Why FP&A Should Be Your Strategic Powerhouse, Not a Reporting Tool – Olivia MacDonald

What does great FP and A look like?

Great FPA looks like a busy calendar. I fear that when you get to a bigger, more established company, FP&A can become a really important part of FP&A that you're not just presenting numbers, you're really drawing a picture for the whole company.

What were the things you took away from audit that you used today?

Amazing thing that I learned is how to deal with difficult stakeholders and build rapport fast.

How did learning about data? How has that helped you doing fpa.

The data side of things? It's made my reporting way easier. I think that it's such an invaluable skill skill for an FP and a professional in the modern world, what is.

The number one technical skill? FP and a professional power query is.

Where I would want someone to really lean in on.

What about that soft skill, that human.

Skill building rapport and strong relationships?

If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about fpa, what would you change?

I think for me, this is a hard one.

FP A guy here. Have you ever wanted to level up your FP A skills? Then check out the FPA Guys Ultimate Course Bundle at the fpnaguy.com that's the FP A N-D A guy.com and use code podcast to save 25%. Get started learning today. Hello everyone. Welcome to FPNA 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, AKA the FPA guy, and I will be guiding you through the evolving landscape of fpna. Each week we are joined by thought leaders, industry experts and practitioners who share their insights and experiences, helping us navigate today's complexities and tomorrow's uncertainties. This week, I'm thrilled to be joined by Olivia McDonald. Olivia, welcome to the show.

Hi Paul. So happy to be here.

Excited to have you. I always get to enjoy listening to your accent.

Yeah, I know we talked about this before. I'm not, let's say turdy tree in a turd. So that that's the one thing that gives me away, other than that I'm climatized.

And what she means by climatized is she's now Canadian or lives in Canada regionally from Ireland. So I'll give a little bit of your background. You can add a little bit more if you like. But Olivia is a highly skilled financial professional specializing in FPA process optimization and system implementation. She's a qualified CPA in ACA And I don't hold that against you. Just so you know. She has a proven track record of enhancing operations and delivering strategic solutions that improve efficiency, accuracy and transparency. She's led various initiatives including variable compensation optimization, done that one. Forecasting for accounts receivable and payable and cross functional onboarding process. She has expertise in data extraction. That sounds fun. Extraction makes me think of a dentist. And transformation using mql, SQL and so ql. She has empowered teams to make informed decisions. Throughout her career. She has demonstrated a passion for collaboration, delivering value and driving financial performance across organizations. Just to share one more thing before I ask the her the first question. I first met Olivia, it was when she was working at Vena. We did a webinar together, right?

Yes, we did.

If I remember right, there were three of us on that, on the panel, you, one other person from Vena and myself.

Yes, there was. It was actually my boss was on the panel as well.

It was your boss. Okay. I couldn't remember who. I remember she was a senior leader. I just didn't know she was your boss. And so that's how Olivia got to know each other. And we've kind of stayed in touch ever since. So I'm thrilled to have her on her show and have her share. Her history is she has a little different background than, I'd say the traditional FP and A person. So we'll dive into that. But before we dive into that, I want to start with this. What does great FP and A look like? If you were to Describe what great FP&A is, what would that be?

Look, to me, FP&A is all about business partnering. So I think great FPA looks like a busy calendar. And the really important nuance there, it's not busy for busyness sake. It's because you're partnering people, you're helping them make strategic decisions. You're joining the business together. I think that's a really important part of FP&A, that you're not just presenting numbers, you're really drawing a picture for the whole company on what do these numbers mean. So really, that seat at a table is great FP and A.

And I'd be curious, as you've worked in FP&A for several years, how often do you think companies have great FP&A? How often do you think FP&A actually has a seat at the table in your experience?

In my experience, if we're looking at like tech startup, I think that's where FPA really shines. Like that's where I've really enjoyed fpa. PE backed firms where the numbers matter so much and you're making constant decisions that are going to change the direction of the company. I fear that when you get to a bigger, more established company, FPA can become more so. Just the reporting side, but maybe not so much the actual analytics and figuring out the next step. And I think that's a real loss for those big companies. I think it's important that you remember that FDA is your strategic business partner and not just a reporting function. That's. I think smaller companies actually really have it right there.

I think it was really interesting that you honed in on the reporting side because I've said before, one of the first articles I wrote, I referred to it 20 years ago it was FPNR Financial Planning and reporting. And today it's much more the analytics. But there are definitely still organizations where it's very heavy on the reporting side and the numbers and not so much the partnering. And I agree with you, they're. They're missing out on something. I think the best FPNA functions, like you said, are integrated with the business. They're spending time with the business and helping support them versus focusing on the numbers.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, next question. You started your career in auditing in Ireland. Why? Why auditing? What interested you in. In audit?

No, this is. It's kind of funny. I was just so sure it was what I wanted, which is so funny. Like you ask like a 12 year old, what do they want? And I was like, auditing. They're like, are you sure?

Wait, as a 12 year old, you said you wanted to be an auditor.

So my best friend's older sister was an auditor. And I was like, she's so wonderful. She's so amazing. I want to be exactly like her. So she's the one who put me on the path to auditing. So all my decisions throughout high school, elementary school were like, okay, it's because you want to be an auditor. When I got there, I was like, you know what, I can't see myself doing this forever. And that was a real like wake up call for me to be like, oh my God, you've got your dream. You only planned as far as this dream of getting here, which I thought was really cool to see that your dreams can change and that you will grow as a person. But that was what auditing really drove me to first was I just knew amazing people who have gone that route and, and I wanted to emulate the career path they had done.

Got it. So you saw someone you really admired and said, I want to be like them. I'll do auditing.

Yeah, well, I always had a mind for math. I always loved numbers. So like when I was in elementary school, I was like, I want to be a shopkeeper. And then when I got to high school, I was like, what's, what else would a shopkeeper need to know? And I was like, auditing, that would help me run my shop. So it was kind of those very small building blocks that led me there and.

