Episodes
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Today’s guest barely needs an introduction. Purna Duggirala (aka, “Chandoo”) is a celebrity in Excel circles. Since 2004, Chandoo has been regularly sharing everything he learns working with Excel training hundreds of finance teams, and had roles including as Data Lead, Remuneration Modeling & Analytics for the New Zealand government.
The 16-time Microsoft MVP runs Chandoo.org , which aims to “make you awesome in Excel and Power BI” getting 250,000 visitors per month from all over the world and his YouTube channel has 750,000 subscribers. His stated goal is “to make you awesome at Excel and Power BI”, and produces the go-to Excel resources from blog posts and videos to full online courses.
My Excel Journey and Community building Skill gaps in FP&A TeamsPower BI vs Excel vs PythonCopilot – advantages and limitsMy favorite Excel functionCheck out https://chandoo.org
Chandoo’s Free Data analyst course: https://chandoo.org/wp/free-data-analyst-course/
Connect with Chandoo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/purnaduggirala/
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In this special episode Glenn is joined by Nate Saperia to answer the 10 most burning questions in FP&A. Nate brings nearly 20 years of finance experience including at Accordion, Spruce Finance, Hess Corporation and GE. At Saperia Consulting Nate specializes in real-time dashboards, financial planning, and interim CFO/FP&A leadership.
The questions:
Q1: How can I use AI in FP&A?
Q2: What do you think of FP&A solutions?
Q3: How can you get to driver based decision making
Q4: Fastest levers FP&A teams can pull with margin pressures rising?
Q5: How can an FP&A function trust the financial data it’s using when it doesn’t control the data?
Q6: Should the CTO or CFO own the data?
Q7. Skills to get from M&A Financial due diligence to FP&A?
Q8. FP&A Internship, what advice?
Q9. Things I wish I had known earlier in FP&A?
Q10. What’s the future of Excel in FP&A?
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Episodes manquant?
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Australian-born Luke Mulcahy started in FP&A at larger businesses including Coates Group (internet leader in Sydney) and manufacturing company Sherwin-Williams. But for nearly 4 years he has loved having “wow” moments of finance insights with smaller companies. closer to the $5-10million range, where powerful insights are taken straight from finance to the CFO. In his words: “You can have those moments a lot more frequently with small business owners and just tell them what they’re, what they’re missing, what they haven’t got eyes on.”In this episode:
Forecasting energy consumption for a utility company in AustraliaThe fear and strategy of becoming a fractional CFO The ideal set up for FP&A in small businesses Why big companies often have big data problems (and cleaning that data)Big FP&A wins in small businessSolving the date problem in Excel -
This special episode formed part of FP&A Con 2025 which saw a record-breaking 1500 registrants.
The guests:Nathan Bell, Managing Partner, VAi Consulting, is among the most in-demand experts. Bell has unique experience– having started in computer science, before leading finance teams at Native American Bank, Digital Media Trends and Gartner– where he advised hundreds of FP&A teams facing chaotic data situations).
Anna Tioma former CFO of Sandoz and Softeq. Most recently she has pivoted to become a fractional CFO at Blend2Balance.
Anna Yamashita, Solutions Consulting at Data Rails who has worked across SAS finance throughout her career where she helps FP&A teams implement modern performance management solutions.
In this session:
How AI is being applied in real FP&A workflows today Predictive analytics as the gold standardGetting to a single version of truth with AI ROI in AI Mastering Data Management Misconceptions about AI in finance and security Co-pilot, promptsBonus: Security and AI -
This episode is 53 minutes packed with practical Excel insights for an FP&A practitioner and Excel advocate at the top of his game.Jeff Gudim is a senior financial analyst, Excel evangelist and hardcore financial model architect at Strategic Education, listed on the NASDAQ and which owns for-profit, online Capella University and Strayer University, Jeff made the leap from private wealth management to corporate FP&A, leveraging his financial planning skills and Excel skills rising up as a data-driven problem solver. Jeff leads forecasting and analysis for a hundred million dollars IT function.
In this episode
Getting from private wealth management to FP&AHow Excel jumpstarted my career My favorite ever Excel model Monte Carlo simulations 3 time saving tips every FP&A professional needs Dynamic arrays and Lambda functions and “fundamental” Excel changeHow to convince your team to use advanced ExcelCompletely new favorite Excel function or featureConnect with Jeff Gudim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-gudim-7a994546/ -
In this masterclass Shifra Isaacs, developer Relations Advocate at Ascend.io, delves into her experience as data scientist, technical writer, and support lead providing fresh insights for FP&A and finance professionals.
