How AI is Used by FP&A professionals & Implemented by Software Vendors with Vena CTO Hugh Cumming

Always had tremendous empathy for the fpa. It's one of the most stressed out roles because it's constantly under demand. Hugh Cumming, a visionary technologist and the Chief Technology Officer at Vena Solutions. With over two decades of experience, he's led digital transformations and now he's redefining.

The future of FP&A with AI driven innovation.

He reveals the biggest challenges in financial planning, the future of automation and why AI is not here to replace jobs, but to amplify human potential. When you challenge ChatGPT for something, it's amazing what it's able to produce. Every time I use it, it's like.

Wow, what advice would you give to FP and A professionals to prepare for the changes that AI is bringing for all of us?

It's going to change all of our jobs in a way.

Vena's vision for AI in the Vena.

Platform, we've had customers give us testimonials that say, you know, I thought I needed to add a couple of extra and now with MenacoPilot, I'm actually getting through my day.

I'm curious, how do you see this impacting Excel?

What Microsoft's trying to do is say you can do really advanced things on your own now and don't need to be an Excel guru.

Finance pros, this is the event you don't want to miss. The AFP FP&A forum, March 17th to 19th in Austin delivers sales free insights from top finance leaders. With 18 plus expert led sessions, you'll gain actionable strategies to drive your success. I'll be there. Join me and hundreds of our peers. Learn more@AFP online.org hello everyone. Welcome to FP&A tomorrow where we delve into the world of financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst and I'll be guiding you through the evolving landscape of FP&A. Each week we're joined by thought leaders, industry experts and practitioners who share their insights and experiences, helping us navigate today's complexities and tomorrow's uncertainty. This week we're thrilled to be joined by Hugh Cumming. Hugh, welcome to the show.

Thanks a lot, Paul. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, really excited to have you. So, just a little bit about Hugh. Hugh comes to us as the Chief Technology Officer of Vena, which many of you may be familiar with. A Toronto based FPA platform for Excel users. He has more than 20 years of experience. He's enjoyed success as a proven product and technology leader, building and scaling some of the world's most successful fintech platforms. He has led agile, product engineering, UX and cloud teams globally at companies such as Finastra, Secure Key Technologies and ADP Canada. Most recently, he served as the Chief Information Officer and Head of Technology at Manu Life Canada, where he led the company's digital transformation efforts and created two of the highest rated applications for banking and digital insurance claims in the Canadian market. Love the background there, Hugh, and excited to get to chat with you today.

Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for the great intro.

You're welcome. So you know a question we like to ask every guest being an FPA show and I know, I love when we get people that aren't in FP and A, the technical they may work in IT because they give us a different perspective, help keep us FP and A people grounded. So what does great FP and A look like for you? As I'm sure you've had to deal with budget and forecast a few times.

Oh, and you know, and I have always had tremendous empathy for the FP and A teams and the people who get assigned to help me. And you know, I've run large budgets and relatively smaller ones and you know, this role, these, you know, it's one of the most stressed out roles because it's constantly under demand to create answers, insights, reports, visualizations, presentations. And you know, so I think, you know, great FPA is when the people in the team that are supporting a business leader are able to not have to spend so much time toiling over numbers and making sure that sheet A matches sheet B. And the other thing that I always like to think, think about is is this concept of, you know, business day. Right. Because that's part of the language. Is it BD + 10 for forecast or + 15? Or maybe it's BD + 20. How do you make BD + 20 equal BD + 5? And I think that's what we're trying to get at with great FP and A. It's like, because that elimination of that time window means there's way more time for the discussions that the business leaders want to have with their FP and A.

No. And that makes a lot of sense, right? Anything that can be done. And I know Ben is trying to do that and a lot of other tools to shorten that time frame to be able to close the books, do the forecast, do the analysis so you can spend the time on business partnering, decision making, strategy, things that are going to create value versus, like you said, tying out sheet A versus sheet B and trying to Figure out why your net revenue doesn't look right for the month of February.

Yeah, I've, I've seen people do that and I, like I said, I have tremendous empathy for the role, which is one of the reasons I was drawn to Vena. I said, wow, this is an opportunity to help in a really meaningful way these folks.