So when are you going to be a shopkeeper? Is that still in the plan? Someday.

I still love the idea of it. I don't know. The way I, I enjoy shopping at Costco and then coming home and stocking my shelves with whatever we purchased. So I still, I get to do that make believe at home.

Great. Well, I'll look forward to your shop one day. I want to come to Toronto and shop at Olivia's Emporium or whatever you call it.

Definitely. I'll send you a gift card.

Perfect. I can relate to the, you know, wanting to be involved as numbers. As a child. One of my favorite things to do is I'd open the newspaper immediately to the sports section and read all the box scores for like basketball games. And I, I could name how many points, assists, rebounds, all the players added. I thought I wanted to be like a sports statistician.

Yeah.

Took a statistics class and was like, no, this ain't happening. I could relate to the enjoying numbers and wanting to do something. Then you get into it and you're like, not quite what I expected. Now what do I do?

Yeah, I. So which the newspaper? I always went to Sudoku, so I realized I love puzzles. And with Audi, that's a great part that you do get. Like you are solving the puzzle, you have an end result you're trying to get to. But I found the fact that it was past focused was actually my biggest gripe with it. And I got to solve puzzles, but the answer was already there. I was just trying to prove the answer I was given. So I really wanted to get into that more feature focus, which is where the FP&A came from. It's like, how can I drive decisions as opposed to saying why something happened as being in that driver's seat rather than following behind it.

Sure, accounting, audit are very much backward looking functions. It's not saying you can't help shape the future, but FP&A is 80% future. You need the accountants, you need the audit, you need the good Data to do your job. But it's just a different role and a different mindset.

Absolutely. Totally agree.

So how did audit help prepare you to be an FPA professional? What were the things you took away from audit that you used today?

I think there's two main parts of that. So one is that no one's happy to see their auditor coming. So figuring out, how do you build those relationships fast and get someone to want to collaborate with you, that is something that I didn't realize at the time, but I've brought it true to every role I've had. How can you face that stakeholder who you're saying, hey, you overspent and we need to figure out a path forward. And is that we. That they don't feel like you're coming down. Like, I'm here as the auditor to say, you're doing a bad job. I'm not here as the FPA person saying, you're doing a bad job. So that was an amazing thing that I learned how to deal with difficult stakeholders and build rapport fast. The other part is actually modeling as well. Someone asked me this recently, or like, where did you learn? And it's like, I don't know. I just liked Excel. When I was thinking back on it, I used to do a lot of contingent liability work. So here we would build out a model and we say, hey, we think this might happen to the company. What would be the outcome if it did? And that was actually my first introduction to financial modeling. And I don't know if a lot of auditors realize that they have that experience and if they know to put that on their resume, because if you've done contingent liability work, you have done financial modeling. So even just that language saying that auditors do a lot of FP and A work, but they're using different language to do it. But those are definitely two key things that I'm using every day in my job.

Now, that makes a lot of sense because I will admit, I never was really excited when the auditors came. It's like, I got to carve out time for this. Got myself in trouble once for basically tell them to get lost. But that's another story.

But that happens in FPA as well. Like, they're not always happy to see you coming, especially if you're new. If previously, if this company did not have an FPA department and they were just allowed spend, they had the funding and they just did what they wanted, it's scary to see FP and A coming and asking you your why and because then they want to keep it close to their chest. So how do you let them know that you're there to partner and support them? And not to say, oh, my God, you're. You're insane. You just spent so much money on a cruise for some reason. But, no, you're there and say, well, you did that because the ROI is xyz and I'm here to fight your battles with you.

Yeah. And I love how you said that. Fight your battles with you. I. Before I worked in fpa, I worked in government contracts, and let me tell you, they hated working with you. Engineers, scientists. Like, I got to deal with paperwork and write these statements of work, and I definitely learned a lot of, like, look, my job is to make your life easier. I know you don't like working with me. Like, I became good friends with one of them outside of work, and we had a great relationship. But when it came to work, he hated dealing with me just because he hated the subject. Like, I get it, but you're going to have to do it. So those relationships are really important. There's a lot of roles like that, particularly when you're in a support function, which audit, finance, you know, procurement. Those are support functions. And a lot of times people don't want to deal with that stuff because that's not their core business. So I. I agree with you. Learning relationships is critical. I want to ask you, how did you go from being an auditor in Ireland to a consultant for an FPA software in Toronto? Little. Little bit of a transition there. Talk me through that story.

This is gonna be a reoccurring team with all my answers. I had an amazing mentor, so it's often that I. I come across someone. I'm like, I love who you are as a person, and I want to try. Follow what you've done, or I want to bounce ideas off of you. So I did my four years at PwC, got my ACA, which is the Irish equivalent of CPA. And at that point, most people in Ireland do emigrate. It's not unusual at all to emigrate just for one year. It's pretty normal. So that year, I was immigrating to Canada. That was the decision. There was no job lined up. My sister was emigrating to England, My brother was emigrating to Holland. It was just a normal thing for us. And I applied for three or four jobs. The first two I applied for were straight auditing jobs. And I got that offer. And, you know, it came in first. I was like, great. I went to the partner at PwC? And I said, hey, can you give me a reference or doing the background check? And he's like, why are you flying halfway around the world to do exactly what you were doing right here? And that was the best advice I could have been given because at that stage I was only going for one year. I was literally just going to go make my North American money, go back home and have a regular life. And he was like, why are you doing that? Why are you uprooting your life when you could do that right here? And the third offer I got, so there was two audit ones and then the third offer came from Venice Solutions, an FP and a company. And it was totally different. It was something I had no experience and I was like, you know what? I'm only going for a year. Let's try something new for a year and then I'll come back to my auditing job at PwC in a year's time, everything will be fine. And when I got there, I just loved it. And I never would have said I was tech inclined. I never would that I have an interest in sas, I in Ireland, FP and A I don't think was a phrase I'd ever heard before. I didn't know anything about it. I just knew straight accounting and straight auditing. So it was a total, it was a gamble because I thought it was just one year of my life. I'm in my early 20s. Let's just gamble this year away because, you know, it was just. It worked out so great though, which I am so thankful that I had a mentor that I could ask and say, this is what I'm thinking of doing. And that he knew me well enough to say, that's a really stupid idea. You need people in your corner who will tell you you're being stupid. Because everyone else in my life said, that's a great idea, you should do it, it's safe. It's so great to have someone who can push you outside your boundaries.