In this episode:
Data science vs business analytics Pulling data not yet able to be modeled Python for Excel The right models for risk scoring, variance analysis and forecasting Replicating a process with a new tool using AIHow can we survive in an AI first worldConnect with Shifra Isaacs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shifra-isaacs/
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Taylor Otstot, Vice President Finance, Dashlane joined GoDaddy (now a $30billion valued) domain registry, domain registrar and web hosting company before their IP. In 8 years he climbed to senior Director of Finance running an FP&A team of 14. From this experience and as VP Finance at DashLane he says he hires for 3 things: curiosity, ambition, and finance leaders who are service-oriented. “If you bring those three things to the table, you're able to wade through a lot of the ambiguity that comes with those decision making processes.”
Also in this episode:
Finance and FP&A as antidote to the machine of Big 43- 4 years in audit as the “perfect amount”Getting to strategy in FP&APartnership vs accountability as a false choice for FP&AImprov comedy having its moment in finance The Tarantino approach to finance presentationsConnect with Taylor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorotstot/
Subscribe to CFO Frameworks newsletter on Substack: https://www.cfoframeworks.com/
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Dave Sackett is Co-Founder and CFO of ecommerce company, AIOne, and former CFO of semiconductor company, ULVAC Technologies. He is a vocal advocate for blockchain and AI and finance, bringing a blend of tech savvy, operational rigor, and a focus on “servant leadership" - that is putting the needs of the employees first and helping people develop and perform as highly as possible. He's a frequent keynote speaker, a Forbes contributor, and an active member of Financial Executives International.
Cost accountant to CFO and AI leader How I practice servant leadership mindset as a CFO Being an introvert CFO leader and overcoming the challengesCostly failures of traditional forecasting in FP&AWhere FP&A Software is going to be in 5 years Finance AI use cases FP&A as custodians of financial truth in AI ageConnect with Dave Sackett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davesackett/
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Derek Paulson is Director of Finance and Performing Marketing at Rad Power Bikes, a Seattle-based e-bike company changing transportation. In this episode he talks about his approach to navigating tariffs (“There no, no word in the English language more scary to a finance professional than the word uncertainty” says Paulson as he discusses required “efficiency” and “flexibility” in their supply chains). He also reveals his approach to the finance transformation required to shift Rad Power from a direct-to-consumer to an e-commerce and retail focused model, that is “starting with a blank Excel sheet to do the modeling for Rad Power Bikes”.In this episode:
How Honeywell and PepsiCo are top training grounds for finance leadersEfficiency vs flexibility in supply chains Is an MBA worth it in finance?Data privacy, AI, and finance Making the case for SUMIFsConnect with Derek Paulson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekpaulson/
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“The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) is a non-for-profit with a really simple mission, which makes it really easy for me to wake up and know what I’m doing every day,” says Bryan Lapidus, Director, FP&A Practice at the Association for Financial Professionals. “We exist for the success of the corporate finance and treasury professionals. FPAC, our certified corporate FP&A certification has been in the market for about 11 years now and 5,000 people have earned it in more than 80 countries.”
Returning guest Lapidus joins Glenn Hopper as they discuss the climate for FP&A including:
Evolution of FP&A and AI Certificates vs Certification Why business school doesn’t prepare you for FP&A rolesThe impact of Sarbanes-Oxley on changing the CFO role Why you need different CFOs at various stages of a company lifecycle Why FP&A professionals are so hirable and promotableHow to become CFO from an FP&A role -
Annette DeYoung, Principal Solutions Consultant at Datarails, is an accountant-turned FP&A manufacturing leader. She has deep experience in leading finance teams at manufacturing companies including Berner Food and Beverage, Rockford Products, Fairbanks Morse Engine, and JL Clark. It was at JL Clark, as Director of FP&A, that Annette implemented FP&A Solution, Datarails to mop up inefficiencies and end drain all-late night sessions at the finance department— she liked the product so much she ended up joining the company and has since spoken to more than 1000 FP&A professionals seeking to love FP&A again by removing tedious repetitive processes.
In this episode
Why I fell in love with manufacturing and finance over my career How creativity drew me from accounting to FP&AWhy a hard-coded accountant attitude was difficult to reconcile with more creative FP&A How to create finance business partnerships on the manufacturing floor Why I brought Datarails into my finance team at JL Clarke The future of Excel in FP&AIs finance (finally) making a move with AI? The power of getting out of your comfort zone in financeConnect with Annette on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahdeyoung/
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Craig Barry has held senior finance roles at some of the most iconic companies in tech and entertainment, including LinkedIn, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Electronic Arts. At LinkedIn, he led central forecasting, supported more than 10 acquisitions, and played a key role in the company’s integration with Microsoft before becoming Head of FP&A at BioRender- building FP&A from the ground up helping the company scale ARR from $18 million to $50 million. Now Barry is principal consultant at ClearSightIQ.