Yeah. So how's that been? Talk a little bit about that experience. You've been there, what, four years now?

Yeah, just over three and a bit. It's been really great. We've been able to scale and grow the company really well and we've added quite a lot of really awesome customers. We celebrated a big milestone recently where we surpassed $100 million of committed annual recurring revenue, which is a pretty significant milestone for us from where we started. We have now over 2,000 customers that trust the Vena platform to produce, you know, anything from their forecast and their annual plan, but also their financial close and their consolidated results. So we have a wide range of customers. So it's been great to see the company grow. It's been great to see the teams grow and, you know, to bring in the talent you need to scale a business at that, at that pace. It's been, it's been a lot of fun. And it's also been a lot of fun building out our, the next level of our strategic partnership with Microsoft, particularly around being able to bring our AI product to market, which has been for me, as a technologist who spent my whole life writing software since I was a kid, actually, I started writing software to be able to be in the middle of this next wave of transformation and be building a product leveraging the most advanced AI capabilities. Capabilities. It's been a lot of fun. It's pretty cool, actually. It's really, it's pretty cool to see what's possible and of course, very exciting to see what's next.

Yeah, and we'll definitely jump into that. I'm excited to get your thoughts there. I'm sure as a technologist, there's something you said that kind of led me to a question. You said you've been coding since you were a kid. Did you code some games? Was there a language? How did that come about?

Yeah, look, you know, the first computer that, you know, showed up at the house was a Commodore. And the only way to write games was to actually learn how to program, you know, in low level languages like machine and learn how to program the graphics. And it was a lot of fun. So, you know, I, with my brother who's a little Older than me, we started writing our own video games. And you know, and my dad, of course, he really didn't understand why he had spent this money on this. And so we wrote him a word processor and said, hey, well, you know, like here, here's something useful you can do with this device you just bought for your, for your kids. And you know, that sort of became the love of like writing software and seeing how, you know, people use it and then, you know, seeing that they can get more stuff done. And it's, you know, it's been sort of one iteration of that in a way after another.

I love that. And I like how you did the word processor right. Hey, here's something for you, dad, that helps. Now we're gonna go play games.

But.

We are coding, so we're learning. You know, that's, that, that's, that's great. I love that story there. So, you know, I know you haven't worked in the FP&A software space before Vena. You'd worked in a lot of other industries. And I'm curious, maybe what's something you've learned about FP and A or FPA software that surprised you since joining Vena that you really didn't have any idea about?

The big observation that I think I've had is that there's a lot of tools in this landscape and teams because they're under so much pressure. I have a very good understanding of this change resistance of why a company might be on, you know, a 10 or 12 year old version of what, whatever, like Hyperion or something that they implemented or TM1 or something like that that they implemented a long time ago. And it's because they're just so much work to just get the answers and the outcomes that they have to produce for the company. A lot of times there's just not enough time to even think about making a change. And that's something that, you know, having been a senior leader in technology, you're always trying to push this change agenda. What can we do next? And then, you know, you run into these organ, say, well, why won't, why won't you change? It'll be, it'll be way better. And yet you really just have to stop and think. It's like, what is it that they're doing every day that's keeping them from being excited about making a change? I think I have a deeper understanding of like the pressure that they're under being on this side within a company like Vanna and having talked to lots of customers as opposed to being, you know, a consumer of FP&A, where I don't really see the work, the hard work they're doing and what's really how to make it easier for them, how to make them show up with, you know, less stress, the results are sooner and they're, you know, really excited about sharing the results. But instead of like, not quite done, we think there might be an error in here. But, you know, here's what we got so far and I think that's been really cool part of being here.

I appreciate that and I'm sure you get a much greater appreciation for the work that's done by the FP&A people. Why they're resistant to change the challenges that go with that. Because people don't like ripping out FP and A software.

That's right, that's right.

Just like people don't like ripping out ERPs, most of us don't like change. And when the change also requires a lot of work, we like it even less. Let's talk AI. I know you're very excited about that.

Yes.

How is that? How's that for one, just kind of change the way you work. How did that change things to see generative AI come about over the last few years?

