Building a high functioning partnership between BI & FP&A
Wasabi Technologies (a Boston-based cloud storage company with over $530M in funding, a decade of hypergrowth, 450+ team members, and multiple exabytes of storage deployed) sets high standards for its finance and analytics teams. Both teams are under pressure to deliver fast, accurate, and actionable insights. Marcos Bento, Director Business Intelligence at Wasabi Technologies and David Suter, Director, Financial Planning And Analysis at Wasabi Technologies join us for a special two-parter. They delve deep into how their teams work together, across functions to turn raw data into real-time financial intelligence.
In this episode:
Building and gaining trust between BI and FP&A
Getting from “10% out” to within a couple percentage points for forecasting
KPIs such as dollars per terabyte
BI and FP&A as investigative reporters
Predictive analytics: forecast in the 6 or 12 months working with sales
The manifesto for AI at Wasabi
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43:07
A "Systems Thinking" Mindset for FP&A Success - Daniel Gardner
Daniel Gardner is operational finance business partner at FirstGroup Plc, a leading UK-based provider of public transport. Daniel brings a unique perspective shaped by a diverse finance career across iconic consumer brands like L’Oreal, the Body Shop and Hunter Boots, where he led major forecasting overhauls and drove commercial transformation. Now at First Group, he is leading the development of a cloud-based forecasting system for a billion pound division, working with more than 50 stakeholders to deliver scalable real-time insights.
In this episode he talks about the power of “systems thinking” in the CFO’s Office as a way of understanding how different parts of an organization (or any complex system) interconnect and influence each other.”If there’s an area, I’d say that FP&A could do with its systems thinking. Structure makes behavior and behavior makes structure. So it travels in a loop, which means that to make changes in an organization, you either have to hire people who do not exhibit the behaviors naturally or you’ve got to change the structure and alter the incentives that are producing the problems.”
In this episode:
Bringing my philosophy-training to finance
Six week finance transformation at Hunter Boots
Getting from lagging to leading indicators
99% of People Problems Are Really System Problems
Python+ Excel (practical examples)
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51:51
“I am done pretending" - my honest take on finance and FP&A” – Sarah Schlott
Sarah Schlott, Senior Director of Finance at Tray, a leading point of sale system in entertainment, joins Glenn Hopper to tear down the sacred rituals of corporate finance. Rising from billing temp to strategic finance leader, Schlott who has been in corporate finance for 18 years, delivers brutal honesty about what’s broken in FP&A and how to fix it. She challenges everything from annual budgets to variance analysis (“forensic accounting in disguise”) while advocating for a bottoms-up, operator-first approach that actually works.
In this episode:
The power of aggressive curiosity in finance
My most accurate forecast was also the one that failed
My views on variance analysis
Running a $100M forecast in Excel
Why we shouldn’t treat the annual budget as a “golden idol”
Moving away from a “spreadsheet guilt trip” every month
From Singer-Songwriter to Finance Leader
Connect with Sarah Schlott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahschlott/
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55:33
From Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to Energy Transformation: Connagh Hopkins
Connagh Hopkins is Head of Business Planning and Reporting at Western Power, one of Australia’s largest electricity network operators. Connagh shares her fascinating and unconventional journey from working on the global licensing for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to navigating Australia’s energy transformation.
In this episode:
Who Wants To be a Millionaire success (powered by Lotus123)
The Consolidated 10 year plan at Western Power
Scenario planning and Inflation challenges in utilities
How we are stacked: 65 person finance team at Western Power
The power and challenge of AI in finance
Connect with Connagh Hopkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connagh-hopkins-a9b3871/
Connagh Hopkins is Head of Business Planning and Reporting at Western Power, where she oversees the FP&A function for one of Australia’s largest electricity network operators. With more than two decades of experience across utilities, property development, not-for-profit, retail, fuel, and media sectors in both the UK and Australia, she’s known for her focus on commercial strategy, cross-functional collaboration, and building high-performance finance teams.
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CFO Grammarly – behind their $1 billion in non-dilutive financing and how we do FP&A
Matt Hudson became CFO of Grammarly – the popular writing assistant tool – after the company acquired Coda (a productivity tool)- of which he was a founding member. Now as CFO at Grammarly he is overseeing rapid change at the company which has over 40 million daily active users and $700m in revenue (and a 50 person finance team). Finance is helping pioneer a company vision of AI redefining every business application and workflow, “reinventing productivity”. To this end, in May 2025, Grammarly raised $1 billion in non-dilutive financing from General Catalyst to fund sales and marketing costs and strategic acquisitions. Since then, Grammarly acquired email startup Superhuman (July 2025). You sense more is coming.
In this episode
Grammarly $1billion non-diluted growth investment explained
Being a founding member of Coda (acquired by Grammarly)
How my product expertise plugs into finance
Joining YouTube when it was around $140million in revenue to $3billion by the time I left ( $36 billion today)
Will CFOs see an explosion of costs because of AI
FP&A set up at Grammarly and biggest KPIs
Bonding over a love of Chili’s
FP&A Today is the podcast for Financial Planning and Analysis. The weekly show dives into the challenges and opportunities within the world of FP&A, interviewing FP&A leaders, CFOs and other finance pros in order to give you the freshest insights and takeaways. Each week our top guests provide actionable advice about financial planning and analysis – from career goals to navigating challenges, and powerful Excel tips.
Our weekly show provides unrivalled insights for navigating FP&A.
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