Interim FP&A, What it is, and Why it is A Growing Career Path With Tim Stalkamp

A big element of interim management is passing the baton from the professionals that are serving in the temporary roles to full-time hires that come into a situation. When everything goes right, interim management professionals are working themselves out of a role. Tim Stahlkamp, Senior Managing Director and Interim Management Leader at Riveron, where he specializes in stepping into distressed companies as interim CEO, CFO, or Chief Restructuring Officer and turning them around across multiple industries.

Why do you think it has grown so much? Obviously, you mentioned the PE, but what are some of the other things you think have made it popular over the last few years?

Companies, senior management teams, ownership groups have started to realize that expertise in a certain functional area can a lot of times create immediate value and be accretive to a business. Results are largely there. The value creation is there. And I think that's why everything from entrepreneurs up through private equity ownership have looked to enter management for solutions.

Is it the board coming over and saying, hey, wait a second, we see something the company is not seeing? Or is it generally the company saying we need somebody in this role?

Boards who are under pressure from shareholders will recognize it's about supplementing with—

Welcome to another episode of FP&A Unlocked, where finance meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, and I'm thrilled to be joined by my co-host, Glenn. Glenn, how you doing?

Doing great, Paul. How you doing?

Doing well. Always a pleasure to have you with me. Always good to have Glenn with me. And today we also have Tim with us from Riveron, and I'm going to let Glenn introduce Tim to our audience. So I'm going to turn it over to you for a minute, Glenn.

All right. Thank you, Paul. Yeah. So I'm really pleased to introduce Tim Stahlkamp. He is the senior managing director of the interim management group at Riveron. But Tim, you could do a better job of explaining your background, so I will turn it over to you. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself.

Thanks, Glenn and Paul. Good to see you again. I've been in Chicago with Riveron for just about 20 years right now. I think I'm just a month shy and started my career in the middle market space doing corporate restructurings. And as a natural derivative of that, about halfway through my career, started filling interim management roles. And I think by this point in my career, I've served in probably almost 30 different C-suite or other interim management roles. And for the last couple years, I've been running Riveron's interim management practice where we are just, as we talk about, putting in interim management roles primarily in middle market size companies throughout the US. And it's been a great experience, and I'm happy to be here to talk about interim management and FP&A today. How they interlink.

Fantastic. Thank you, Tim. So, Paul, I know you like to kick off with a particular question, so I'll turn it back to you.

I do. Just, you know, since I think he— you mentioned he's your boss, Glenn, you need to be on your best behavior today.

I will do my best not to insult him during the podcast.

Everybody's on the hot seat today.

All righty. So, Tim, as you know and Glenn knows, there's a question I always like to ask. I love to get different people's perspective on this because It's always interesting to see, depending on where they come from, where they work, how they think about this, there's always a little different nuance to it. So if I asked you to describe what great FP&A looks like, what is great FP&A, how would you do that?

You know, I've been in hundreds of companies over the years, and I think what really distinguishes a great FP&A leader and a great FP&A organization is being visible throughout the process and being ahead of the curve. So it's not just running financials, not just running forecast models, but really leading the process and being looked to for leader throughout the organization for all the elements that drive forecasting, budgeting, the metrics, reporting the metrics, and being somebody who's visible in a team that's visible as opposed to behind the scenes. There's great FP&A leaders that operate a bit more behind the scenes, but the ones that really stand out are the ones that are sitting next to the CFO and really driving the process and being looked at as leaders across the organization. Then beyond that, you know, there's other elements of FP&A, but those to me are the, the most critical attributes of really what great FP&A looks like.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And I like how you mentioned, you know, visible and being there. People are aware, they have a seat at the table. Yes, can you do good FP&A in the background? So yeah, but I think you're limited, and I'm going to guess Glenn would agree there needs to be some level of visibility and awareness really to what you're doing and being at the table, so to speak, to have the greatest impact. Glenn, your thoughts?

Yeah, no, I agree. In fact, actually, Tim, I also like the fact that you really emphasize the leadership. You know, a lot of times people think about finance and it's about the work that you do, the data you're producing, the analysis you're doing. But FP&A is really in that leadership role. You got to be looking forward and you got to be thinking about how do you influence that next decision at the company. And, you know, so, you know, certainly for all the FP&A people out there, that's to me is where, you know, you start off your career. And Paul and I have talked about this many times. You got the technical side of things. You're building your models. You're doing your analysis. But the advancement and the impact really comes from the leadership to go over it, to bring people together, and to show people the value that you're really driving with FP&A.

The best FP&A leads are ones that really act as integrators across an organization. So they take the output, they take the financial modeling that they're doing, they're really driving it into different business units. They're using the data, presenting the data, becoming really a source of truth to help drive decision-making. Not just, you know, generating reports and KPIs, but really using that output to drive decision-making. See, the best leaders in FP&A are ones that really integrate the entire process out of finance into the rest of the organization. Yep.

I, I agree. In fact, what you just described isn't FP&A specific. I think it applies across not just finance, but many organizations.

It's funny how many of the principles we teach, you know, we talk about, the people share about great FP&A would apply to a lot of businesses. Yes, there are things that are unique, but in many ways, what makes a great leader, what makes a great org comes down to some just timeless leadership principles. It's amazing how often it comes back to that.