Well, I think, you know, everyone is moving at a different pace. You know, for me there's I, I will say two things. One is it's been, you know, very exciting to see what's possible and to see, you know, when you challenge ChatGPT for something or an outcome, it's amazing what it's able to produce. And it's like every time I use it, it's like, wow, you know, I didn't tell you anything else and you got it pretty close to being right. So I've, you know, certainly like a lot of folks, I use it in my day to day correspondence and communications. Right. And it may just be, I need to it, it helps because, you know, one of the ways in which, you know, it's hard to be productive is, you know, sometimes if you have to change context between one task, you're working on something and then all of a sudden you have to do something completely different. What's really cool is how Chat GP is like, Anna have to do this, can you get me started? And you know, all of a sudden you have the starting right. So it's like, oh, and Anna need to, you know, write a press release for something else. And I need to look at this, you know, new design for this piece of software and those Two things are totally different. And what Chat GPT does is it helps you get started with both of them. And it, that's for me, where the efficiency is. Because in my role I have this dual duality or, or plurality of, of all the things that, that I have to do that are just very different. And every one of them has this cognitive load of getting started. And I think that's what's been really cool is to how, how efficiently, you know, it's like I just, I could be in a meeting and ask it to get me started on like writing, you know, on a presentation for the board. And then it's like, okay, here's what we're going to talk about. And, and that's what's, what's so amazing about it because it's the ability to generate new content that's never been produced before and it doesn't get produced again for you that's based on the inputs you provide. I think is pretty well, it's like a really, you know, our head of legal who is like our chief, she, she's so, you know, passionate about how AI is changing the way her profession is working and she's our superstar of adoption internally. And it's just, you know, it's amazing how it's just able to just complete documents and add a clause and look, do that, research that. And she called it a really, it's like having a really, really smart but inexperienced intern on your team.

Yeah, And I've heard that analogy before and I like that one of the intern. But it, it's a. Not just smart, but an extremely large breadth of knowledge. Right. It's almost like a team of interns.

That's right.

There's one intern that knows that many different areas I want their brain, you know what I mean?

Because soon we'll have both.

Right.

We'll have our brain. Plus.

You know, I love how it can kind of get you started or just help with things. Like today I was trying to figure out this formula for Excel, something I don't do very often, and just threw it into Chat GPT gave an example what I want and said write the formula and it worked perfectly.

Yeah, that's exactly what we're trying to encourage people at Vanna, at our customers to really think about. It's not the big things, like we're not asking it to do big things, but like ask it to do little things many times a day and you'll be really surprised at what's possible.

I really like that idea of, hey, using it for many little things. And I think the other thing is look at it. I love how you said get started because I think so many people are like, well, but it only got me partway there. The answer wasn't right. It's like, yes, but did it get you started? Did it make it easier for the entire process? Well then why are you focusing on the negatives and not thinking, I just saved 30 minutes.

That's right. And I think people underestimate the, the ramp, you know, the mental ramp up time to, to start something else is very high. And you know, that consumes, you know, maybe 30 or 40% of your day is just simply getting your head reoriented to do something else. And, and then we as humans, we structure our day around knowing that we have to focus on these set of tasks and then focus on these. And what's cool is that if you can eliminate that barrier to switching now, you can do multiple. It's not, of course, we're not able to do multiple things at the same time, but you can kind of have a different way of organizing your day because you don't have to prep and prepare as much to change your, you know, change modality, so to speak, into doing something different.

Yeah, I really like that. Right. Mental switching cost is high. It's expensive. Just like switching costs for products is expensive if you're constantly trying to restart and do different things. And I'd never thought of AI, hey, let me get, let it help me get started on all these different tasks. I really like that way of thinking about it. And I'd love to know, kind of tell me about Venice Vision for AI and the Vena platform. Kind of, where are you at? What's it looking like over the next 12 months?