Well, well said. Having a mentor that knows you well enough to, as you said, tell you something stupid or a bad idea or that. Why are you thinking of doing that? Push yourself and learn and grow is invaluable. I mean, I've, I've had some in my life that made a huge difference. And what has it been now? Eight years, Nine years in Toronto in only six.

So we actually just got our citizenship about a month or two ago. So that's how I know it's definitely over five. But yeah, we, we couldn't believe it we just kept renewing our visa. We just enjoyed it so much. And I recently applied for citizenship and now we're here for the long haul. All because of that one conversation where I put myself out there with someone saying, what do you think? And I think a lot of people forget to put themselves out there. They want to pretend they have it all together. And I'm so glad I had that heart to heart conversation. It totally has changed trajectory of my life.

Do any of us really have it all together?

We like to pretend. Sometimes I do think we like to pretend. Oh, we do. I tell us different.

I mean, all you got to do is go out on Instagram or any social media and every you look at it and go, wow, that person has the amazing family. Their kitchen's perfect, this great meal. They. I want to be like them. And the next day you see the newspaper where they just got arrested for something and you're like, maybe not.

But even the highlight, like with sdna, I was pretty new to it. But even to this day, I still am okay to put myself out there. The way me and Paul started talking again recently was I was like, hey, I'm working on this model and I'm not sure if this looks right or what to do. What do you think? So even just to know that you have those connections, they're there for a reason, it can lead to opportunities like this. And that's something I'm a big believer. And it's put yourself out there because you don't know what, where it's going to go. And maybe it'll go nowhere. Maybe Paul didn't open that LinkedIn message. I wouldn't have lost anything. There would have been no issue. But instead it led to this great conversation.

Exactly. It's like you said, you know, you, as Michael Jordan once said, you miss every shot you don't take.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's so true. I have a friend that he uses the expression he read a book where it just said just ask for things. So he calls himself an ask. And I tease him about that. He's like, I ask for everything. It's just because it's good practice. Even if I know they're going to say no, it forces me to get out of my, my comfort zone and learn to ask for things. Like, I've heard no before, I'll hear it again. No big deal. Some things he ask for, sometimes I'm just like, really? But, you know, that's why we call him the.

That is a great philosophy. I might have to Steal that.

It really is. I need to do it more. I'm not, I'm not good at that one. But he's, he's, he's really good at it. He did it in one of the restaurants we were at when I was in actually in Toronto. So it was fun to watch him. But I want to get back a little bit to Vena. So you spent about five years there, is that right? Four or five years.

Four years.

Four years. And you had four different roles from what I could tell from LinkedIn. So you went from, you know, doing consulting to help with kind of systems and operations eventually to a more traditional fp, FP and a role. So maybe talk a little bit about that journey, what you learned at va, the different roles you had. I'd love to learn a little bit about that FP and a guy here today I want to Talk about the FPA Guys Ultimate FP and a course bundle. This bundle includes over 10 hours of content recorded by Ron Montero and myself, many templates and great lessons to make you a better FPA professional. The content includes FP and a business partnering, how to manage tough conversations, build world class relationships and hold the business accountable. Includes Modern Excel, which is a real game changer for the way you'll work in Excel. Excel Tables, the gateway to modern Excel Power Query, a game changer for transforming your manual processes and loading data and then dynamic arrays. Next we cover modeling design principles. In this course we talk about the importance of designing models in a certain way and how important it is that you think about design. And last but not least, driving value through smart analysis, how you can conduct data analysis to be a better FPA professional. Go ahead and sign up for this bundle@the fpnaguy.com that's the fpend a n d a guy.com use the code podcast to save 25% get started learning today?

Yeah, absolutely. So when I started first it was purely brand new so they wanted to hire CPAs, so my Irish one worked for them. But the whole idea was to learn the tech side. So the data manipulation, extraction, all like that's where I learned all those different letters. SQL, mql, all that business. So that was what I spent the first year, year and a half when I was there was really ramping up on what was the software we were using and how to implement it for customers. So there I learned project management and also an awful lot about how to work with data which was so invaluable when I moved into the systems ops role so what I didn't like about consulting was you implement it and you walk away. I have no idea if what I built will work for you in a year time. I know it works for exactly what you ask for right now, but. But what's going to happen once you grow. And I hated that. So then when I joined our actually we created a finances and ops role which again was one of those asshole things where I said to cfo I'm not sure if I like consulting because of this reason. And he said don't go anywhere, we will create a role. So again be sure to ask and talk to those mentors at rather than just applying out and having gone because I love the culture of the company. So then with this finance ops role, the it was the first operations ops role we had and it was all about upgrading our technology, our own internal technology. So whatever we netsuite vena, whatever we were using, becoming the expert in it again, I loved that. But once you build something well you create a strong foundation that move the dial project. Then I was like okay, cool, done. And I was ready for the next challenge. And at that stage I was more focused on present tense. How do I make it work for right now? So I've done past tense, present tense, past. And then the FPA was when I got the opportunity to move into future focus. So with FP and A, I worked directly with our product and engineering team, so how could they scale their business? And it was just amazing. That's where I realized that's where my passion lied. I taught it was all these other things and then finally I was like, you actually hit the right motion now. This is where you fully are, you know, come alight with doing the work. So and a lot of it just came out of conversations that saying this is what I like and what I don't like about the role. And then these opportunities, these paths that I didn't see before for myself when I was back in college doing the degree, these paths were opened up.