So let's, let's get into our main topic though today. We're talking about interim management. And so many people aren't necessarily familiar with the term. The simplest definition is interim management helps companies bridge a gap when they either are creating a new position or they've lost a key leader in their organization where someone could come in an interim basis, manage that team. And, you know, help them, you know, get to the point where then they bring in their permanent leader or maybe even upscale them to a certain point where a new leader could come in and take over. You know, so Tim, certainly over the last, God, I don't know, 5, 10 years, interim management has, you know, really expanded. I mean, what have you seen? I mean, since you've been in this role, you lead this organization for Riveron, what have you seen with interim management over the last several years?

Well, we've been seeing exactly that, Glenn. And I think a big component of that has been the growth of private equity. So we've been involved in hundreds of different businesses where we've come in, in interim management roles that where maybe 5, 10 years ago that may not have been looked at as an option. And particularly with private equity taking a much bigger presence in the overall economy and running an ever larger number of businesses. They often turn to interim management because they want results faster and they want the process to run smoothly. They're looking for expertise. And so the growth of private equity has been a huge driver for why interim management has increased over the last 5 years. And we're glad to be part of, you know, helping lots of companies across various industries and various roles with the, with the professionals that we have in our ranks.

So it sounds like, you know, one of the key things you mentioned, and before I even ask this question. I'm going to share something I have found really interesting is I think I mentioned when you and I talked to him and Glenn, all three of us chatted before this, is this year I've heard more people reach out to me about kind of interim management. Not that they're using those words, but that they're looking at these consulting firms that do interim. They've mentioned Riveron and others in the last year than I think I have the few years before. You know, prior to that, it was almost always fractional. Very little mention of interim. And obviously fractional is still big and it continues to be a huge part, especially for smaller companies that don't want that fully burdened cost of a, of a whole head. They want to, you know, reduce that cost but have the support. So it's been interesting to watch it grow. But why do you think it has grown so much? Obviously you mentioned the PE, but what are some of the other things you maybe that you think have made it popular over the last few years?

Well, I think companies, senior management teams, ownership groups, whether it's private equity, otherwise start— started to realize that expertise in a certain functional area can a lot of times create immediate value and be accretive to a business. So they look beyond the cost of bringing an outside professional in, and obviously the cost from an outside professional are almost always higher than an in-place, you know, full-time professional inside of business. And I, so I think that's one of the drivers. Results are largely there. The value value creation is there. And I think that's why all sorts of everything from entrepreneurs, of course, up through private equity ownership and even into the public space, why those different stakeholders have looked to interim management for solutions, because they know they're going to get the value and they'll see the value creation out of the process.

You bring it back to the value creation, right? That's at the end of the day, if you can justify the cost, you're going to bring someone in. It used to be, okay, we can bridge the gap internally. You kind of viewed it as a controller or accounting reporting back office. We deal with it a few months. But I think as FP&A has been viewed more of a value creator, I saw someone say the other day that, you know, FP&A should create revenue. And I always cringe when I hear that. Like, no, no, we support a business that creates revenue, but we can help create value. And if they see that, they're going to want someone to bridge that gap. If they feel like if we don't have them for a few months, it could cost us in value, then they're much more likely to bring in somebody on a part-time or interim basis.

That's right. That's right. In your example, under, under revenue, right? Driving sales pipeline reporting, creating metrics around sales funnel and lead attributes are all critical for businesses and really astute FP&A leaders have experience in that and know how to integrate that entire process across the organization. It's not just clicking in this system or clicking in that system. You really need the leadership behind the process and the intuition. And I think there's lots of companies that have turned to interim management support to really kick off that integration. And then a big element of interim management is passing the baton from the professionals that are serving in the temporary roles to full-time hires that come into a situation. That's a key element of the entire process. So when everything goes right, the interim management professionals are working themselves out of a role, and that's just the nature of it, and then lining themselves up for the next one.

Hence interim.

That's right. Hence interim.

That's right. You know, I think that interim management though also brings a different level of expertise, right? So you could go, I mean, 20 years ago, you have a VP who leaves company. Oftentimes the company will just say, well, we'll just take a director and put them in that role temporarily internally. And they, the team doesn't learn anything new. There's no one from the outside who comes in with a fresh perspective. I think that's something else that interim management does and that value creation, tying it back to what you guys were just talking about, is that you get that outside perspective to say, you know, I've seen this at other places and let me share with you what works well and what doesn't to make sure that you're not gonna make the mistakes that some other companies are making and that you actually take the best practices. And along those lines, I mean, Tim, when you think you, you manage this team, what do you look for for the right background when you're trying to place somebody in an interim management role or bring somebody onto your interim management team? What is that background that you're really looking for?

Well, expertise in a role is critical, whether it's CFO, controller, head of FPA, even CEO, obviously. But one of the biggest attributes and selling points of being in interim management is having an expertise across multiple different situations and, and actually even across different industries. That really it sells better and it sells better because the professionals with a variety of backgrounds can bring everything they've learned in their prior role exposure into a new situation. And then they draw on a much larger toolbox, so to speak, than somebody, for instance, maybe even in the same industry or even the same company for over 20 years. That's all critical. And institutional knowledge is really helpful. But having that broad skill set across a variety of different situations, whether they're challenging situations, growth-related situations, whatever the case may be, the more your toolbox is full with the various specific tools you need, the more successful you'll be in interim management. And that doesn't necessarily mean you need to come from a specific industry, but having the broad background really does play better and allows an interim management professional to be more successful almost all the time, as opposed to somebody that's had a more linear career in the same company or even the same industry over a longer period of time.

You know, it's, it's kind of funny because you draw that contrast to someone who, if you're applying for a VP of FP&A role or a CFO role, oftentimes those companies are looking for, do you have the experience specifically with the systems we're working on or in the industry that we've been in or doing the exact same thing that we've, we've been doing so we know that we could place you in. Interim management, though, when you have a career, it's a little, it's a little different. You're kind of looking, wait a second, it's great to have a lot of deep experience, but the width, if you will, of going across industries, across companies, across systems in different environments, really, I think, adds a different dimension to interim management that you don't normally see when someone's applying for a permanent role.

That's right. And I do think part of our job too is the professionals that provide the services to sometimes help the buyer, whether it's private equity or an entrepreneur or even senior leadership of a publicly traded business, help to really refine and think about what specifically is the role that they need and how is that role going to be successful? Because a lot of times we'll get approached with a very narrow job description that'll be very, very difficult for, you know, a handful of people to— beyond a handful of people to fill. And our job a lot of times is to work on the front end to widen that aperture a bit and say, well, what about this expertise? Wouldn't this be helpful in that situation? And we may not have exactly somebody that's worked in this specific ERP before, but we have a professional that's worked across, you know, troubled situations in a dozen different ERPs, and they'd be a great quarterback for some of the issues you're feeling. That's just an example. On our end, in providing the service, we, a lot of times have to work on the front end to, to figure out exactly what the scope needs to be. And sometimes that'll be jostling a little bit to come up with, put, taking the right professional and the right background and making them successful for the role at the outset. That's a huge part. If the role's not defined correctly at the outset and there's not alignment, that's when you most likely have situations that are not going to be successful in intermanagement. We're fortunate that we, are able to get that right most of the time. But if it's not defined correctly at the beginning and you don't have the right skillset from the outset, you're gonna have a real much more challenging situation as opposed to one that is really value creative, which is what everybody wants.

Couple things that I thought of there is one, it's kind of like consulting in some ways, right? When someone's a consultant, you usually want to have a breadth of experience because you never know where you're sending them next week or next month. They're, And so just the more they're able to adapt, it's not even so much all the experiences, it's that ability to adapt and have seen different situations that is so valuable. And, you know, so that was the first thing. And the second is you talk about, you know, having a wide— is the example someone gave me is they call it the finance athlete versus kind of the finance specialist, right? You have people that spent their whole career in Treasury. And they know it really, really well, or they're the Excel jockey, or they're great at modeling, or whatever it may be. And they may have, they have other skills, but they've gone very, very deep in a particular area. That athlete has that broad range. Okay, I've touched on some of go-to-market, I've spent some time over here, and I've done some strategy, or I've worked at 6 or 7 different companies, you know. And so they, they have that ability to adjust much quicker, like, you know, kind of that utility infielder, for a term Glenn would use, right? They're able to easily switch between multiple different roles versus the person that, I'm a catcher, I've always been a catcher, I will be a catcher the rest of my life. That's kind of, you know, the examples I use to think about it. I would imagine sometimes it can get really difficult to fill some of these roles because you never know exactly what they want, right? They could come in on Thursday, Friday, whenever you get them, and I'm sure they always want somebody by Monday. It's rarely ever, oh, I'll give it to somebody next month, right? It's, we have them tomorrow and, oh, they need to come across the country.

Yep.

And so, you know, I imagine sometimes you have some difficult example, difficult times filling some of these roles. Any projects or examples that really stick out to you in the kind of challenge of filling these type of roles?

Well, the ones that are the most challenging to fill are the ones where the scope is very defined. And the buyer is effectively looking for a needle in a haystack in terms of professional background. And that's not in our management. And, you know, once in a blue moon, we might have the exact professional that's worked in the exact industry and has faced the exact situations, whether it's, for instance, you know, budgeting challenges or forecasting errors that they come and be brought in to fix or driving initiatives for a company. But more often than not, the scope needs to be broad enough and there's enough issues inside of a company for a well-rounded professional, an athlete, Paul, to your point of view, that can come in and tackle any part of the FP&A organization and even be wider than that to drop in and, and really start adding value on an immediate basis. So other than, you know, of course not every deal goes according to plan. But I will tell you with, with specifics that each one that has not gone according to plan has been where there has not been full alignment from the very beginning on what exactly the interim management professional needs to be doing, what the scope of the role should be, and what the communication protocols need to be from that individual or individuals into the various stakeholders. That is almost universally. The handful of areas that if they do not go right, they're not set well from the beginning in terms of expectations, you're going to have many more challenges on having a successful outcome. And of course, yeah, not every deal goes according to plan, but they can all be traced back to those specific symptoms from the very beginning when they don't. So we do spend a lot of time at the beginning, and I know the other firms that provide interim management do as well, really defining the scope, and spending a lot of time making sure that the backgrounds of our professionals are right for the particular situation. Just like in any other organization, right? You've got a variety of different personalities, a variety of different skill sets. You need to make sure all those align for the role or roles that you're playing to be successful in the outcome.

And so I'm curious, when you get those needle in the haystack type that you generally can't fill, do you tell them they're being unrealistic and do they often adjust the scope or do they go elsewhere? What kind of happens? I'm sure sometimes you get some where you're just like, this would be nice, but what you're asking for is too specific.

In a general way, yes. And a lot of times what will happen is the buyer of the service will hear that and then will pivot elsewhere into maybe other firms that are offering the same solution, or they might be running a parallel search process to fill a role. But we've seen a number of opportunities that have bounced back around to us where buyer pivots away for a period of time and then comes back and says, well, actually, we're not having success in either our full-time search or finding the person we would like on an interim management perspective. So I'd say, you know, at least a third of our opportunities that we come across are rebound opportunities that we saw initially and they come back around. One of the things we're working hard on is really finding that balance from the front end and saying, well, we may not have your, we may not be your needle, so to speak, But here's exactly how we can help you create value along the way. And that includes obviously, you know, professionally handing off the role to a full-time person that would come into a company. That's, again, that's a key part of the process is you need to be able to not just orderly exit out of the role at the right time, but be able to transfer knowledge and make sure that the individual or individuals that are stepping into the full-time role are set up for success. If you don't go through that step, You know, it's, it's really difficult to be in the business.

Yeah. It's hard to have success if you don't make sure it's a smooth transition. That's right. If you come in, you do really great work, but then when you leave, it's a total mess.

You failed. That's right. That's exactly right.

And nobody always leaves the, the customer in a better spot.

That's right.

Yeah. And so, I mean, when we talk about interim management, right, a lot of times, again, people are thinking about, hey, you got a, a, someone coming as an interim CFO or interim head of FP&A, interim controller. But interim management's a little bit more than that too, because there's a lot of times you're interacting with boards, you have sometimes projects that there's an expertise or a knowledge base that interim management provides. That's, you know, from that you get from your team that works in other ways too. Can you maybe give a few examples of different types of projects that maybe you've seen that aren't just about, hey, come in and manage this team, but do something a little different.

Yeah, so I think a great example there has been the increasing prevalence of the role, an interim role called the Chief Transformation Officer, which has been around for a while, but I'd say in the last, you know, 5+ years has really taken on more prevalence inside the situations. And I view that role as it's an interim role, but it's also a role that's designed for a specific project or series of projects that ultimately would not have necessarily a full-time person drop in to replace that individual. The scope that the Chief Transformation Officer is working through should be designed so that the knowledge base and the activities ultimately are spread across throughout the organization by the time that individual or individuals exit. And so, you know, Chief Transformation Officer gets involved in everything from systems-related improvements to further integrating business units, using FP&A to really drive decision-making, all the internal facets that are key and tantamount to creating value really drive up through the chief transformation officer. I think elements of that role are a little bit different than other C-suite roles, whereas maybe the, the chief transformation officer in a lot of cases may be reporting directly to a board of directors. And this allows, you know, value creation activities to be run from an individual or individuals that have a lot of expertise in that area. But it also allows CEO to remain focused on strategy and growth initiatives and allows a CFO to be focused on all the, the key financial leadership roles. And now you've got a Chief Transformation Officer who's really very pinpoint defined on value creating activities inside an organization. So, We've seen a lot of those roles, we've filled a lot more of those roles in the last few years, and I would imagine we're gonna continue to do so, particularly for private equity-based companies or backed companies that are really looking for speed and execution expertise to drive that value creation.

Tim, let me follow up on one thing, 'cause you know, you did talk about, you know, sometimes these roles could report into a board directly and When you think about, you know, most people think, oh, you know what, they need interim role, we need an interim CFO, the CFO just left, you would go in, the company would identify that as a need or an interim controller or VP of FP&A or something. But how many projects are you seeing, or are you seeing a growth where it's more about, you know, a private equity board in particular? Because I know you mentioned how prevalent private equity is using interim management. Is it the board coming over and saying, Hey, wait a second, we see something the company is not seeing that we want to be doing here. Or is it generally the company saying, no, you know what, we need somebody in this role, or a good mix?

I think it's a mix, but a lot of times boards who are under pressure from shareholders, whether it's a private-backed company or public company, will recognize that it's not about changing out C-suite leadership or other key leadership inside the business, about supplementing for a period of time, supplementing with specific expertise that can push along projects or various work streams to ultimately drive value creation. And sometimes, you know, getting more transparency into a business or process is part of that, and that's why outside interim management support can be really value-add. But even without necessarily the drive for just Transparency, having that expertise to come in and do— manage specific projects, developing new cadence, maybe adjusting an operating model. All those activities can be vested in a person or a small group of people that will be there to drive the process without disrupting day-to-day management, without having to change out senior leadership, because that's not the goal. A lot of times it's not the goal at all. The goal is really to get value creation faster. It's not about replacing key individuals, it's about supplementing. And I think that's where we've seen interim management to make great strides in the last few years. It's designed to be temporary, but it's also designed to create value and they go hand in hand. And, you know, then you take the expertise out of a series of different situations and from our end, we move on to the next one and it's working the way it's designed.

