FP&A Today Glenn Hopper

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
Christian Martinez, Finance Analytics Manager, Kraft Heinz
Gabriela Gutierrez, Financial Planning & Analysis Specialist
 
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 techstackDownload financial data (balance sheets, savings) from a company on  Yahoo Finance and plug into Chat GPT 4o (Prompt: Act as a management consultant and analyze this data with an FP&A lens” (and getting volume analysis, volatility analysis, moving averages..) 
FP&ACon 2024 (on demand) https://www.datarails.com/events/fpa-con-2024/
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
Putting sales on blast:  how often do you catch a forecast from a sales organization that’s even 50%, right?
Coming into a company to save them after they were delivering finance reporting 30 days after close (from 30 days to day 8)
the role of data analysis and bi  in finance and in the decision making process.
How business runs on “hunches” and why it is FP&A to prove that hunch 
Why if you cannot communicate to the business you are useless 
The vast amount of data we have access to in telecoms and how we separate the signal from the noise 
How finance rubs against IT and why it’s not pretty 
Why AI in finance is like a “very smart but green intern” and prompt engineers are ridiculous
Killing for food in winters during his childhood
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.
The role of finance at a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) – a security that trades like a stock on the major exchanges and reports to the SEC. 
Blowing the whistle in finance  when a former CFO pocketed $1m
Creating $700,000 for residents at Invest with Roots
Becoming CFO and bringing in budgeting and FP&A processes
Love of modeling and how I am using  modeling skills to get into the multifamily space
How to find great finance staff +the accountant recruitment challenge 
Favorite Excel function 
My motorbike crash 
Follow Seth on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethazimmerman/

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 managing an eventual successful exit (in 2023 the company was acquired by Swedish enterprise software giant IFS). Now he is a full-time YouTuber teaching Excel and Microsoft Copilot – still using finance and analytics to build his business.
In this episode David talks:
PwC CPA audit coming up that way to FP&A
Quebec, loving video games and landing a role at Ubisoft
Moving from a big company to a startup and a steep finance learning curve
Building the plane while flying in FP&A
Learning the sales pitch of funding round facing questions and disinterterested investors
CTOs crying when the budget is rejected by the board
Due diligence and exit – lessons
Becoming a YouTuber making Excel fun again and grasping Microsoft Copilot 
How CoPilot and AI will transform FP&A
Scenario analysis in Copilot 
20,000 hours of gaming and my favorite Excel function
Follow David on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-fortin-cpa-816b20b5/
Follow David’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@piggybankaccountant

From being the First kid in her family to finish high school, Swati Bagri began as a role as auditor at Deloitte (“I did what any 17-year-old smart kid would do. I just followed my friends”). At Deloitte she discovered a “love of finance” realizing it’s “what I want to do for the rest of my life”.
Swati cemented her FP&A career at some of the world’s biggest brands: Nestlé, Mars, Amazon, and Kraft Heinz. At these giants she absorbed and built a playbook to get from “good” to “great” FP&A. Behing the success of FP&A at these teams, she explains is 3 things: strategic planning and forecasting, technology and risk management.
In this episode Swati talks about:
Finance transformation as a significant part of her role (the slippery term of “finance transformation” defined as the “effective use of technology to free up people’s time”)
How predictive analytics was used at Nestlé from rainfall data, and the wider playbook of building financial models with consumers in mind 
Hyperinflationary markets like Turkey and Egypt and FP&A and the lessons learned
Business partnering roles at Amazon and Nestlé and what I have learned about successful relationship building towards common objectives 
Co-founding The Strategy Story (including learning about Marriage insurance for wedding days)
Start by Explaining the P&L and coaching non-finance folk
War stories – annual planning cycles 
FP&A-led transformation at an ecommerce marketplace business and getting buy-in from senior management through a data story
The power of podcasts to keep your at the top of your finance game 
Sky Jumping and my favorite Excel function
Connect with Swati Bagri on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/swatibagri/
Book a mentoring session with Swati at https://topmate.io/swatibagri

We host our first ever FP&A guest from the US casino and gambling sector with the head of FP&A at Genting Americas, a world leader in casinos and lodging with luxurious loactions in Las Vegas, Bimini, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom.
Bill Singh is VP FP&A of Genting Americas, part of the world’s largest Destination Resort operator operating as Resorts World . Genting boasting five public companies capitalized at $45 billion and employing more than 50,000 people worldwide. This episode  reveals their inside FP&A game including metrics such as “win per unit per day” tacking the “hold”. Bill is strategic leader with more than a decade leading FP&A and providing insights on skills and budgeting management, to insider advice about gaming.
In this episode:
Getting an unexpected offer of an FP&A role at a casino in Nevada
Why FP&A at the “nexus of data and decision-making” is an “ultimate” career path 
Critical skills you must develop in FP&A 
Giving “X+1” in your FP&A answers
Salesmanship in FP&A
FP&A metrics: “Win per unit per day and hold”
Lodging: occupancy, your ADR, your revenue per available room
Odds and statistics from tables, games and FP&A modeling 
Insider advice about gaming (including “Don’t play a game right by the door”)
The power of leading budget for the operating side and the capital budget for all divisions +lessons from 10 years of budgeting  
The impact of AI in getting answers faster for operators
MATCH+TEMPO – My favorite Excel function and lessons from drumming  
Follow and connect with Bill Singh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billsinghprofile/