Thanks for sharing. I appreciate you sharing that. And there's so much to be said of telling people what you enjoy having good open conversations with your management because you never know where that's going to lead to an opportunity that you haven't even thought about. And that may lead to something. You're like, oh wow, I really love doing this. Like you talked about data, you never picture yourself as technical or learning about SQL and different query languages. How did learning about data, how has that helped you doing fpa? How does that help you in your career.

So in my mind, the fact that I've learned about so much about, about the data side of things, it's made my reporting way easier. So I can optimize reports, I can use Power Query to join different data sets together and also I can understand data sets. So I understand kind of the pros and cons of how we're joining our data, but that means the reporting. I didn't become an FP&R person. I was able to truly be FP&A because I can set up that foundation and fully focus on the analysis and business partnering from the get go. I think that is such an invaluable skill for an FPA professional in the modern world. We have so many different softwares, we have so much different technology like data warehouses, all of this stuff and you can get lost in there very easily, especially if your background is a traditional accounting or a finance background. This is not something I ever touched on in my degree or in my cpa. Maybe it's different nowadays, but at that time it wasn't, we didn't touch on it at all so fully. It truly was hands on learning. I know with interns I've worked with nowadays they're all coming in, they have Python, all this amazing skill set. They are the future of FP&A because they're coming in with that data mindset so they can focus on actual insights instead of just reporting.

I like what you said there. I come from a data background. I did two years of report writing basically as a, as an analyst, a lot of SQL, a lot in Excel and databases and it's been invaluable in my FP and a career to understand that. It's so helpful when I train Excel, help people understand how they should structure their data, why Power Query is so powerful. As I tell people, Power Query basically got me promoted because of the stuff I was able to build and do and everybody's like, wait, you can do that?

Yeah, it was incredible. Now we have the data visualization as well with Power BI and all these different dashboards that we can use. We have a person on our team who just started using Google Looker, which I had never used before. And that's the most exciting part to me is that there's constantly new stuff and it might already be in your tech stack, but don't feel like you have to go out and buy this new tool all the time. A Lot of it you're probably already paying for, you're just not leveraging it and that's super Exciting to me.

Well, like, key example, if you have the Enterprise, the E5 license, which a lot of companies have, because the technical side on Microsoft, you're getting Power bi, AI.

Yeah.

You can use it. Are you getting everything? No. There's a premium license and more you can spend. You could still do reporting in it. So, yes. It's amazing how often there are tools in a company that you're not aware of. I know we went through our rationalization, and one of the companies I worked for, I think we found, I don't know, six, seven different BI tools across the company. This group's using Domo, we have power bi. Over here's MicroStrategy. I think we had someone else using Tableau. Why do we have all these different tools?

Yeah. And also, I think what could be a big barrier or a fear for people early in their career or even later in their career is that they're like, well, I only know this one tool, so I need to bring this tool with me to every business. That's not the reality. Once you get comfortable, you'll see that a lot of the way they operate is so similar to one another that, like, you know, Power, if you can do Power Query or you can do Power bi, you can do the vice versa. Where a lot of people, I don't think they realize that. I think we have more people maybe on the marketing side that at least in our company that are using Power bi, they have no idea that they could use Power Query also, but they've already learned the skill set. So realizing so much of what you do is transferable is so important.

Well, and I loved how you said the importance of you know more than one tool thinking you just have to always take one tool with you. There's a ton of transfer nation. Yeah, you can transfer those skills. Right. They're transferable. But there's one thing, I kind of made me laugh when you said that. I was thinking about, and we often talk about. Except trying to use Excel for everything, Right. And I saw one the other day, and I think this has become more common. It was a Generative AI or AI, and they showed a big hammer and there was nothing but screws on the table. It's like, here, I got the solution. We can use this for anything. You know, it's kind of like, I think that's sometimes how we get with one certain tool. Excel's been historically the one that people try to do everything in. I think now we get some people trying to do things in Generative AI. Sometimes you're like, okay, no, you're just gonna have to do that. That might not make sense there.

Yeah, absolutely. I will say I am fully addicted to Excel. I don't know if I'd ever go to a company that was exclusively Google Sheets because I'm so addicted to Excel. I love it. But at this company, actually, the majority of people use Google Sheets and it's been good for me to learn what are the minor differences here and there and to see where are the pros and cons. So to not be so, so strict in your belief, I can only use Excel. Yes, I love it. But Google Sheets has a lot of benefits as well. So definitely being on their site that you need to be flexible and meet people where they're at as well.

You just put in a plug for a episode I did on Financial Modelers Corner with David Benim. He's Microsoft mvp. He'd be the equivalent if Google offered it for Google Sheets. And he breaks them down when Google Sheets is better. And one of the things he said is I hate when people say Google Sheets is only better for collaboration. It's like there are all these different use cases where it makes sense to use Google. And then he talks about the use cases where it makes sense to use Excel. So if you get a chance, it'd be a great episode. It kind of opened my eyes on Google a little bit more to its strengths because I haven't used Google much. I'm definitely. I've tested a bunch of different spreadsheets, but I love Excel. I'm like you. I definitely do value my Excel spreadsheet. I'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands. I want to ask. Going back to Ven, I want to ask question. I've seen a lot of people get into FPA and then they go into the route of working for an FPA tool. Whether they go into product, you know, implementation cells, a lot of them do that. Any advice to somebody who may be listening and thinking, I'd love to work for one of these tools companies I want to get out of the traditional FP and a role and you did it kind of backwards to where a lot of people do. But any advice for somebody listening that might be interested in working for a planning software?