So I'm curious, what's interim management? I know you're filling a lot of different type of roles. Obviously, the show, we mostly discuss FP&A, but you have the CFO, you mentioned transformation controller. So kind of what's the mix like? What's the typical role? What do you mostly see? Kind of a little more of how that's split. And then how long are these engagements? What's the kind of typical length? I know they vary, but—

Paul, if you would ask me that question, you know, each month for the last couple of years, I would have had a different answer each month in terms of the allocation. It does, you know, there is always a steady, constant flow of, let's say, need for CFOs. We are an office of the CFO firm at Riverine, so that's the key role that we see. And I'd say then it's followed by controller roles, and then lastly by the head of FP&A or FP&A-type roles inside an organization. But seasonality can play a bit more to that, particularly around budget timeframes and an audit process where we see a bit more of a need for controllers than for other roles. But each month we see, just when we think we've figured out a particular cadence, we'll see a bit of a twist and turns in terms of what buyers are actually looking for skillset-wise. I'd say one constant is that there is an immediate need almost always in all these situations. That is the nature of the role to be prepared to drop in with the right professional professionals on a near immediate basis and to be able to start generating value literally from day one, right? A real successful interim management professional or a small team of interim management professionals know how to start driving value and communicate that they're driving that value from day one. And that really sets up an engagement for success.

That makes a lot of sense. Not surprised you mentioned seasonality, all those things that play into it. I'm curious, I mean, how hard is it to keep your team staffed? Because I know you have full-time people that work for you and maybe you have some part-time or, you know, contract you go through from time to time, but how often is it to balance supply and demand? Because it's not like you have a crystal ball here.

No, don't have a crystal ball. And Interim Management is one of the, you know, the service lines, probably, you know, I, the good news is it. In interim management, probably the easiest service line to sell. There's a very specific need. It's very simple to be able to describe the services that are offered. But at the same time, if you don't have the professional or professionals available at the time when a buyer comes looking, they're going to move on elsewhere to other— so there is a balance on keeping, you know, an adequate related bench. And within that bench, you need to have, at least from my viewpoint, enough professionals that have more expertise in industrial type businesses versus service businesses. You need to have enough professionals that break down between those that have served in the seat of the CFO versus the seat of the controller versus having worked in leading FP&A processes or running FP&A. You need to have a well-rounded bench and yes, you can have athletes that play multiple roles there and come across different organizations. But there's very few interim management professionals, even those that have been doing this work for decades, that can check all the boxes on each and every single opportunity that come in the door. So it is about keeping the right balance of professionals. We try to be very cognizant of that as we've built up our team. And then, of course, it's always a good testament that interim management professionals are regularly looked at for the full-time roles, right? And some professionals are interested in making interim management their entire career. Others may find that they develop a great relationship working with a client and they choose to move in-house. That is part of being in this space.

Yeah, I've definitely seen that. You hire someone on a part-time basis and before you know it, they're there full-time. I think everybody's seen that.

It's a good— look, it's a sign that things are going well if you have professionals that are trusted that are being hired away and into the companies. That's not the business model that we want to run on a regular basis, but it is the nature of being in this space. So we're constantly in the market talking to individuals that have an interest in interim management, whether they've done it before or whether they've worked at a handful of companies in different industries and want to give interim management a shot. We're always recruiting and we have to. That's just part of the, the business model.

So Tim, along those lines, when, you know, right now, obviously, it's an FP&A podcast, and you got an audience here of FP&A people. If, you know, there's a director or VP out there who's thinking, you know what, this sounds pretty cool, it's interim management stuff, but I spent my whole career working in FP&A, or I really just worked for one or two companies, what would you recommend to them to say, here's how you could potentially build up your resume to move into an interim management role?

Again, I think it comes back to the more experiences an individual has across industries, across roles, and this, you can be successful in interim management having worked for the same company for a number of years, but you are more marketable with a variety of different experiences in your background. So I would tell anybody that has an interest, you know, to the extent you've been in the same industry for a while, give another industry a shot. Right? Take the skill set that you've learned in FP&A, and if you've been in a service-related business for the last 10 years, you might want to look at other businesses, whether they're in service or in industrial companies, as a way to further build up your industry expertise. Now, obviously, you know, getting expertise in how AI can help in FP&A and be a supplement within FP&A is going to be critical for, you know, the next number of years down the road. It'll never be a replacement, so to speak, but knowing how technology broadly can further support FP&A output and FP&A decision-making would be critical to somebody who's in the space right now. And I think what we'll continue to see over the next several years is kind of a blending of the office of the CFO with the office of the CIO inside a company. And so individuals that can get expertise on both the financial side and the technology side and have that interlock between the two will be the ones that are most successful in roles going forward, not just in interim management, but in permanent roles as well.

Yeah, I think you hit on something there, and it's something, a theme that Paul and I have probably talked about for, God, I don't know how many years now, Paul, but the idea of you could work in FP&A, but go take another position in the company in a business role, you know, go out into a sales ops team or, you know, some other kind of organization within your company and just get an experience from the other side. What does it look like to be that business partner that's now having to rely on FP&A? It makes you a better FP&A person as well. But it's also the same thing with the system side. I mean, it's kind of funny because Paul and I, I mean, it feels like every other podcast that we do is about some kind of system-related thing or technology, and then every other one is about FP&A practices in some way. And that blend of the technology side is also something that if you're not involved in technology today, it's not hard in your current FP&A role. You could be looking at how can we leverage your systems better? How do we go over and get more efficiency out of the systems that, that we have? Or how do we apply some of these new technologies in a way to go over and drive greater value for the firm or for the business that you have to do? Port. So it's just kind of funny that you hit on many of the themes that Paul and I have been talking about for several years.

