FP&A Today

Sahil Kamani, is a Berlin-based senior finance leader and FP&A professional at Ellie (Volkswagen Group), Starting at a credit rating agency in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis — inspired, fittingly, by a fascination with the documentary Inside Job — Sahil moved through regulation, capital markets, and an MBA before pivoting into operational finance 

In this episode: 

Being the person handing out credit ratings 

Cash burn and the KPIs that matter most in a turnaround

What bankers and regulators instinctively look for 

How the CFO you work influences your storytelling

Being CFO of Berlin's fastest-growing pickleball club.

 

Sahil R Kamani on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahilrkamani/

John Glasgow, is the founder, CEO and CFO of Campfire AI native ERP with more than $100m in funding, built to help high growth companies close faster, get richer visibility from their accounting data, and scale. John brings his insights as an operator who has spent time in FP&A and strategic finance, including at Adobe and an executive at Invoice To Go, leading that finance company to a $625 million sale to bill.com. Campfire came out of firsthand frustration with legacy ERPs and a need to rebuild the general ledger for the AI era.

In this episode:

My years in FP&A and strategic finance at Adobe before becoming a founder 

CFA Certification 

Invoice to Go acquisition what I learned  

The frustration and origin story of frustration and why Campfire was set up

Why building our own AI model makes sense 

Key quote: “If you slap AI on top of an ERP with summarized revenue data, then you’re essentially gonna get no insights that are of any value.”

Marko Horvat has been a public accountant, Controller, head of FP&A and CFO, as well as VP in Gartner's research and advisory practice, specializing in topics most relevant to CFOs and finance transformation.



In this episode he talks: 



Interplay IT and CISO and organizational politics (“if it runs on electricity, it’s ours”)
CFO skillsets gap


Real change in CFO’s Office with AI (audit pattern recognition to forecasting)


Last mile transformation in finance 


Mindset, skillset, toolset transformation 


Treating forecast as in perpetual beta 


The power of the subtotal function 



Recommended books:



There's Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work



Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

Troy Anderson is CFO of Kelly Services, a staffing solutions provider to various industries, who has spent his career driving transformation across some of the most complex business environments. Before joining Kelly, he served as CFO at Universal Technical Institute, where he helped double revenue over five years through a mix of organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Earlier in his career, he held senior finance leadership roles at Conduent, a $6billion player (bought by Xerox). 

Conduent life cycle a $6b public company acquired by Xerox

Investor relations at Xerox as a game-changer for my career 

Making finance a partner across the value chain

Business Process Outsourcing vs AI

The need for a deep understanding of your business 

Catch the full transcript below

Stephen Hedlund is head of finance at Rillet, an AI-native ERP which has raised over $100million from Sequoia and  Andreessen Horowitz. In  Steven’s words Rillet is “building the modern NetSuite.”

In this episode:

How Isaac Asimov’s Foundation helped me discover finance 

Experience from enterprise at Walmart to building startups 

Go-to-market (marketing) to Head of Finance Gillet 

The moat for leading ERPs and our strategy 

Being the ICP and marketing voice for Rillet 

“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation