Saaya Nath is a partner of Jump Capital, a VC firm specializing in investments in software and infrastructure (their portfolio includes treasury software to products helping companies visualize and understand their cloud bills).

In this episode talks to Glenn about:

• How the CFO’s Office can automate workflows around finance and AI
• The most common complaint talking to finance teams
• Main focus of AI for finance teams we are seeing and rates of adoption
• Spend management, finOps, cloud cost management, and cash flow management opportunities
• How well are SMBs served by the proliferation of CFO Tech stack tools?
• Regulatory challenges in founder pitches
• Ways to begin in a low risk way for AI in finance
• Case study from Glenn on finance automation challenges in a manufacturing finance team
• How Jump Capital chooses the companies and early stages in an era of change vs FOMO and bubbles
• Favorite Excel function

Follow Saaya Nath on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saaya-nath-12ba82a3/overlay/about-this-profile/

Christian Franz Hansen Christian is a seasoned management consultant and finance thought leader. He’s made it his mission to bridge the gap between strategic decision making and data analysis with a background that includes roles at EY and a finance consultant helping big-names including General Motors, Lego Group, and Maersk. He’s now a member of the Business Partnering Institute, where he’s revolutionizing how finance professionals approach their roles.

In this episode:

• From Excel Wizard as a stepping stone to career growth (“ I still love the beauty of a well designed Excel model”)
• From EY to a change-oriented consulting company at Finance Business Partnering Institute
• Top ways to elevate the finance professional
• Partnering, communication, influencing stakeholders, problem solving and understanding the value drivers
• Working with 500 business professionals at Maersk to turn the finance ship around from bean counters to business partners
• Meeting Anders Liu Lindberg and starting the Business Partnering Institute
• Outcomes vs Outputs in finance
• Allocating finance hours to not drown in tasks
• Resistance against our “soft skills” training and how to overcome it in your finance team
• Top down communication
• One piece of advice to make daily finance easier
• PowerQuery in Excel

Connect with Christian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frantzhansen/

Tobias Zwingmann is an ex-Senior Data Scientist-turned managing partner of RAPYD.AI - which is empowering companies from B2B SaaS startups to leading financial institutions towards a unified AI strategy. His data insights are shared in his books including “AI-Powered Business Intelligence” (O’Reilly 2022) and “Augmented Analytics” (Co-author, O‘Reilly 2024) as well as weekly newsletter “The Augmented Advantage” read by 4,500+ business leaders from brands like Amazon, Mercedes-Benz, Gucci, and Santander.

In this episode:

• My rise in data science
• Did the latest changes to Co-Pilot actually make it good?
• What finance can learn from other departments using AI
• Consolidating reports and augmenting processes using AI
• Let’s talk forecasting and analytics and regression analysis
• Leveraging Excel and Power BI to enhance their data analysis capabilities
• Getting to “data progressive” and “data active” in your organization
• Augmented Analytics Explained
• Clean (but not tidy) data in finance
• Two ways to make data tidy in ChatGPT

Connect with Tobias Zwingmann on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-zwingmann

George Mount is an Excel MVP and author of Modern Data Analytics in Excel (he describes it as a guide to becoming a data analyst in Excel). His latest book, Advancing into Analytics: From Excel to Python and R could be subtitled “becoming a data scientist in Excel. As founder and CEO of Stringfest Analytics, he provides analytics education and upskilling including works with finance departments at the top ten banks. In this episode he answers how someone in FP&A – killing it in Excel – can go further in their career while using Excel as home base.

In this episode:

• Two books and the ROI you get as a finance professional from reading it
• Using Excel as your home base for FP&A
• When to use Excel vs Python
• citizen data scientists (or citizen data analysts) in Python
• Using low code/no code tools
• Excel, copilot and Python as a new “trinity” for FP&A
• Getting your data house in order before getting to AI
• A surprising Excel favorite befitting an MVP Connect with George Mount on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gjmount/ Further Reading

George Mount: Modern Data Analytics in Excel: Using Power Query, Power Pivot, and More for Enhanced Data Analytics George Mount: Advancing into Analytics: From Excel to Python and R

This year Bruno Oliveira got promoted to CFO, flying up the FP&A route at Swissport, the world’s leader in airport ground services and air cargo handling, active at 286 airports in 60 countries.