In this episode
My winding road to strategic finance Junior FP&A Analyst position at Electronic Arts as my first break Cost center focus in creative industries at EA with $3b salesLucasFilm (pre-Disney) run as a sole proprietorship by George Lucas Pixar head of finance for their Canadian operations and production planning LinkedIn and focus on “revenue, revenue, revenue”FP&A focus on modeling for acquisitions at LinkedIn and “virtual” P&LsStrategy for building out FP&A from scratch at BioRender My fractional CFO life -
Mike Dion works at a Fortune 100 company. He has previously worked as a finance leader at Verizon-as well as startups and as a mentor to enterprise giants to scrappy startups—unlocking tens of millions of dollars in value across industries like Entertainment and Telecom. He does this through Mike’s F9 Finance: a no nonsense website and newsletter (with 20k subscribers) passing on the skills that have accelerated his career, providing a guide to new tools (based on his experience automating 100,000 hours of labour) and secrets to promotion. He tells Glenn Hopper: “Three things, increasing revenue, decreasing expenses, and making your leaders look good. Those are the three things that move your career, not the reports, not the forecast tools to get to that.”
In this episode
Passion in media and entertainment putting in our first consolidated planning systemAt Verizon starting a center of Excellence (after facing a situation where 40 VPs wanted 30 decks based on Excel files Lack of approachable finance content: introducing Mike’s F9 Finanance Secrets to dynamic modeling and scenario planning 3 Ways teams are getting overwhelmed with forecasts Better prompting and my relationship with AIA completely new answer for Fave Excel FunctionF9 Finance: https://www.f9finance.com/
F9 Finance YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@f9finance
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FP&A Today goes on the road!. Our host city is Boston and the historic Harvard Club with an audience of Boston CFOs and FP&A leaders. Our first live recording sees an all-star panel of Jack McCullough, CFO Leadership Council, Michael Bayer, CFO of Wasabi Technologies, Cathy Yang, CFO Trexon.
By way of background, Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, talked of “remarkably high” levels of economic uncertainty. “I don’t know anyone who has a lot of confidence in their forecast,” he said. FactSet, a financial-data firm, found that over half of the companies in America’s S&P 500 index cited tariffs in their earnings calls—more than in any other time over the past decade.
In this episode we probe how finance executives can navigate today’s complex geopolitical and technological landscape including:
The ROI of a CFO AI Strategy How to navigate as a financial leader with tariffs and trade tensionsTrexon’s Experience navigating tariffs affecting 12 business units and 16 sitesTech and AI’s role in enhancing supply chain visibility Pricing increases for customers due to tariffs and navigating that from the CFO’s Office Back to work or not for finance teams?The future of accounting -
Shannon Nash is a chief financial officer, board director, investor, attorney, filmmaker, and CPA. She sits on the boards of Net Scout systems, Lazy Dog restaurants, and Sofi Bank, and most recently was CFO at Wing, the Alphabet-owned drone delivery company, and one of the hottest companies in the US. Here, she reveals the secrets FP&A professionals need to know about presenting to the Board and how to turn numbers into a narrative to advance to CFO and beyond
Explaining the power of the Board to shape a company’s strategyThe finance of film-making and my experience making a major new documentary The power of FP&A in securing $150 million in funding at Reputation.com Presenting to boards -what drives us crazyHow improv training unexpectedly revolutionized her executive communication styleConnect with Shannon on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannonknash
Watch On Board documentary: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/onboardthefilm
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CEO and Principal Analyst at Amalgam Insights, Hyoun Park helps CIOs & CFOs create the ROI and strategic business cases for better AI and IT FinOps. He is also host of the weekly podcast, This Week in Enterprise Tech.
In this episode Hyoun discusses some of the quick AI wins for finance departments.
My journey Starting as a CRM administrator to analyst Cloud spend getting out of control (unexpected cloud bills for $20m!)AI use cases: invoices, contracts, billing and spending contracts (dealing with 1000 software contracts) and reconciliationsAgentic AI and uses in Finance Zero based budgeting and Forecasting in the AI age ROI for AI investmentPeople who will lose their jobs in AI in finance vs those who will survive My futurist predictionConnect with Hyoun on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hyounpark/
Host of weekly podcast, This week in Enterprise Tech: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319034
http://www.amalgaminsights.com/
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With nearly 300k subscribers on YouTube, Bill Hanna’s weekly videos on The Financial Controller Channels provide his audience with lessons over a 15-year career in Auditing & Corporate Accounting. He provides inspiration and practices in accounting and finance through his videos and courses “Designed To Save You Years of Learning” (as one reviewer wrote “I have learnt more with you than 3 years studying accounting and finance”).
