An Excel MVP walks into a podcast

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 Santander.  In this episode: My rise in data science Did the latest changes to Co-Pilot actually make it good? What finance can learn from other departments using AI Consolidating reports and augmenting processes using AI  Let’s talk forecasting and analytics and regression analysis  Leveraging Excel and Power BI to enhance their data analysis capabilities Getting to “data progressive” and “data active” in your organization  Augmented Analytics Explained  Clean (but not tidy) data in finance Two ways to make data tidy in ChatGPT Connect with Tobias Zwingmann on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-zwingmann

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 go further in their career while using Excel as home base. In this episode:  Two books and the ROI you get as a finance professional from reading it  Using Excel as your home base for FP&A When to use Excel vs Python  citizen data scientists (or citizen data analysts) in Python  Using low code/no code tools Excel, copilot and Python as a new “trinity” for FP&A Getting your data house in order before getting to AI A surprising Excel favorite befitting an MVP Connect with George Mount on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gjmount/ Further Reading George Mount: Modern Data Analytics in Excel: Using Power Query, Power Pivot, and More for Enhanced Data Analytics George Mount: Advancing into Analytics: From Excel to Python and R

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 metric, direct labor and fleet management costs  How our FP&A Team works together with our data analytics team  Cross functional relationships piloting Swissport success  Walking through the business budget planning at Swissport   Instead of  dreaming  of a new technology (such as AI) use the specific blade of a swiss army knife for your business   Why PowerQuery is mandatory for FP&A Getting to fifth place in Latin America in the Financial Modeling World Cup Follow and connect with Bruno  on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bosilva/

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 at the sign off and say, okay, I have now committed $10m in company money. You then need to get  involved in the execution of the strategy. I changed my role from just being the person who signed off and asked for periodic reports to actually going out into the field and starting to talk and feel like an owner.” In this masterclass episode Ravikumar reveals The Bigger business context we are living through that finance cannot ignore The failures when strategy projects are not being tracked by finance  How to feel really that the results are yours Storytelling and  influencing secrets from the finance seat  Good and bad costs  Balancing short term and long term in your finance role My biggest advice for people to succeed in a finance role at any stage of their career  My favorite Excel Function (even corporate legends get asked) Further reading Ravikumar Ramanan: The CFO Lens: How to Thrive in the Fast-Changing World of Finance Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath: Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

“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 including AI. He’s a passionate advocate for using technology to drive efficiency and innovation. In this episode, Don emphasizes how AI has transformed the speed at which financial professionals can access information and solve problems. “Right now, if you’re doing AI, you have a huge advantage against those that aren’t. But I think in the next year or so, you’re going to quickly shift to, it’s a liability for you if you aren’t doing it.” In this episode  Streamling finance tasks as an accountant and FP&A Why efficiency is only a part of the finance AI revolution  Biggest area ripe for AI FP&A Disruption? Democratization of data science  Retrieval augmented generation to analyze hundreds of documents (for instance filings) Get the Paid Plan  TwinzTalk Tips  Why what hat you can do in two minutes gets done  Distinctions between OpenAI and Claude Finance in five years Power Query  and UNIQUE Follow and connect with Don Tomoff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dontomoff/

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, economics (and a love of sci-fi) informs his FP&A. Prior to joining AmPhil, Skip was an associate vice provost at Liberty University responsible for the institution’s strategic planning and regulatory compliance.  In this episode:  My multidisciplinary journey (aka “confused youth”) - studying math, economics, educational leadership and religion  (and how it applies to my data insights)  FP&A business partnering at a University Finance team - navigating functions from the Dean of Arts to the Dean of Engineering  3 proven strategies for financial data and analysis getting management to informed decisions Countering “so what, and "why am I am here” approaches from business partners How to navigate ad hoc requests When you don’t have enough access to data  The power of benchmarking  Leading vs lagging indicators  Unlocking the Secrets of Lost Sales Opportunities - a big impact report and the challenges, impact and approach My favorite Excel function Connect and and ask questions to Skip over on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skipkastroll/ Further Reading: Skip Kastroll: Bridging the Gap: Translating Finance Insights for Effective Decision-Making