No, awesome question. I mean we're, this is, I mean, obviously we're very excited about what we were able to deliver as part of our big, big product release last year that we announced at our conference. It was really focused on creating a copilot within the Vena platform that's trained on the unique data setup for every one of the customers. So, so it doesn't, it's not using a general data set, it's using, you know, our specific customers data set. And we trained it with over 200, a library of 200 commonly asked, you know, FP and a type questions. And we train it against every, every customer's model. So it allows them to quickly get started at, you know, when to have business, a business user ask a question. Right. So you know, what's My sales forecast or what's my sales plan? How am I doing this year? Like, and then it doesn't just give an answer. It actually produces an Excel sheet for them that allows them to then take that and do more. And the real wow moments come when you then say, that's great, but what if, you know, I opened up a new store? What would my sales forecast be for next quarter? And then it's like, oh, well, here's. Here's a version that I've added more information. You know, did I get it right? And then it's like, yes, that was thumbs up. Or, you know, that was not right. Oh, tell me why it wasn't right. And then all of a sudden you realize you're talking to this, you know, this system the same way you would be talking and engaging with your FPNA professional. And I think that's where we're starting to see. And that's where the real, you know, the. That we get really excited about with our customers. We've had customers give us testimonials that say, you know, I thought I needed to, to add a couple of extra people. And now with Manic Copilot, I'm actually getting through my day. I'm actually being able to feel, feel the responses. I'm actually seeing that efficiency. And that's what we're really excited about is like, companies like, seeing that efficiency gain, seeing that they can also transform their financial processes while still serving the business very well, because this is taking real work away. So from a roadmap perspective, we're building multiple agents. So that was our first agent, the ability to do that analysis. We're adding agents to produce reports so that you can say, and produce me my financial reports and financial statements. Boom. And produce me an ad hoc analysis. Boom. And where we're going with it is like, and. And produce me a PowerPoint presentation that I can send to the board. So just the ability to actually do. Do real work on behalf of the FPA team that's put the effort into training, making sure that it's training, getting the right answers back, and then just letting it do that work. And as we look at our roadmap, one of the things we're super excited about this year is being able to embed the copilot and agent experience directly into Microsoft Teams so that you can, from teams, just ask your FPA team a question and it can be served right away by our event copilot and our agents can produce the outcome that you're requesting, which is it's you know, it's really, you know, you get excited and you see that I'm getting excited about it. I think it's going to create some. Wow.

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Yeah, great questions and I do get asked that a lot. So I mean it is built on Azure OpenAI and we are using some of the advanced capabilities there like synaptic kernel to help with, you know, making sure that semantic kernel to make sure that the, you know, the deep understanding of what's asked is there. We're also using, you know, an approach that is called request augmented generation which leverages something called a vector database so that, you know, just think about the vector database is pointing to where the data is. And then the third thing we do, we have feedback cycle which is if the answer is not the best answer you can, as the FPA owner of the medical pilot, you can say, well actually that field is not the right place to pull that data. You use these two fields together to get that answer and then the next, anytime it gets asked those questions, it'll come back with those answers. So I think those are all very important. So you can just could curate and train. We don't use this is not the public chat GPT. This is a Vana. This is our private Azure OpenAI subscription that is been security tested and is private and protects our customer data as they would expect. There's no sharing of data, either publicly or with other tenants whatsoever in any way.

Got it. That totally makes sense. That's the standard we have to have with these products for people to have trust, especially in finance.

Yeah. And I think it's, it's one of the barriers to adoption is, is just that trust. Like how do you, how do you build that trust so that, because you know these, this is not an organization that can have, you know, anything wrong with the answers. Right. I think the expectation is pixel perfect spreadsheets and that's what is expected and I think that's the standard our customers, they have to set for us because that's the standard being set for them by the businesses that they serve.

Yeah, I think trust is a huge one. Definitely a barrier to adoption. What do you see as the other barriers? You know, it feels like now a lot of departments obviously are struggling hear a lot of different things of either trying to find use cases or how best to implement it. What, what are you seeing as far as barriers?

