1172: Finance Isn’t the Brake—It’s the Steering Wheel for Growth | Tony MacDonald, CFO, Sama

Tony McDonald prefers a different image of the CFO role—one that replaces restraint with direction. “I would like to be considered as one of the people on the stagecoach that helps hold the reins,” he tells us, describing sales as “the horses that I want galloping always full speed ahead.”That mindset was shaped during his time at Oracle, where he operated inside a deeply sales-driven organization. There, McDonald learned that finance could influence growth not by limiting it, but by guiding it. His role extended beyond oversight—he led financial planning across an organization of roughly 140,000 people, gaining visibility into how revenue engines scale and where they break down, he tells us.Today, that experience informs how he approaches revenue operations. Rather than acting as a gatekeeper, McDonald positions finance as an enabler—rewarding “exceptional performance…unconditionally relative to quality revenue,” while maintaining rigorous control over the metrics that matter, he tells us.This balance requires precision. From lead generation through the sales funnel, McDonald emphasizes continuous calibration—using data to refine performance and ensure that growth is both measurable and repeatable. He remains actively involved, even helping build marketing dashboards to improve visibility across the funnel, he tells us.For McDonald, revenue operations is not a support function—it is where finance and strategy intersect. The goal is simple: let sales run fast, but make sure they’re headed in the right direction.

In this CFO Thought Leader episode, Jack Sweeney speaks with technology general counsel Akin Adekeye about when AI becomes a board-level concern. Adekeye explains AI crosses into governance when it impacts risk, capital allocation, and competitiveness. He highlights “shadow AI” risks, regulatory uncertainty, and the need for structured oversight. Effective governance includes board involvement, executive ownership, and clear operating controls. CFOs play a central role in balancing innovation with risk, ensuring organizations neither lag competitors nor expose themselves to harm. Looking ahead, AI governance will become standardized, with rising expectations for board literacy, disclosure, and formal control frameworks.Three Key Takeaways1. AI becomes a board issue when it impacts enterprise risk and capital allocationThe transition point is not technical maturity—it’s strategic exposure. Once AI influences risk posture, investment decisions, or long-term strategy, it moves beyond IT into board-level oversight.2. Governance must evolve alongside AI adoptionBoards can no longer treat AI as a siloed innovation effort. It requires structured governance frameworks that address accountability, transparency, and cross-functional implications.3. Legal and finance leaders play a critical translation roleGeneral Counsels and CFOs are essential in helping boards understand AI’s implications—bridging technical capabilities with risk, compliance, and strategic decision-making.

Marc Mehlman still recalls the moment a senior leader pulled him aside and told him he was “in such a rush” and needed to “enjoy the journey,” he tells us. At the time, Mehlman was part of a leadership program filled with high achievers eager to move quickly into senior roles. Instead, he took a different path—spending nearly a decade moving laterally across FP&A, corporate development, strategy, and operational roles.That deliberate detour became the foundation of his leadership philosophy. By working across divisions and even geographies, Mehlman built a broad understanding of how businesses actually function. Later, when he stepped into operating roles—including leading a roughly $1 billion revenue segment—he began to see a gap. Many finance leaders could explain results, but not the decisions behind them. “They’re just numbers,” he tells us, emphasizing that financial outcomes are simply the result of actions taken across the business.Another pivotal moment came when he initially declined an investor relations role. After multiple conversations with senior leadership, he accepted—and discovered the power of communication. There, he learned to tell a consistent story, build credibility, and deliver on expectations quarter after quarter.Today, as CFO, those experiences converge. His early focus on exploration, combined with operational insight and storytelling discipline, shapes how he evaluates decisions, partners across functions, and defines the modern CFO—not as a reporter of results, but as an architect of them.