I think showing a passion is the main thing here. So I would imagine a lot of people who want to get out of the traditional FP and a role is because they want more diverse experience. They want to figure out what industry is the right there. I, you know, milk for their coffee. So that's what I think is really showing a passion. Is that the reason you want to be there? Like, what is your actual driving force? Is it because you want to be at the forefront of technology? Is it because you want to help businesses? Is it because you've seen a lot of bad FP and A and you're like, no, that's not what I want people to know FDA for. And I want to be a driving force to make it better. So figure out what is your driving force for wanting to move into one of these companies and show that passion in the interview. Because it takes all sorts. Like there is. It's really important not to have the same type of consultant on all the projects. It's not going to work if we just all hire CPAs and they're the only ones that are implementing it, then we'll just get cookie cutters of our FDA solutions. You need to have your own unique angle on why is it important to you to work for a company like that?

Got it. Thank you. Appreciate that advice. Next question. I want to ask any advice you can offer. If someone's looking for a planning tool, things they should do to be prepared, how they should think about it. As you know, this market has exploded with options. I talk quite a bit about that. I'm always amazed how many people I hear from of, hey, I'm developing an FPA tool. There's nobody in the market, right? I'm just like, do you look like, yeah, no, there's nobody in the market. It's a greenfield. Go for it, you know. So any advice? Because one of the biggest things I've heard from people again and again, I did a survey three different times, and all of them said the number one thing holding them back is basically just not understanding, you know, the market and. And struggles there. So any. Any advice you'd offer.

So I am going to be biased because obviously I worked at an FPA tool company and that's okay.

I recognize there'll be some bias. We won't hold it against you.

But the part where I'm trying to not be biased is actually I had a small spin at an insurance company and they were trying to hide again, FP and a tool. So I guess you got to do demos across the board at lots of different companies, and that's what I recommend to people so much, is to do those demos. But to come in and say, what is it that you want? Like, what is it that you're currently doing? What do you hate about what you're doing and what is your dream state? And your dream state is a wish list. You have to understand that's not going to be the reality for you across the board, but that's what you talk to the vendors because they all have very unique offerings. And that was really insightful for me to see. After four years of Vena, obviously I was like, there is no other option that would be better. After doing the demos, I was like, I can see pros and cons across the board. Vena is great. If you are absolutely dead set on Excel, Excel is the way you want to go. There's other tools out there to actually integrate better with Google sheets. And that was pretty exciting for the last company I was at because they were a Google Shop, not an Excel shop. Other than that, a lot of the features are very similar. So don't get too caught up in the marketing. You really need to actually talk to a sales team and do a demo. It's an hour, two hours out of your life. It's very worth it. I actually think, Paul, that you did a day maybe where you had lots of different FDA companies come in and do their demos. I actually watched that. That was excellent. So even attending events like that, if you don't want them to have your contact info because you're worried about them reaching out to you too much, there are sessions like that held where you can see from a whole platter of different FP&A companies and figure out who is the right partner for you. And that's the main thing here. You need to find people that you jive with and they're going to be a partner for you because it's a big commitment. So part of it is also just making sure your personalities gel as well, because the tools are not that far away from each other to figure out what is your baseline, Are you an Excel or a Google Shop? And then figuring out the right people you want to work with.

Lot of great advice there. You know, figuring out, hey, do you want Excel? Do you want something that works with power? Bi do you want a web app? Google, kind of. There's some fundamental things you got to figure out. Your tech stack, different tools are going to integrate better with it than others, those type of things. And then I really like what you said of relating to the partner, particularly your implementation partner. Like, I'm helping somebody with selecting a tool right now. And they eliminated a tool off their list because they just didn't get a good filling. They didn't feel like they connected at all with the salesperson they left with just a bad feeling and he made the decision. I left it totally up to the person. He's like, we're just going to take them off the list. I just didn't get a good feeling about it. I was like, yeah, you want to be able to make sure you can work with, with somebody. And if you're totally sure that it's not going to be a good relationship.

It'S just not worth it like a job. And if you were dating like there is, it is a buyer's market right now. There is a lot of options out there. If you've got a bad feeling, you got to trust your gut because you're not just investing money, but it's a big time investment. You don't want to do it twice. You're with these people for the long haul.

I think I'm going to call my next demo day the dating show. You said it's like dating, come, come date your planning tool.

Don't tell us which company it is and we have to guess. So it's blind dating.

You know what? Some you'd be able to figure out because they're different enough. 80% of them you'd have no idea because you're like, I mean, how different can planning be at the end of the day? It's like you said, a lot of the functionality is very similar. You know, there's probably a dozen tools for a lot of companies that could work, sometimes maybe even more. And so it's much about the person, the work up front as it is the actual software you select. There's probably a lot of vendors that are hating me, say that right now, but they'll get over it.

I will say one key definite differentiator I found when we were doing like the whole load of demos was workflow, which I did not think would be a different differentiator. I thought that was pretty bog standard, that each platform would offer a reasonably robust workflow that integrated with security. And that actually didn't. And that surprised me so much that as a right plug for Vena, the workflow is very important to me because I don't want to be reaching out to someone say, hey, you didn't submit this or hey, here's your template. I want the system to do it for me. So for me that was my table stakes. It was always my first question that I asked. And if they didn't have a workflow, it's like, okay, it's not the right relationship. So figure out what is your table stakes that can be your first question. Figure out if it is the right relationship for you or not.

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Yeah.

Some of the third gen, which they don't have as robust workflow. I mean what you're going to find and you'd know this and I won't go too much in this because the audience will be like stop talking about it. But right. Newer tools don't realize how complex building an FPA platform is and it takes several years. So as I often tell people, you got to be willing to grow with that tool if you're going to select someone new to the market. Doesn't mean they may not be great. They may have some functionality you really want, but generally your older tools are going to have much more robust approvals workflow. The little things that they've learned over time from their customers and you know, I think that's what you're talking about with Venice. They've learned hey, we need a robust workflow flow. Often workflow approvals kind of comes last for the new tools.

And it all depends who you are as a company. It depends a lot. Maybe, you know, if you do top down budgeting, it might not matter to you. If you're doing bottoms up and you have 50 or 60 contributors, you don't want to be working with a tool without a workflow. So again, it all depends on who you are. What do you need but asking yourself these questions before you even go in so you can easily knock off things that just aren't a good relationship for you.