Yeah, and I think, you know, you just take that and drill down a little bit more as it relates to FP&A. Talk about forecasting, for instance, right? A great FP&A professional won't just have a handle on a forecasting process, but they'll build in scenario planning, in variability, in all sorts of attributes that can really be better at driving decision-making as opposed to a static process. And that will interlock with the technology continues to get better. Professional will be able to use that technology to make more scenarios, be more refined throughout the process. You know, the days of budget templates for the budget process, you know, we've all been in businesses where It's all been Excel-based and you need weeks to send out budget templates into different business units and, you know, take that input and collect it back and organize it. Broadly, the process may not change a whole lot, but technology will be a great way to facilitate a smoother and more efficient process. It'll still require the aptitude of a leader or a team of, you know, FP&A expertise or professionals throughout the process. But the technology would be a great way to make everything more efficient, open up the aperture for professionals in FP&A and otherwise, but it's not going to replace a number of the different processes that are needed inside of FP&A, otherwise inside of business.

Yeah, you still have to have solid foundational skills, but, you know, technology can enable you to do more.

More.

There's no question. The better the skills are, it can allow you to streamline forecasting, budgeting, so many things. And I'm seeing that more and more as I see more people, you know, that I've been interviewing that are doing a lot with AI talk about data thinking and systems thinking. And, you know, I was fortunate enough to kind of have a business analyst type role, work in procurement, those type of things before I went into FP&A. And that business side was incredibly valuable the data side, really understanding data because, right, FP&A, we're going to deal with data all day, every day. It feels like that's not going away. It may— it will change with AI and how we interact with it and what we do versus what it does. But it doesn't— it doesn't go away. So I totally appreciate what you're sharing.

Use an example, Paul. Like, we are regularly asked when a buyer is looking for interim roles, particularly around CFO or controller roles. For individual or individuals that have background in this type of ERP, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics. I think over time, over the next several years, that'll be less of a specific requirement. It'll be more, well, do you have expertise in driving this process? Not necessarily with this specific system. Because, you know, the technology will continue to increase. AI will be able to facilitate ease of use across any ERP. ERPs aren't going to go away. So it'd be less about, all right, well, we need somebody who's worked in this specific ERP environment before. I think that'll become less critical over the next several years, and it'll be more about, well, how have you used an ERP, and how have you used the output to drive decision-making and to drive value creation inside of business? I think that'll be One of the more near-term changes that we see is that the asks for that specific expertise behind a specific system will start to wean away over time, but the need for the professionals will not, you know, wean at all.

Sure. I've always felt like sometimes, particularly in FP&A, roles get too systems-focused. I remember interviewing somebody, I think it was Jack Alexander, and he shared one time he saw a role where the person had listed 15 different software you need to know. He's like, no, like focus on what skills you want them to bring. Be happy if they know 3 or 4 of those systems. 'Cause at the end of the day, whether I know Google or Excel, I know spreadsheets. Whether I know Tableau or Power BI or Looker, if I understand data and schema and how to do visualizations, I'm gonna be able to figure that out. Okay. I understand your piece. You know, unless you're bringing someone in to do a specific implementation, which typically isn't interim management, that's all project management. That's a different situation if you're bringing in someone to help you put Dynamics in place or SAP. But for that more broad, I've always felt like roles often focus too much on systems. I know we're going on a little bit of a tangent here, but your thoughts, Glenn?

I've worked at many companies and, you know, every company has a different system, a different structure. And it's not about the system itself. It's about being open to just how the system works. And being able to pick it up. And what you end up finding, and this gets back to when Paul, we used to talk about how no one really teaches FP&A. Same thing with system. It's once you kind of understand how a system is supposed to work or how FP&A processes work, all of a sudden you can start seeing how it applies across companies and situations, you know, whatever it is. And so I've always looked at it and I've always told people, yeah, you know, I maybe I haven't worked on that specific system. But I've worked on 4 others and typically within a week and a half, I'm up and running and I'm all good on the system because 90% of the systems overlap in the same way. It's just, where am I clicking on to go and get to where I need to go?

That would, that extends to homegrown type systems, ERPs and otherwise. And a lot of times we will be told, well, we've had this system, it morphed over time. Nobody can figure it out out of the people that have worked here for 20 years. And, you know, that's not the case, right?

It's not the case.

Case, if you have expertise in working in a variety of different systems environments and have had the leadership experience across different, you know, businesses and different industries, you can jump in and troubleshoot. There's no such thing as a, you know, I've never seen this before, I can't figure it out. And, um, I think that's one of the things you just have to set the expectation about from the beginning on Interim Management in particular is We can assist in this area because we've done this before, that in this environment, that in that environment, and we can culminate all those prior experiences to drop in and, you know, be a troubleshooter, be a value creator. That's what people want to hear. And ultimately, that's what you have to deliver.