Michael Perica had been discussing the market implications of AI with investors for a number of years, but the market didn’t fully react—until one particular moment. In late January and early February, a wave of announcements around enterprise-focused AI models and workflow plugins triggered what has become widely known as the “SaaS-pocalypse.” In a single day, roughly $258 billion in SaaS market value disappeared, he tells us.For Perica, the episode confirmed something he had already been sensing in conversations with investors and clients. The traditional path to enterprise modernization—committing to large, monolithic software platforms—was no longer the only option. AI, particularly emerging agentic AI technologies, was beginning to offer organizations a new route: modernizing workflows and processes without necessarily replacing entire systems.The sudden market reaction accelerated those conversations. Investors and executives began reaching out to Rimini Street asking whether this moment validated the alternative technology path the company had been discussing. For Perica, the answer was clear. The event underscored that organizations now had the ability to tailor AI models directly to specific business processes rather than conforming their operations to a rigid software roadmap.That shift has shaped how Perica thinks about strategy going forward. Instead of viewing AI purely as a tool for efficiency, he sees it as a catalyst for enterprise-wide transformation. Finance leaders, he argues, now have an opportunity to work closely with CIOs to rethink workflows, eliminate operational bottlenecks, and deploy targeted AI solutions that create quick wins across the organization.In Perica’s view, the SaaS-pocalypse wasn’t just a market correction. It was a signal that a new technology paradigm had arrived—and that forward-looking CFOs must be ready to lead the change.

Andrew Bender still remembers a moment from high school football practice when a coach challenged him with a simple question: “Do you want to be all conference or all state?” The comment surprised him. At the time, Bender tells us he wasn’t even sure he had the potential to reach the lower bar. Yet the moment stayed with him because it revealed something important—that sometimes others see possibilities before we do.That lesson about recognizing potential shaped how Bender approached his career decisions. Early on, while working at William Blair, he faced a choice common among his peers: continue toward private equity or pursue a different path. Instead of following the typical investment track, he realized he preferred working inside organizations rather than advising them from the outside. The parts of investment banking he enjoyed most involved “diving into the organizations” he represented, Bender tells us.Over time, that realization led him toward roles blending strategy and finance. Consulting and business school helped him develop structured problem-solving skills and the ability to learn new industries quickly. Later, at Snyder’s-Lance, he worked across corporate strategy and business-unit finance, gaining operational perspective that would prepare him for future CFO roles.That blend of strategy and finance thinking surfaced again after Bender joined BNI Global. Preparing board materials, he realized the company tracked numerous KPIs but struggled to explain performance drivers. If the metrics didn’t link to financial outcomes, he recalls thinking, “what are we doing here?”The solution was simplification. Bender helped refocus leadership on five core business drivers—member renewals, visitor activity, conversion rates, chapter launches, and pricing—while teaching operational leaders how those metrics translate into financial performance.

Early in Lucanet’s expansion, two Chinese employees working in Germany had a moment of insight. Seeing how configurable the consolidation software was, they believed it could succeed in their home market. Acting on that conviction, they traveled from Berlin back to China and built what would become Lucanet’s Chinese business. The story illustrates how a tool designed for global complexity could travel easily across borders, Gurney tells us.Lucanet’s origins are firmly rooted in Germany, where the company first built its reputation with a consolidation platform designed for companies operating across multiple jurisdictions. That design decision proved foundational. Because customers often consolidate entities across countries, the platform had to integrate financial data from different jurisdictions and support multiple accounting frameworks, Gurney tells us. The system can report under German GAAP, IFRS, or different management accounting rules and allows users to toggle between those views efficiently, he tells us.Read MoreToday, the company’s geographic reach reflects that original cross-border orientation. While Germany remains Lucanet’s strongest market, the company now operates across Europe and Asia, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, China, and Singapore, Gurney tells us. Increasingly, a majority of new customer bookings come from outside Lucanet’s historical DACH and Netherlands markets, he tells us.Growth has also been shaped by capital structure changes. After roughly eighteen years as a founder-run business, HG Capital made a majority investment in 2022, accelerating both product development and geographic expansion, Gurney tells us.For Gurney, who joined Lucanet at the start of May last year, the company’s focus remains clear: build tools that make the Office of the CFO more effective across borders and systems, he tells us.