Totally agree. Just like dating, you got to knock off those that aren't a good relationship. Coming back to that. Yeah. All right, so you left Venice to Go back into corporate or go into corporate finance because you're auditing before in a traditional FPA role. Remember? Right. For an insurance company, you weren't there a long time. You mentioned they had Google and you hate Google. So was that the reason or why the switch? You and I talked a little bit about this. I'd love you to share a little bit of kind of how that went.

Sure. So that was not the reason. I did not leave just because they had Google. So when I joined, I joined the process improvement team and the whole aim of that was helping their FP and A team. So how could they grow and how could they do better? What I found, and honestly this is a great lesson for me in terms of interviewing is it was more of that R role, so FP and R rather than the analysis strategic work. And that's where I learned that I really like smaller companies and I love the tech industry. Prior to that I would have said I was industry agnostic. Like, you know, wherever there's an exciting opportunity and great people, I want to go there. But now I do feel like I probably am going to shift and pigeonhole myself more into this SaaS space because I just love it here. I love how dynamic it is with insurance and larger companies. Your decisions aren't always move the dial decisions. As a small company, what you're doing really, really matters because you are really looking closely at your rule of 40. You're doing really high growth and so you have to move fast. Insurance moves a lot slower. It just wasn't the right fit for me. But I'm still so glad I did it because it led to the current opportunity I'm in. So I don't regret the move even if it wasn't the right move for me because otherwise I do think I'd still be a Venom. I'd be very happy at Venom, but I don't think I will professionally pushed myself to where I wanted to.

Basically the role helped you get out of your comfort zone and push yourself and discover what industry you love.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's what I found with audit as well is I got to experience lots of different industries. And the same with consulting at Venice. I got to go into different companies to see what did I like and what did I not like. So I, I highly recommend that route. If you're not sure what is it the right move for you? I mean, when I audited my specialty was dairy and manufacturing. Turns out I'm not that into dairy or manufacturing manufacturer. That seems pretty fun. But dairy Wasn't really for me. But if you have any questions about cheese manufacturing, I am the person to ask.

All right, I'll put you in touch with my training partner, Ron. He supported Kraft Cheese for like years.

Okay.

So you two can talk dairy and cheese. I'll, I'll get out of the room and let you two have fun.

Sounds good.

All right, well, you know, we're recording this around budget season. Have you kicked off your budget? There's the first question.

Yes. So we kicked off our budget probably.

A month ago and you were still able to find time to talk to me. I'm impressed. You must be using Power Query a lot.

It's going pretty well. I don't want to speak too soon. It's going pretty well. I feel like we started nice and early and what we wanted to try this year was kind of a blitz approach. So what happens if we start early and we say we are going to be done in 60 days come hell or high water. This is only a two month budgeting process and that's it. So that I kind of like the idea of the split splits approach. I've been at companies before and the budgeting season was maybe eight months. So you're, you're quite deep into it or you don't finish your budget until March and you're like, well, we're already three months in. So like, you know, I'd prefer just to be working on forecast at this point. So I'm kind of excited with this new approach we're taking of, of blitzing. True. And just making hard decisions now and committing to a line of action leads.

Me to a question. So you talk to kind of blitzing through and keeping it short, which I think is the best way to do, especially given all the uncertainty in the world. You know, the budget is a planning process. It's not about a number. So what have you done to help accelerate the process? Maybe any advice you can offer things that have helped you, you know, try to keep it to 60 days. I know you're not done yet. We'll have to check back in to see if you meet that 60 days. But what are some of the things you did in, in preparation for shortening that time frame?

So what we did was a tops down approach first. So we looked at like, what are we currently doing? What are our metrics we want to achieve for next year? So like we're mainly looking at revenue as a percentage of, sorry, expenses as a percentage of revenue. So we've been into sales and marketing, whatever. What do we want to target versus what is our current run rate and where do we think our revenue is going to go to. So we really started with the revenue piece of figuring out what do we think our growth is going to be. And we actually got pretty specific. We're like, well, this is the customer we think XYZ is going to happen to. We have a pretty robust revenue information. So we can do a lot of forecasting there that are budgeting there. That's pretty close to the mark. And then we use that for our expense budgeting once we figured out our envelopes. That's where I got the budget coordinators involved as a Prior to that, we only ever did top down. So we said this is what we think it's going to be good luck this year. We did tops down and we said this is what we think it's going to be. But I want you to adjust it. I want you as a person on the ground tell them what do you think you're going to spend? When is it going to happen? Where did I miss the mark? And that's actually where we're spending most our time now is having the budget contributors be involved and take ownership for their budget as opposed to next year. They can't use the excuse of I had no input, I have no idea what's happening. It's a team effort. But I really think creating those envelopes at the start as opposed to doing a pure bottoms up where then you have to do your slicing and dicing afterwards, I think that really helped us be more proactive and efficient in our approach.

Yeah, that's one of. Funny enough, that's one of the things we teach in our best practice. FP&A is kind of understanding what your targets are to start with. Whether you do a high level or at least talking to management, what the expectations are, they may not give you all the numbers by having an idea so you can share that with the business as you build it up. No matter how much you do up front in the building up, you're always going to have some kind of gap because, you know, investors and stuff have expectations they want to achieve. Business generally, you know, are going to be limited in how much they think they can really do a lot of times and rarely ever do they align. And that's where the conversations and the fun begins, trying to figure out how you close those gaps, which ones you close, all those type of things. But I love you said you started with kind of that top down and then involved everybody. How's it been as it sounds like this is the first time you really involved the business. It's just been kind of a top down management exercise before, which is very common in small companies. So how has your business partners received this approach?