Yeah, I'd add one thing to that. I think when you have that experience that works well for interim management, which is been in different industries, been in different environments, and so on. There's a confidence you have when you go into a situation when you're not, hey, I've never worked on that system before. I never worked in that industry before. But it doesn't worry you because you're like, yeah, you know what? I know what questions to ask. I know, you know, how to go into a situation, know when to listen and kind of why I like to say play sponge and absorb what's going on around you. And when to go over and say, hey, I got an idea. Have you thought about it this way? And you challenge things. And that is something that FP&A people, I think, also do all the time because whether you're supporting a new business line or you're going to a new company, it's the same skill set. You got to go in and figure out, wait a second, because every company's structured a little differently. They do things in a little different way. New people you got to meet, new products you got to learn, but it's the same skill set of how do you go about learning. It is.

It is. It's the same skill set. And again, you go back to rapidly changing and advancing technologies. It's not about a replacement for the need for FP&A and other roles. If anything, there's going to be more data used and gathered to support the role, you know, the FP&A process. There'll be more decision-making that comes out of FP&A with advances in technology. And so, and I think that's something that professionals that work in FP&A all the way up through the office of the CFO, should be excited about is harnessing all that technology to be able to make decisions faster, drive value creation faster. But businesses, particularly those in the middle market that have been a bit more hamstrung over time with the amount of data that they can use easily, even though it exists in the ether, but they may not have the systems in place to gather it or otherwise, that will all— there'll be a lot of shortcuts created over the next few years to be able to use information that previously may not have been used by an FP&A team. And if you're in FP&A, that should be a real area of excitement that you'll be able to watch real time over the next couple of years.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Definitely an exciting time as we get some of that unlocked. I'm curious, one thing, you know, I know you mentioned historically and it's kind of opened up some, a lot of roles have come from PE-owned firms. You're starting to see a little bit of a shift there. I'm curious when you're looking to hire someone, How often is a PE background important versus having a public company versus, you know, maybe VC or private, or we've talked about, you know, having different experiences. And part of that is just being at different companies, different industries. But I'm curious, kind of how does the role of, you know, how they're owned or having those different experiences between PE, VC, you know, private, public, family-owned, whatever it might be, how important is that to interim management?

I think it's, it's important. Um, private equity is notorious for driving decision-making based on information, and they want information to be able to go and analyze. And whether it's information about acquisitions or growth strategy, basically, you know, the more information that can be gathered by a business and be used for decision-making is tantamount to how private equity approaches its portfolio. And so we've seen interim management play an integral role there for drop-in roles where individuals have the expertise on how to report up to private equity boards. And whether it's a, you know, a principal on a deal or a full board, you have to have great communication skills. You have to know and anticipate the questions they're going to ask. And a great interim management professional that has PE experience in their background can do that. Uh, it's also a great way if you are in FP&A right now and you're owned by a private equity firm, listen to the questions that are being asked, figure out the data that is being asked for, figure out the challenges for why that data may not exist. That will all help an FP&A professional gain expertise. And now, you know, just as private equity has been in increasing prevalence in, in the space and driving interim management over the last 5 to 10 years, we're going to start to see other asset classes be involved. Private credit that will be involved in more of the direct ownership of businesses through changes of control. Yes, public companies will always be there.

The— it—

but in knowing how to navigate all the stakeholders across all those different environments, knowing how to communicate up, communicate sideways, and communicate downwards is all critical to an interim management role and the professionals that fill those roles.

That's helpful. I appreciate that. And it's funny, as you mentioned private credit and everything, it, you know, just can't help think of, uh, you know, the pub markets. What, what we'll be learning is we're seeing a whole new class of companies go public over the next few years, right? You see SpaceX and OpenAI and Anthropic, just how it will continue to change things. These are huge data companies in many ways.

That's right. We're in a bit of a lull right now on the transaction side. Whether it's IPOs or just, you know, more traditional M&A work. As that starts to rebound, you're going to see everything move faster, which will mean faster trade-out of certain key members of management teams, creating more demand for interim management. We haven't even seen an acceleration in transaction activity relative to the last handful of years. And as that starts, there's going to be more pressure on the system to move even faster. And to have the right individuals in the right roles to create that value that will lead to the next transaction. And so we're in the, you know, far from the 9th inning right now in terms of the broader economy. But I think all of us that are in the space have been really happy with the progression of interim management for the last 5 to 10 years. But there is a great runway ahead of us in this space. And just as transaction activity will pick up will, interim management will benefit from the need for that service as deals are getting done and companies are getting larger and going through acquisition processes. So that's what gives me a lot of confidence that interim management, it's gonna continue to grow and be a bigger part of the professional service offering, you know, over the next decade.

Okay.

So Tim, I think, you know, as we are coming up kind of towards the close here, Final thoughts, uh, what would you like to leave, you know, our listeners with about, you know, what about interim management, Riveron, what you're seeing in the market?

Yeah, well, I, I've been excited about what we've seen in the market, and like I said, I, I am excited for what will be an ever-increasing amount of transaction activity over the next several years that will drive in large part further demand for interim management. And I think for, for individuals that are not interim management today, but are inside of companies, been playing roles, particularly in FP&A, the advances in technology that are coming are not replacement. They are supplemental. They will drive key decision-making to make things move faster and open up a wider degree of decision-making that hadn't been available before. And that should be exciting for anybody that you know, is working in FP&A and has aspirations to, you know, maybe sit in the seat of CFO, maybe to own their own business someday, right? Those are all key attributes. And so I'm excited about the entire space. I think we're going to see really interesting changes across industries where technology will be a key play. But at the end of the day, it's the professional leadership from the individuals that is really tantamount for value creation. And that's what gives me a lot of hope for why this interim management space is going to continue to grow over the next several years.