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 your story: “For example, with contracts management, you wouldn’t think that would translate into finance and accounting. However, as part of that role I was working with sales to build the sales bids for new business. I was also working very closely with accounting to give them revenue expectations for commercial contracts and OPEX expenses for our commercial properties.” In this episode: My passion for bringing order from chaos in finance Examples from my FP&A including calculating the obsolescence reserve for almost a billion dollars worth of inventory on a biannual basis Building a new model and updating assumptions (transforming the process from 6 months to 60 days and releasing $5m back to the balance sheet) The importance of data minimalism Monte Carlo analysis giving you a wider range of possible outcomes  Tableau as a data visualization tool and digging into commissions Importance of flexibility in a finance and FP&A   Most important FP&A Skill?  The ladder of abstraction The most vital go-to-market finance metrics  Connect with Laura on LinkedIn or email her at [email protected]

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 said that the hardest part of their job is the 4 hours of entering Excel sheets related to forecasts. After looking at the situation, Paik decided to hire a financial  analyst (at $80,000) to take away the pain for salespeople previously diverted away from the selling - bringing in $4m in extra revenue Paik discovered and stopped a recurring report that hasn’t been read by the client in three years - giving back up to 5 hours a week to finance for strategic tasks By analyzing  how a finance professional was performing next to her job description Paik found “she was 140% utilized just on her recurring work” (compared to ad hoc work or project work). “By reallocating a lot of our time to project work we can become a value center or a profit center.” In this episode: ERP SOS! How an  8 month ERP implementation turned into two years  Moving from individual finance contributor to manager: tips and tricks  What Peter Drucker actually said about measurement (and why it matters)  The unmeasured country of Back Office functions Managing finance buckets into recurring work, ad hoc work and projects How to balance a million finance projects The right metrics to measure the finance team Average worker only productive up to 4 hours a day and how to get the most of that time What is a business for?” The real power of a project The power of AI in the back office  Connect with Daniel Paik on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielpaik/ CuroWork: https://www.curowork.com/

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 Europe. This episode covers: Getting dropped into audit in KPMG New Zealand before discovering a  “love for helping messy clients” Nonprofits and the finance of Movember getting up to 3000 transactions per day  How to sell the change of system stack  SAP vs Xero vs QuickBooks  Tech upgrades ahead of a liquidity event How I have seen PE destroy the culture of the business (and some good experiences) Sharing scars and war stories from PE  My finance horror at a restaurant business and why I walked out  CFOs and sniff testing the budget How we are using AI in finance and budgeting   My experience being a CFO in the wild recruitment business  How finance can prepare themselves to make informed tech decisions Involving junior team members on projects Basketball meditation and wellness   Connect and chat with Tyler on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylercaskey/

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 says. “Whether that’s custom or bespoke modeling or just using tools. The next generation is unlocking prescriptive analytics. That is not just presentation or data for the purpose of extracting insights, but insights that come with recommendations and, and the ability to run multiple scenarios. “Real time data acquisition and analytics is also empowering us to do things more on a daily, if not hourly basis, and see things way sooner, uh, from, from an analytics and forecasting perspective.” In the second week of data-nerding-out we have a treat: AI’s transformation of finance and financial modeling Predictive analytics to prescriptive analytics  Moving from cost center to “value add” in finance through the data How best to deliver and integrate your data to enhance financial functions Studying sentiment analysis in your CRM to investigate pipeline  Complex models in FP&A including clustering and Naive Bayes SQL vs no SQL and FP&A The Panama papers What the data environment looks like for FP&A in the next two years  Zero shot prompts and chain of thought prompting  Reverse engineering to get the best AI finance results  Connect with Brandon Wilson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bkwilson/