It has been really interesting how passionate they are about it. Like they were really excited that they get to have an input and a say and that was lovely for me to see because you don't know how people are going to take it. They might be very off put by it or not engage at all. But people had great ideas. One important thing I think we did was we included their run rate and increased it. Like, you know, that was part of our top down approach. So they had a list of these are the current vendors you're using. Like how do you feel about it? Because prior to that they might have been like, well, I'm not actually sure who hits my department versus who hits somewhere else. But I think they really, they really enjoyed it and it seems that they actually want to collaborate more now on different opportunities after seeing how we do the budgeting process. So for me it's been a totally, totally net positive experience.

Awesome.

I know there's still some time left to go, so we'll see, we'll see if things get more tense near the end.

But right now they never get tense. When push comes to shove and you're like, I need another $100,000. It was like, here you go. So don't worry, I'm sure it will go smooth. All right, we're going to move into the FPA section where I'm going to ask you a couple questions. These are standard questions we ask everybody and just get your quick thoughts on them. So first, what is the number one technical skill FP and a professional should master?

For me, it's some form of data manipulation and data joining. So there's so many out there you can use right now. If someone was to ask me, I would say Power Query is where I would want someone to really lean in on. I know we have a lot of interns who've been coming to the table with Python, which I have not learned yet. But it seems fantastic. It's on my to do list to skill up there. But equally like if it's something like SQL that that's just something you're really good at that is very transferable to other places. But yeah, for me definitely do that. Data manipulation is so important and that's what I'd recommend to everyone right now.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of data manipulation. I think that's definitely one of the top skills we all need. What about that soft skill, that human skill?

This definitely comes back to my answer about like, what did I learn from PwC?

I?

And it's that building rapport and business partnering. So how do you make someone want to work with you? You. You could go in with the stick approach, being like, you know what, we're going to slice your budget if you don't do it. I don't think that's any environment someone wants to work in. So doing that card approach of we are a team, we're working on this together, there's so many other places that we can collaborate together. So for me, it really is building rapport and strong relationships is the super important soft skill. And that's what I look for in the interviews as well. I think a lot of technical skills can be learned, but the soft skills are kind of inherent to you. They can definitely be honed and improved. But how do you communicate with others is so important.

Yeah. So communication and building those relationships. Got it. All right. This is one that is kind of fun that I've started asking recently if you could wave a magic wand. So you're the. I guess the fairy godmother for the day or whatever you want to call it and change one thing about fpa. What would you change?

For me, this is a hard one. What? Okay. I actually have an answer that I think is good because I've seen it at Texada for the first time for us Operations reports under fpa. So I have an ops team that are absolutely incredible. And this is not something that I've seen in many other places. And it has been amazing, the collaboration and the. The amount of crossover work that Operations and FPA do and how we can build each other's work up and make it stronger. So if like a wave alone, I would insist that all SDNA and Operations work together. That Operations isn't siloed to their own parts of the business. And also that we remember it's SDNA and not spnr. So yeah, two. Two wishes. If I could get the genie, can.

We give you two? I don't know. It wasn't a genie. You were a God. But we'll go with it. We'll let you be the genie, your Robin Williams for the day.

Okay, perfect. I have one left over, but I'll save that one.

We'll save that for the next interview. How are you using generative AI today? I know you and I have talked about that, so share some of the things you're doing in your department.

So we tried out Gemini at my last company and for Gemini I was just using it for like pretty straightforward stuff. So like helping start off template, start start off email. So stuff I think most people have used day to day. Now at this company I'm using ChatGPT and we have a private business license so we can upload our company info to it. So what I've been using it is to help me communicate better. So I will create my PowerPoint. This is what I think the business needs to know. Is this clear? And I'll get feedback. So I actually have created a Persona. It's my financial analyst and you tell it where it went to school, you tell it all about your company and then they are an additional member of the team. So I'm actually using it to help either start off presentations to create standard operating guides, kind of anything documentation related. I'm leaning very heavily on it and it has been an absolute game changer for me. We can link it in and have it attached to our Google sheets, which is amazing that we don't have to like upload the data. We just say, hey, here's the link to the Google sheet. Do a segmentation analysis for us and it will send back the segmentation analysis with its rationale. So it really is an extra team member for me right now. So I am really excited about the future of it.

So will you be sharing your bonus with this team member?

Well, if I have their bank info.

That might be a little much. Is that what you're saying?

We're paying for the license, so I feel like that's almost like giving it a free bonus.

We'll talk more about that offline. No, that's great. You're using it as much as you are that you have an internal license. You can give it your data. I love how you mentioned here's what I'm trying to accomplish. Give me feedback. One of the best things I've heard from people is using AI to poke holes in what you're doing or find the flaws or play the devil's advocate, whatever you want to call it. And it sounds that's a little bit of what you're doing is help me understand where the weaknesses are.

Absolutely. And it's so helpful before going into that conversation, like, let's see your C suite, you want to be prepared for what is it? What conversation will this PowerPoint generate and be sure you have that in your appendix that you're coming super prepared to the table. It's totally invaluable and you can also do that partially with the free license. As long as you don't upload your info. You can be like, this is what I'm going to talk about. What are some normal questions to be asked? So even just for fact checking yourself, I think it's so useful.

So you're telling me I shouldn't give it my private data?

I mean, you could give it your private data, give it my Social Security card.

That's not a problem, right?

Fine. I can now type into ChatGPT what Paul Barnhurst Social Security number. So that'll be great.

Yeah, go ahead and give that a try. See what, let me know what comes up. No, I, I love the things you shared there. A lot of great advice around that. Now I want to move into the section where we get to know you personally a little better. What's your favorite hobby or passion? What do you do with your free time?

So we recently got a new dog. So she, we got her two months ago. She's a year and a half old. And for anyone who has a young dog, they know that they take up a lot of your time and your efforts. So that's kind of what I'm doing with all my free time right now is trying to teach this dog to be a functioning member of society. So I am absolutely loving it. It's such a great excuse to get up and get away from your desk because this dog needs to play. I can't help it. It's a necessary thing. So that is my main hobby right now.