In this episode:
How I stumbled into accounting Lessons in accounting leadership The power of mentoring teams about mistakes I makeFP&A vs controller The accounting crisis affecting the CFO’s Office My accidental influencer journey Bringing practical explanation of concepts through one company followed across the courseThe accounting concepts needed to get to CFOHaving a wife who is also an accountant Being a Mac user using ExcelLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-hanna-cpa-7653a851/YouTube channel (Financial Controller) https://www.youtube.com/@TheFinancialController
Courses: https://controller-academy.com/
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Today’s guest is perhaps the leading CFO name in data and analytics, the ex-CFO of Tableau and DataRobot. Now as Founder & CEO at Caliper, Fletcher draws on over a decade of executive experience at the intersection of finance and analytics. At Caliper, his mission is transform cloud cost and usage data into actionable insights
In this episode Fletcher discusses
The relationship between analytics and the CFOSubscription, net dollar retention, customer retention, and annual recurring revenue as key metrics Getting from CFO to CEO and the learning curve How we rely on AI and predictive ML and seasonal patterns to find anomaliesGetting to base analytics and starting in AIChallenges and waste with cloud and holding engineers accountableThe opportunity to save 30% on cloud spendMoving from Excel to Google SheetsConnect with Damon LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damon-fletcher-bb8a6614/
https://calipersoftware.ai
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Walmart, Kraft Heinz, Blue Rock Therapeutics, and the Four Seasons hotels are just some of companies that regularly invite Ron Monteiro to coach their finance teams in storytelling. But Ron’s success followed decades of fear in presenting and public speaking in FP&A settings. Starting in accounting at Hitachi (“Ron Monteiro: “it was actually the only job I could get”) the CPA and CMA was inspired by a manager who gave him direction and mentorship doing FP&A as Kraft, as well as work over a decade in daily overcoming his debilitating fears. Now he delivers a playbook to teams across the world where finance is “expected to be at the table, not just tactically, but strategically.”Ron is also the author of a new book: Love Mondays which draws on his experience and interviews with finance leaders.
In this episode
Fear of public speaking I’ve carried through my life Kraft Foods and a leap of faith from my manager15 years at Kraft with 7 jobs and five promotions including FP&A manager, analyst and director Transforming Kraft FP&A into strategic value: Kraft Singles and “Getting Our Shit Together” meetingsBrendan Flynn’s leadership of finance at Kraft developing future finance leaders The downward trend of FP&A post 3G Capital’s buyout CPG and the essential metrics Learning what you can do to grow – listening tour as business partnering and putting your hand upLove Mondays! A Proven Process to Bring Joy Back Into Your Work Week and Life Paperback by Ron Monteiro https://www.amazon.ca/Love-Mondays-Proven-Process-Bring/dp/B0DPMTVYY3
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“Consolidation. A lot of people don’t know exactly what it is. They think that it’s just an aggregation of numbers. Like you just add numbers, but it’s more technical than that. Most of the time when we are talking about consolidation, it’s international big groups that have subsidiaries around the world. Consolidation is the process of converting those financial statements normally built locally, because they have to be compliant with the local requirements and be compliant with the GAAP of the group.”
Charaf Bourhalla has been Head of Consolidation at Nestle Skin Health, Vimian Group and Edify Investment Partner. He holds several key certifications, including the FMVA from CFI, ACCA with a focus on IFRS, and the PMP from PMI. His posts on LinkedIn reach millions of people explaining complex topics simply such as IFRS 10 – Consolidated Financial Statements, AS 16 – Property, Plant and Equipment and AS 1 – Presentation of Financial Statements.
In this episode:
From years of struggle, to Kimberly Clarke as a reporting analyst to entering a pharma company as business controller 13-year tenure as a consultant developing a deep understanding of IFRS, USGAAP, French GAAP, and IPSAS, 3 Jobs as Head of Consolidation including Nestle Skin Health with 70 subsidiaries around the worldSimplifying complexities of financial consolidation and non financial KPIsSecrets to working with FP&A for consolidation and forecasting and building a mid-term planContinual training for teams in subsidiaries Technology and complexity changing the consolidation gameHow Charaf called in when a company found itself consolidating more than 70 legal entities using ExcelNot to pick consultants with partnerships with only one providerConnect with Charaf on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charaf-bourhalla-04760a1b/
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