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, and to me, it's one of the things that really attracted me to interim management. It's not just about, I mean, great runway and I've been seeing the trends of it, but it's also a way for people in FP&A to get that exposure. I mean, I've came into, you know, working here before Riveron, I worked at 7 different industries. I worked at public companies, I worked at private, I've worked at a private equity firm, private equity-owned firm, family-owned. And it was one of those things that kind of said, you know what, this brings it all together. And ultimately, I think for many of us who've spent our careers working in FP&A roles, what we really love doing is having an impact on organizations. And that's exactly what interim management is really doing. It's going out there and, and solving problems. I mean, Tim, you mentioned many times about influencing how companies make decisions, which is ultimately what we do in FP&A. And so, you know, I, I, I think this topic is just certainly very pertinent to people in FP&A, but also kind of what people are seeing out in the market with the, the growth in private equity and how some of these companies are approaching filling these finance roles. They're not just traditionally saying we have to have a permanent person in each of these spots, there are times that you go over and you supplement, as you mentioned, to just go and get you to that next level.

That's right. That's right. And just as, you know, technology will continue to facilitate and make role, you know, certain roles easier to— this core skill set behind FP&A, behind controllership roles, behind the seat of the CFO, will always be there and the need will always be there. It just becomes more information drives more processes that leads to better execution, that leads to value creation. It's all— it should be a real exciting time for anybody that's just starting out their career now in FP&A or otherwise, or that's midway through their career. There's a lot of great opportunities coming ahead, and I think that's what keeps all of us excited. And those of us that are on the interim side, It's what keeps us energized about what is going to continue to be a growing market.

Exciting times. Thank you for sharing that. I think, you know, Glenn, you summed it up well. And I think, Tim, you emphasize this of, you know, the enjoyment is when you see that impact and you help a company move forward, whether it's interim management, whether it's fractional, whether it's full-time. We all want to have an impact. And one of those great ways you can do it is, is interim management. I think it's something not many people have thought about in the past, and it continues to be a growing area. So thank you for joining us, Tim. Before we wrap up here, first I'll ask Glenn, then we'll give Tim last words. Any last thoughts from you, Glenn?

You know, I would just say that when I moved from, you know, an industry role into consulting, it was one of those things I was a little nervous about because I knew how to go into a company and how to run an FP&A team and make an impact on a company. And I was like, uh, okay, how's this going to translate over to consulting where move a little faster and you're put into a lot of different situations, but it's been a lot of fun. You know, I've gone over, I've worked in 4 different industries in my 16 months that I've been at Riveron. I've gotten to see different types of companies in different levels, and it's just broadened that experience. And so to me, as, as you know, someone who's worked primarily in FP&A and corporate strategy, the idea of interim management was, it's been a great career move. I've really enjoyed it. So I'm glad that, Tim, you've been able to join us here and share that experience and what's going on with interim management to all the people out there in FP&A, maybe not heard of it before. So I appreciate that.

When I first started working 20-something years ago, if you had a number of different jobs on your resume, it was sometimes seen as a sign of, well, maybe this is a job hopper, or maybe they're not performing successfully in the roles they've had. Nowadays, having a variety of backgrounds across a variety of different companies, being in a variety of different seats, really is value-add, you know, because everything is moving faster and be able to draw on, again, the analogy of a toolbox, but having more tools in your toolbox, so to speak, can only add more value to a particular situation. So ideally, folks that have great backgrounds across a variety of different industries and a variety of different roles would look to enter a management And I welcome anybody that has an interest in the space, but that really is key today to, to driving forward that and then harnessing all of the technology advances in the influx of data that is just about to hit companies where data streams and data sets that were never really tracked or tracked in the background are now going to be at the forefront of decision-making. That should be really exciting for folks that are in their roles. It'll be a fun time for the next number of years.

One last thing in there, and because we talked a lot about the, the skill set of the individual, why they'd want to go into interim management. But the funny thing is, Tim, you just brought something up that it's also companies that are now looking and say, wait a second, maybe we should be looking at things a little differently and reaching out to consulting firms and so on that do interim management for that additional expertise to bridge that gap to, you know, bringing that new perspective. So I guess I was just one of those things that, yes, it's that broad experience that helps people move into interim management, be successful, but it's also a way of helping companies get that different perspective and take their finance organizations to new levels.

That's right. That's exactly right.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Tim. Thank you, Glenn, for setting this up. Really enjoyed the conversation. We hope you enjoyed this as well. We'd love to hear from you. Love to know what you liked about this episode and Until next time, thank you everybody. We really appreciate you spending the time. And if you haven't shared a review of the podcast, we'd love for you to go do that on all the platforms out there, Spotify, YouTube, Apple. We'll put in that little pitch. Feel free to reach out to Tim or Glenn, let 'em know how you like the show. And thank you so much everybody for joining us.

Thanks, Paul. Appreciate the time. And thank you, Glenn.

That's it for today's episode of FP&A Unlocked. If you enjoy FP&A Unlocked, please take a moment to leave a 5-star rating and review. It's the best way to support the FP&A Guy and help more FP&A professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app, and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education credits for the FPAC certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A Guy, and I'll see you next time.