Yeah, puppies are a lot of work. I've heard that. I haven't had one, but I've heard they're a lot of work. All right, what's the one book you'd recommend to our audience? What, what should they be reading or what should they read?

I love this question because I've not seen this recommended too much elsewhere. There is this book called the no Club and that the full title is the no Club Putting an End to Women's Dead End Work. But I think it's relevant for everyone. So don't feel like you can't read it if you're a man. But it's all about looking at your to do list right now or looking at your workload, what your, your tasks are and saying, does this make sense? So firstly, does anyone care about this? And I think this is really important for FPA because you may have been generating a report for decades now because Bob three decades ago did it, but is anyone actually opening it? You have no idea. And if they are, is it telling the story that's still relevant to your company now? So really questioning the work that you do do to see does anyone care about it? But then also looking at the work that you do and saying, am I gaining anything out of this? Is this something. That was an amazing opportunity for me two years ago when I started the role, but now I'm an expert in this and by keeping this role, I'm not learning anything. But also I'm stopping someone else from getting the opportunity. So to make sure you're not hoarding tasks either, I have found that this really helps not only with my workload, but also my work satisfaction. Because whatever I'm doing, I truly feel is value add because I did that self assessment. So I could not recommend that book highly enough. It totally changed how I manage my day and how I manage my workload.

Love it. Thank you for sharing that. I'll hire more people so I can start saying no more often. I just. Yeah, little details. All right. Favorite travel destination. If you could go anywhere in the world tomorrow, where are you going?

Mine's gonna be so boring. But back to Ireland. So that's where all my family and friends still are. Like, I am lucky that I go back fairly regularly. So two or three times a year. But yeah, that is, if I could just snap my fingers, I would be in Ireland right this second, sitting in my grandmother's house having warm brown bread made out just fresh out of the oven. So that would be my ideal situation right now.

You're making me jealous. I haven't made any fresh bread for a while. I actually have a wheat grinder and sometimes I'll grind my own flour and make fresh bread. Love it.

Yeah, they literally do it every day, so there's this constant smell out of their house of fresh bread and oh, I miss it so much.

I'm coming to Ireland. I'm coming for some fresh bread. Let me know next time you're going. All right. If you could have dinner with one person alive in the world today, who are you picking and why?

Pick one is going to be controversial, but I would pick Taylor Swift. I know she's been getting some hate lately, but so one. I think she's amazing artist. I'm a total swifty. I love her, but if we look at the business side of it, so what she did with re Recording. All her master. All her. I think it's her masters after they got sold to someone else. But also the way she plays the chart game, you know, Re Releasing the same song but with a minor tweak or someone else's backing vocals to. To game the charts. So she's filling up all the positions. I think it's an incredible business strategy and I would love just to know more like, is it her business strategy? Does she just have incredible people around her? But yeah, as a businesswoman, I think she is really fascinating and she's kind of turned the music industry on its head and it's really highlighted the fact that it needs to be refreshed because the fact she can play the charts is pretty crazy. That she can just re release a song and block up the charts for everyone else.

Yeah. I can't say Swifty, but I will agree she is an incredible businesswoman. You know, either she has an amazing team, she's figured out herself. I'm guessing it's a combination both. But it would be interesting to talk to her about how she developed this and how it grew it into the empire. It is, because it's amazing how big it is. Regardless of whether you like her music or like her, I think everybody has to acknowledge she has built an empire in the music industry. No question. And beyond that, the loyal following she has is pretty amazing.

I think a lot of people fpna, they care a lot about strategy and that's why I think it would be so interesting just to hear more about her strategy. How does do you know when it's good or bad advice to take? Which is something I think that for FPA professionals is so important. The data can tell you one thing. It could still be bad advice. So yeah, it can now be really interesting for. For most FP and A professionals.

All right, well, I look forward to the feedback after that happens. Let me know how it goes.

We'll send this a podcast to her.

All right, we'll see what we can do. Maybe we'll find somebody that knows her. Travis Kelsey. Maybe you can email him. I mean, I believe Vena has the Kansas City Chiefs as one of its customers.

If I remember, I did not think through that connection before I left. Dang.

So if you. I, I know some people have been. We could see what we could do here.

Yeah. Okay, that's good to know.

All right, let's see if we can make this happen. All right, wrap up time. If you could offer one piece of advice to be a better FP and a business partner today, what would it be?

I would think it's truly care about the people you're working with. So care about what their ultimate goal is. You are not there just to be a bean counter, push paper around on your desk. You should be passionate about what you do and the projects you're involved in, and that passion will show true to the end result. So that's my biggest piece of advice is really love what you do. And if you don't, that's okay. There's lots of jobs out there. But hopefully you do love what you do. If you're listening to an FPA podcast.

Yeah. If you hate FP and A and you're listening to this podcast, you can hang up now. That would be my advice. Just stop listening. All right, last question. If somebody listened to this, they're like, wow, she was amazing. Which is what they're all going to say. How would they get a hold of you? If they want to reach out and ask you a question or learn more about you, what's the best way?

So LinkedIn is definitely the best way, as just Olivia Rose MacDonald at LinkedIn or whatever they do, however they do that. But yeah, LinkedIn is the best way. I would love to connect with people. I am always excited to talk about Martin's FP&A and you never know where connections can make. So a couple years ago I was on a podcast with Paul and thankfully I added him on LinkedIn and now it's led to this situation.

There you go. You never know what will happen. I mean, who wouldn't want to chat with me, right?

Yep. All my FPA questions, straight funnel.

All right, there you go. Now, thank you so much for joining me today, Livia. I really enjoyed the chat. I think our audience will enjoy it as well. I love the work you're doing in FP&A. The way you think about it, I think there's a lot everybody can learn from you. So thanks for joining.

No, thank you so much, Paul. It was a pleasure.

Thanks for listening to FP&A tomorrow. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating and a review on your podcast 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 earmark cpe.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 for further details.