Yeah, I, I mean time is a big one and we talked about that at the beginning. Right. The whole change curve of okay, now I have to do something different. I think that's what we're still, we're, we're still working with the how do we best onboard customers so that they see it. Like we've done things that really over the last year just really focused on okay, in 10 minutes you can be using it and see it and, and I think that's, but getting customers that, you know to find that 10 minutes. Right. Is, you know, it's, it's, it's part of that change curve of okay, I'm in my close. This is our annual plan cycle. I'll get, you know, I want to look at it. I'm really excited about it, but I want to do it after. So I think that's the part of, part of it is just timing, getting, getting it in front of customers. I think also overcoming sort of these industries broad narratives around hallucination. And you know, I think that's probably the second big thing and I think the third is, is adoption of AI generally across organizations will also drive it within the FP and A, because as the organization gets more comfortable with using AI, you'll just see people will just be inspired by other people. Right. When you see the legal team saying I asked, I asked for a French language version of the contract with equivalent Clauses and like three, you know, over the, over the next 30 seconds it spit out a 40 page document and it's like, wow, like that would have been days of work. And, and I think those narratives get told and, and the excitement starts building. I think that reduces the anxiety people have when they see particularly I use the legal organization often because, you know, obviously they also have a big responsibility to make sure stuff is right in a different way.

Sure.

So, you know, I think critical, right. Like if you, if you're seeing like, you know, asking Chat GPT to write a marketing blurb, that's. If it's slightly off, it's not perfect, then you know, there's no real penalty. But if your contract language is off, then that's bad. If your financial reports are off, then that's really bad. And I think that's just like, get that these things will all work together to build confidence. And I do believe, right. That over this next horizon, you know, every company is going to be looking at ways to accelerate adoption and leverage of, of AI within how they run their business and drive competitive gains in whatever industry that they're operating in.

Yeah. And so how is your kind of engineering, your product, your tech team, how are you guys using it? Let's stop for a minute. And how is your team using it today?

I mean, we are early adopters of GitHub Copilot, which is the copilot that sits alongside the GitHub repository. They've leveraged mountains of code data to the most likely next part of this, you know, function call. And so we do, you know, every developer uses it every day. We've had hundreds of thousands of prompts that developers, you know, we, they probably accept 30% of them where GitHub says, hey, this, we think you should add this and here's how you would make this call better. And, and so the interest, they slowly work their way into our coding cycles. And you know, it, it probably represents now that of the lines of code generated if over the last 12 months, there's probably 30% of it that's actually been generated by Copilot. Now of course, as part of the work that developers are doing. So not, you know, off to the side, but as part of the work, you can imagine that 30% of it now is work that's being added and improved and generated by Copilot and accepted by the developer as part of the change that they're pushing into the system, which is pretty cool. And of course it all still has to go through all the testing and all the same circles. But it's an efficiency gain. It's absolutely an efficiency gain that's measurable. And I think it'll just get better over time as well. Again, as people get more comfortable. It's like, ask it to refactor and to upgrade this library. Okay, well, let's try that. And I think a lot of it's just like, okay, let's try that and see what happens.

It's so true. I mean, a lot of that value comes with just testing and playing. There's putting, investing that time to learn how it can best help you. And I'm curious, kind of on that front, is there anything you've seen, maybe an example where you've seen an FPA department, you know, gain substantial value, where they're really saving some time or getting some big benefit from AI implementation, whether that's generative machine learning, whatever it might be. But love if there's kind of a use case or example you could share with us.

Yeah, I mean, we have some use cases that I don't know if they're all published, but we'll certainly be able to share. But, you know, some of my favorite stories are, you know, where we had a customer, he was one of our early adopters, you know, team of really a team of one fpa, you know, smaller company but, you know, completely underwater, you know, reached out to us and said, I want to do a video testimonial because, because after I adopt a V copilot, I'm actually able to now serve the business, right? I'm like, I'm, I'm, you know, team. I'm not a team of one anymore. I'm a team of one plus, you know, the agents within Vena Copilot. And I think, you know, that's what we're trying to see more and more of. And we are seeing, you know, examples of different levels of everyone's at different stages of adoption. You know, some people have moved right into it and opened it right up and other people are just trying to, you know, use it every once in a while to ask a question and see what, what the answer is? We had, you know, we serviced tens of thousands of questions and, and responses, and every one of those represents real work that, that, that an FP and a person would have. Would have had to. Would have had to do.