In this must-listen episode:

• FP&A in the trenches from banks, to automotive, agriculture and aviation at Swissport
• How to cope without control on demand in aviation
• Financial planning three to six months ahead
• Structure of FP&A at Swissport
• Factoring in safety as the most important aviation metric, direct labor and fleet management costs
• How our FP&A Team works together with our data analytics team
• Cross functional relationships piloting Swissport success
• Walking through the business budget planning at Swissport
• Instead of dreaming of a new technology (such as AI) use the specific blade of a swiss army knife for your business
• Why PowerQuery is mandatory for FP&A
• Getting to fifth place in Latin America in the Financial Modeling World Cup

Follow and connect with Bruno on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bosilva/

Forget “Founder Mode”. For those in FP&A your CFO expects Owner Mode. “In rugby, if you observe, a player often clings on to the ball, not letting it go out of his hands until the goal is scored. That’s how we need to handle things. Own it — cling onto it — achieve the goal,” says former IBM India CFO Ravikumar Ramanan, author of the brilliant book: The CFO Lens, how to Thrive in the Fast Changing World of Finance He tells Glenn Hopper: “The expectation of a finance partner is not to stop at the sign off and say, okay, I have now committed $10m in company money. You then need to get involved in the execution of the strategy. I changed my role from just being the person who signed off and asked for periodic reports to actually going out into the field and starting to talk and feel like an owner.” In this masterclass episode Ravikumar reveals

• The Bigger business context we are living through that finance cannot ignore
• The failures when strategy projects are not being tracked by finance
• How to feel really that the results are yours
• Storytelling and influencing secrets from the finance seat
• Good and bad costs
• Balancing short term and long term in your finance role
• My biggest advice for people to succeed in a finance role at any stage of their career
• My favorite Excel Function (even corporate legends get asked)

Further reading

Ravikumar Ramanan: The CFO Lens: How to Thrive in the Fast-Changing World of Finance Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath: Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

“Not having the answer is no longer acceptable because you are 30 seconds from having the answer. You’ve just gotta ask.” – Don Tomoff

Don Tomoff, founder of Invenio Advisors, is a finance rockstar and a trailblazer in AI adoption for finance. As a CMA his life’s mission is to make work easier for literally everyone he encounters. The CMA and finance expert has more than 30 years of experience spanning accounting, being a CFO, and consulting. Don Tomoff is not just an expert in his field including AI. He’s a passionate advocate for using technology to drive efficiency and innovation.

In this episode, Don emphasizes how AI has transformed the speed at which financial professionals can access information and solve problems. “Right now, if you’re doing AI, you have a huge advantage against those that aren’t. But I think in the next year or so, you’re going to quickly shift to, it’s a liability for you if you aren’t doing it.”

In this episode

• Streamling finance tasks as an accountant and FP&A
• Why efficiency is only a part of the finance AI revolution
• Biggest area ripe for AI FP&A Disruption?
• Democratization of data science
• Retrieval augmented generation to analyze hundreds of documents (for instance filings)
• Get the Paid Plan
• TwinzTalk Tips
• Why what hat you can do in two minutes gets done
• Distinctions between OpenAI and Claude
• Finance in five years
• Power Query and UNIQUE

Follow and connect with Don Tomoff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dontomoff/

Skip Katroll is Senior Director, Insights and Analytics at AmPhil. AmPhil helps big-name nonprofits raise more money and advance their missions. This episode is packed with practical and honest insights and takeaways you can apply to your day job. Skip gives the inside story on creating and selling a report at Amphil, "Unlocking the Secrets of Lost Sales Opportunities", and the approach that he followed. Skip also reveals how a background leading finance at top universities alongside math, economics (and a love of sci-fi) informs his FP&A.

Prior to joining AmPhil, Skip was an associate vice provost at Liberty University responsible for the institution’s strategic planning and regulatory compliance.

In this episode:

• My multidisciplinary journey (aka “confused youth”) - studying math, economics, educational leadership and religion (and how it applies to my data insights)
• FP&A business partnering at a University Finance team - navigating functions from the Dean of Arts to the Dean of Engineering
• 3 proven strategies for financial data and analysis getting management to informed decisions
• Countering “so what, and "why am I am here” approaches from business partners
• How to navigate ad hoc requests When you don’t have enough access to data
• The power of benchmarking
• Leading vs lagging indicators
• Unlocking the Secrets of Lost Sales Opportunities - a big impact report and the challenges, impact and approach
• My favorite Excel function

Connect and and ask questions to Skip over on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skipkastroll/

Further Reading:

Skip Kastroll: Bridging the Gap: Translating Finance Insights for Effective Decision-Making