Ashley Still, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intuit’s mid-market business, discusses how the expectations of finance leaders are shifting as AI reshapes the finance function. She explains how Intuit is expanding beyond its small-business roots with Intuit Enterprise Suite, designed to serve growing mid-market organizations seeking faster implementation and lower total cost than traditional ERP systems. Still highlights how AI-powered agents are helping finance teams reduce manual work, accelerate month-end insights, and focus more on strategic decision-making. As the CFO role evolves from scorekeeper to growth driver, she believes technology will increasingly enable finance leaders to connect data, manage risk, and guide business growth.

Early in his career, Intekhab Nazeer found himself sitting in go-to-market meetings rather than finance reviews. A CFO mentor had pushed him beyond traditional accounting responsibilities, exposing him to pipeline discussions and sales forecasting. That experience changed how he viewed finance leadership. Instead of simply reporting financial results, he began understanding “how pipeline is generated, how deal flow is measured, how the forecasting really works,” Nazeer tells us. The exposure reshaped his perspective, shifting his mindset from reporting outcomes to influencing them.The shift became even more real when he stepped into an interim CFO role after his mentor moved on. Responsibility changed overnight. “I was no longer supporting decisions. I was making decisions,” Nazeer tells us, describing board meetings, capital allocation choices, and the balancing act between growth and risk.Throughout his career, he continued to place finance alongside operations rather than apart from them. At one venture-backed company, that mindset proved critical. Revenue targets were being met, yet something felt wrong. When Nazeer overlaid unit economics—customer acquisition cost, payback period, and expansion revenue—he discovered the company was optimizing growth while quietly locking in unprofitable customer behavior, he tells us.The response required collaboration rather than spreadsheets alone. He worked with sales and product leaders to redefine the ideal customer profile, adjust pricing discipline, and elevate metrics like payback period and the “magic number” into core operating indicators, he tells us.The experience reinforced a lesson he carries today: the CFO role is “far less about spreadsheets and more about psychology,” Nazeer tells us. Precision creates accuracy, but influence creates outcomes.

Fiber is “a lot of investment up front for that stream of cash flow in the future,” Derek Doyle tells us. At C Spire, that reality defines nearly every strategic decision.The advanced technology and communications company has been reinventing itself for more than 70 years, Doyle tells us. Today, it is the largest privately held wireless carrier in the U.S. and operates 22,000 miles of fiber, placing it among the top 20 fiber internet providers in the country by premise passings, he tells us. The company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars expanding beyond Mississippi into Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida, Doyle tells us—moves that require disciplined capital judgment.For Doyle, capital allocation is not just about near-term profit. It is about equity value. Public companies may emphasize shareholder return metrics, but as a private company, C Spire centers on equity value growth, he tells us. “I’m a big intrinsic value person,” Doyle explains, grounding decisions in discounted cash flow and intrinsic value models, he tells us.That approach requires looking beyond projected profit to the full funding equation—how much must be borrowed, how much capital deployed up front, and what long-term cash flows justify the investment, Doyle tells us.Ultimately, the objective is clear: invest resources in what “drives that needle the most,” he tells us—ensuring that growth in connectivity translates into sustainable enterprise value.

In this episode of Planning Aces, hosts Jack Sweeney and Glenn Hopper lead a focused discussion spotlighting the thinking of CFO Kevin Rubin of Zscaler, CFO Bruce Schuman of Universal Technical Institute, and CFO Razzak Jallow of FloQast on how disciplined FP&A leadership is shaping AI adoption. Rubin frames AI as a capital allocation decision, supported by centralized governance to prevent tool sprawl. Schuman underscores foundational readiness—data governance, ERP consolidation, and process redesign—before deploying AI-driven forecasting. Jallow cautions against fragmented “spaghetti AI,” advocating for platform coherence and skill development.As resident thought leader, Glenn Hopper reinforces a unifying insight: AI should function as an “exoskeleton” for finance—amplifying sound processes, not replacing them. Together, Jack and Glenn connect the perspectives, highlighting a shared conclusion: AI success in FP&A depends less on speed and more on governance, architecture, and trust embedded in the planning process.