Yeah, love the example you shared there. Someone being able to, you know, get from being underwater to being able to manage because they had the assistant there with them, FP and a guy here. And I want to tell you about the planning and bi showcase. Gone are the days of juggling multiple platforms now with business intelligence tools you can integrate planning directly into your BI system, the same system your entire company already uses. Join me on March 20 for the Planning and BI showcase where industry leaders will demonstrate how top BI tools are reshaping strategic planning. See firsthand how modern FP&A solutions can drive real value across your enterprise. The event features live demos from leading BI solutions. Whether you're a CFO or an FPA professional, you'll discover the tools that can help you deliver more value across your enterprise. Don't miss out. Register today at www.excelevents.come planning.in.bi showcase and take the first step towards smarter data driven decision making. It's really cool. I'm curious, what advice would you give to FP and A professionals to prepare for the changes that AI is bringing? Right. It's changing a lot of jobs. It's going to have an impact on FP&A. Any kind of recommendations you can give.

Well, I think, you know, for all of us it's going to change all of our jobs in a way. I mean it's not, it's, you know, it's not something that's just, you know, it's not a fad, it's, you know, it's a point in change, right. It's like you look back in time over these, what people call industrial revolutions, they were big, right? Like the steam engine wasn't just 1.3 times stronger than, you know, a worker, it was did the work of a thousand workers and yeah, transforming industries and making, you know, so. And of course it went from steam to electric and diesel and all these other generations. But the core innovation is like, is a massive lift in what, you know, humans can get done pretty. And I think, you know, we're just at that start, right where we're seeing it as an incremental improvement. But over time as people more, it gets more and more adopted. We should expect to go through that same cycle of it being a massive change, beneficial change in terms of how much capability and capacity that every human has to create value into whatever, however they define it. And so I think part of it is just you have to, you know, is when you're in the middle of this, it's like the famous Henry Ford quote that was like if I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses, right? And he went, and actually he didn't invent the automobile, he just made it possible for everyone to own one. Right. And that you know, and of course like this is really about, you know, thinking about your role as something that is just going to evolve and change over time and that AI is going to play a role. When we hire co op students, they come in and they are the most excited to dive right in. They've already been using it to help them finish papers, to help them in their exams. And they show up in our software teams and they're like, oh, I'm using Copilot. I used Copilot to actually tell me what the APIs were for word because I didn't want to read the Microsoft document. I just asked Copilot to build me the test stubs for it. And that's, you know, just trying those things like, like you said with the Excel formula. Just ask Copilot to write the Excel formula for you. And I think what that does is it creates that, you know, that confidence that like, okay, those are the kinds of things I can ask, like, what are the other things I can ask it for? I'm going to ask it for something else. And I think, I think, I think it's the getting started with getting started, which is the hurdle, right? And I just always encourage people to do small things. Don't think about like, oh, here's this big task I want Copilot to do just like, what are you going to do in the next 10 seconds? Seconds? And instead of doing it yourself, ask Copilot to get started for you. And I think, you know, that's why I would just encourage everyone to just that, gain that experiential knowledge so you can gain a perspective for your organization about how it's going to create value. Because every organization is different. But I think just every one of us needs to gain that, you know, that experiential perspective that we can bring back to our organization. I think that, you know, helps us with our own growth and development, you know, within the companies that we're working with.

Got it. Yeah. No, I love the kind of get started experiment, you know, learn to learn to use it. And I'm curious, how do you see this impacting Excel? You know, I always laugh on LinkedIn when I see people that say AI will kill Excel, you don't need it anymore. And I don't know, Microsoft is doing a pretty good job of using AI from my perspective. But how do you see things changing within Excel with AI?

