 12 months. And with the 40% saved time they can significantly reduce error rates and start to show their true value.” In this episode Tyler talks to Glenn about some of his experiences working with teams from New Zealand, Australia, the US, UK and E...
Aug 20, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 123
Continuing our “Masters of FP&A Data” series, we have the privilege of hosting Brandon Wilson, Founder and CEO of Steady Dynamic. Brandon works with clients from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies giving expertise to those who lack experience building digital solutions. He encourages big ideation, assuming technology can solve any problem, and works to prioritize and constrain scope relative to business objectives. “FP&A has to some degree implemented predictive analytics” he ...
Aug 13, 2024•54 min•Ep. 122
Nicholas Mann, founder and CEO Stratos Consulting, has got the best out of the data for hundreds of companies. He has helped data and analytics leaders go from siloed, heterogeneous data source to a modeled data warehouse and analytics platforms. In this awesome analytics episode he shares some of his experiences: Getting companies on their data journey The importance of FP&A not just staying in their lane Inner workings of how data is impacting the rest of the business From deep finance dom...
Aug 06, 2024•59 min•Ep. 121
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 lau...
Jul 30, 2024•46 min•Ep. 120
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 ...
Jul 23, 2024•58 min•Ep. 119
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 autho...
Jul 16, 2024•55 min•Ep. 118
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% rat...
Jul 09, 2024•59 min•Ep. 117
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,...
Jul 02, 2024•55 min•Ep. 116
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 curre...
Jun 25, 2024•52 min•Ep. 115
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:? The move from numbers to storytelling Soufyan on why the finance director was always frustrated by my business presentations (when I was even invited to meetings)...
Jun 18, 2024•56 min•Ep. 114
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, Keynot...
Jun 11, 2024•55 min•Ep. 113
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 in...
Jun 04, 2024•46 min•Ep. 112
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...
May 28, 2024•39 min•Ep. 111
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 managin...
May 21, 2024•48 min•Ep. 110