Well, I mean, you know, we, we of course love Excel. It's part of, part of the history of Vanna is like you can build a great FPA platform centered around Excel. It doesn't have to be a barrier. So I think that's, you know, that that's our so to speak Kool Aid that we all, it's our green Kool Aid at Vena. And you know, and I think that what Microsoft is trying to do constantly with Excel is just lower the bar to expertise. You need to actually do really advanced things. And what. Some of the things we're super excited about is bringing Python. People didn't love VBA macros. They were kind of clunky and wow, that's like really old technology that exists for a very long time and not everyone picked it up and figured out how to do it and you know, so they had things that would auto generate the VBA code, but it was still there. And I think, you know, with the shift to Python and what we're seeing with those kinds of easier to get your head around languages is greater adoption and you can, you know, I think that what with Copilot and with Python, what Microsoft's trying to do is say you can do really advanced things on your own now and don't need to be an Excel guru, right? You don't need to hire a macro developer to do that next cool thing, you can actually do it. Just ask Copilot to help you write a Python script that actually connects these two things together. And that's, you know, why I don't think there's going to, there is a better solution to be that planning canvas to use the language that we like to use within your FPA process. Then, then, then Excel, I mean, it's, it's, you know, I think it's withstood the test of time. I read the statistics. There's 750 million users globally on Excel. So it's going to be, I, I don't think that's something that's unpluggable.

Yeah, you know, it's definitely, it's not unpluggable in the short term, that's for sure. You know, in the long run, we're all dead. I think is, but yeah, I mean, it's amazing. The ecosystem and just everything that's built around Excel Add ins, training product, the list goes on and on.

I mean, that's right.

Spreadsheet going anywhere happened to Excel.

University college training all starts and ends with Excel.

So yeah, it's pretty amazing. All right, so we're going to move into our next section where I ask kind of some standard questions that are.

Kind of get people's perspectives.

So the first one is, what do you think the number one technical skill Fpa professionals should master.

I mean, Excel, of course. Yeah.

I'd be disappointed if you said anything else.

Well, and I think also, like, I would say starting to play with the more advanced new capabilities like Python and like Copilot, of course, but definitely, you know, Excel mastery has, is, is, is, is, is key.

Yeah, no, that, that's a common answer we get for sure. Spreadsheets, Excel, financial modeling. What about that softer human skill? What do we need to master?

Oh, it's a great question. I mean, I think, you know, the ability to embrace the, you know, the principles of servant leadership. Right. Like, how can I help you be more, more, more successful? It's just a core part of the role. And I think as you know, engineers and finance professors have something very much in common, which is, you know, maybe those are the numerical logical skills get more developed and the, the soft skills get maybe underdeveloped. Certainly through your professional education, you have to figure those out. So I would say like really just embracing that servant leadership mindset of, you know, this is a role where you're gonna, your success comes by helping other people be more successful. And I think just, you know, you know, being, being seen as that type of individual will help those, you know, folks in those kinds of roles actually be seen as someone who's, you know, always the person there in the room with them that's going to help them succeed.

Yeah, I've never had anyone give that answer of the servant leadership. I love the way you explain that. Right. Being that servant leader and helping your business partners succeed, that's really what we're, you know, helping to do is help them make better, faster decisions and be successful. But I love the term servant leadership because I think there's so much value when you think of leadership as serving others, helping others versus, you know, I'm in charge.

That's right.

That's a great, great way to think about it. All right, this is your softball. You'll like this. What's your favorite thing about Microsoft Excel?

Oh, that's a great question. I think my favorite thing about Microsoft Excel is that you can use it to do just about anything.

Right.

It could be your kids softball team, you know, scorecard, and it can also do your, you know, billion dollar company financial plan. And you know, it's amazing with the breadth of utility and problems that can be applied, applied to and you know, you can start anywhere with very little knowledge like building a spreadsheet for your kids softball team to, you know, having obviously deeply experienced FP and a knowledge. I think that's what's pretty incredible.

Yeah, I agree. It's really amazing that you can do everything from so basic to so complex in Excel and so many different areas. Anytime I hear someone use the term advanced Excel, I'm always like, what does that even mean? Advanced in what? There's how many different programming languages in the tool alone? All right, so this next section is the get to know you section where we ask you some personal questions to get to know you a little bit.

Yeah, sure.

So what's a favorite hobby or passion? What do you like to do when you're not working?

Well, I'm, I'm an avid skier, so I love to do that. That's why I'm buried in snow right now north of Toronto. So that's something I also love, you know, creative pursuits. I love playing piano, and it's just always been part of my, part of my life.

Love it. Piano, skiing, those are both, those are both great ones. I've done a little bit of piano. My, my wife would relate to you on both the skiing and the piano. So what is one book you could recommend to our audience? If there's a book you're going to recommend, what should we read?

I, I love that book, Outliers by Malcolm. Malcolm Gladwell. And he. I just, you know, it just really feeds my analytical side of my brain and, you know, just, you know, and this need to understand things. And I love the idea that the underlying data may tell a different story from what people kind of observe. Right. And I think of the examples he gives around, you know, of what, you know, just around like the differentiation between what makes someone successful and like this 10,000 hour bar that's like the difference between an orchestra, you know, performer and a music teacher is like 8,000 hours of training. Right. It's not, you know, oh, this person got really lucky. And it's just like, and I think those kind of like, you know, it's just gaining an understanding of that. Just the appreciation of how hard these people have worked to achieve that kind of whatever that pinnacle is, is actually, it's, in a way, it's freeing because then there's not this burden of like, oh, why is there's this person that's different and better. Well, they just happen to have done 8,000 more hours of, of music training than you did. And that's okay. Right? Those are choices we make.

Yeah, there's, there, there's generally a reason why someone's as good at what they're doing as they are. Yeah. Right.

I mean, the passion drives that. Doing it in practice four hours a day. Right, sure.

If you're going to put in 10,000 hours, I sure hope you enjoy it. Otherwise, probably a masochist.

That's right. So, yeah, so definitely. Like, I love that, but I love the idea, like, Freakonomics as well, like, all those kinds of books. That's what really, really, really gets my attention.

Great. I like it. Yeah, those are some good ones. Curious. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

If it has to be one thing. I mean, when I was a child, I wanted to be an NHL ghoul. I was like, canada.

That doesn't surprise me.

It's Canada. Ken Dryden was like, the goal for the Montreal Canadiens. And, you know, I just. I just wanted to be like that. I wanted to wear the Montreal, you know, see, and play in the NHL. It's just, you know, just maybe I didn't practice 10,000 hours. It just, you know, these things are not things you can create for yourself. They. There's just a massive combination of things that have to happen for. For you to get there. And it was. Yeah, you know, it's certainly fun trying and. But that was what I wanted to do. I just. I pictured myself doing that. And so it's fun. As a kid, you have to dream.

You do. I wanted to be John Stockton as a kid, a jazz fan.

But, yeah, no, I found music when I realized I wasn't going to be an NHL hockey player. I went deep on. On.

Yeah, no, I. I understand that one. All right, so this is just kind of a fun question. I'm curious to see how you answer. If you could have any superpower, which one would you pick?

Oh, my God. Any superpower. Well, I think it would be really cool to be able to breathe underwater because there's this whole undis. I mean, people always say they want to fly, but of course, like, you can go in an airplane and fly, and of course not the same, but. But, you know, there's this whole other, like, two thirds of the world that is so undiscovered and unexplored because we just can't survive underwater. And, you know, we left the water, you know, long ago and, you know, we live close to water always. But I think it would be. That would be really cool.

I'm with you. That'd be fun if we could both have that superpower. I'll. I'll go scuba diving with you. And being able to breathe forever.

That's right. Yeah.

We'll see what we can find. Maybe we'll go check out the Titanic, see if we can get some rewards or something.

Yeah, sorry, my phone.

Yeah, no problem. So kind of last question here. If you know our audience is listening to this and they'd like to learn more about you or potentially get in touch, what's the best way for them to do that?

Well, I think just visit venice solutions.com explore everything we're up to. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on there and you know, let's, let's go from there.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Hugh. I enjoyed chatting with you and you know, love what Ben is up to. I've seen the product before and I know you guys have a great team there and doing good work. We always need good FP and A solutions and things to make our lives easier. So thanks for all you do.

Oh, thank you. I really enjoyed the conversation. Enjoy the rest of your day and week. Thanks.

Thanks for listening to FP&A tomorrow. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating and a review on your your podcast platform of choice. This allows us to continue to bring you great guests from around the globe. As a reminder, you can earn CPE credit by going to earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app, taking a short quiz and getting your CPE certificate to earn Continuing Education credits for the FPAC certification. Take the quiz on earmark and contact me, the show host, for further details.