FP&A Today, Episode 20: How FP&A Drives Revenue at The Economist

Howard Tunnicliffe studied chemistry originally. Once he realized he “wasn’t the greatest experimental chemist ever” he made a switch to finance.

It was during an audit contractor role at US tech company Dell in 2007 that his eyes were opened to an unseen part of finance: the “rockstars of FP&A”. He saw FP&A as a  place which joined “psychology” with the “nuts and bolts of how companies actually make money”. 

Howard is now Head of FP&A in the subscriptions business at The Economist. The newspaper dates from 1843 and is consumed by 1,185,000 of the most highly influential subscribers in the world.

In this practical and frank episode, Howard reveals the inside story of his career in  FP&A and how a revamped FP&A function has driven growth at The Economist. 

Howard talks with Paul about:

  • How a relationship break up caused Howard to focus on soft skills that now define his career
  • How the FP&A team are told to find analysis and insights which contribute to paying back their salaries up to five-times
  • Moving core metrics from “volume” to “value” as a response to digitization of news in their industry
  • The importance of The Economist moving from hybrid roles to “centers of excellence” in finance 
  • The key to successful business partnering with sales and marketing teams concentrating on drivers which bring sales
  • How FP&A managed a pricing strategy that increased total revenue by 15% and customer lifetime value by 20% for The Economist
  • Though “unglamorous”, how listening in finance is key to all good finance work
  • Book recommendations to enhance soft skills that have transformed his career
  • His favorite Excel function!

Book Recommendations from Howard 

Howard’s Courses

Grab these courses offered by Howard Tunnicliffe  to improve your Soft Skills in Finance:

Paul Barnhurst:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to FP&A today I am your host, Paul Barnhurst aka the FP&A Guy, and you are listening to FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails, financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users. Every week, we welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis and discuss some of the biggest stories and challenges in the world of FP&A. We’ll provide you with actionable advice about financial planning and analysis today. This is going to be your go-to resource for all things, FP&A , I am thrilled to welcome today’s guest on the show, Howard Tunnicliffe. Howard. Welcome to the show. Yeah,

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Thanks. So Paul, it’s great to be here.

Paul Barnhurst:

Well, we’re really excited to have you, and I think I may have said the name wrong, but it’s Howard. It’s Tunnicliffe, right?

Howard Tunnicliffe:

That’s it? Yeah. You

Paul Barnhurst:

Got it. Yeah. Sorry. I got it wrong that first time I knew as soon as I said it. Alrighty. Now, Howard hails from the UK, he has his own online courses around soft skills. He works for The Economist. Interesting enough. He got his degree if I’m right. Majoring in chemistry, right from the university of Bristol. And he’s worked for a number of different companies, including EY, Starbucks. And he’s spent, you know, last, almost nine years at The Economist and he’s head of finance for the subscription business. Correct?

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah. That’s it

Paul Barnhurst:

Great. Yeah. So that’s a little bit about Howard and I’ll give him a minute to share a little bit more about himself. So why don’t I go ahead and introduce yourselves to the audience, Howard?

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah. Great. Thanks a lot, Paul. So yeah, I think you covered a lot of my background already. So most recently head of FP&A at The Economist in the subscriptions business there. And yeah, I’ve been there for eight, nine years now, so yeah, clearly it’s enjoying, it’s enjoying it. It’s a challenging role for me. Um, and then yeah, my side hustle, as you mentioned as well, the soft skills courses. So I found that, um, there, aren’t always great resources, I think on soft skills that I know you yourself Paul post a lot of technical tips and there’s a lot of things on LinkedIn technical wise for finance people. And we seem to love that. So my, my mission is to try and get people more into the soft skills. Because I think it’s really important. Um, and in terms of my background, so yeah, as you said, I started off at chemistry, masters. I realized I wasn’t the greatest experimental chemist ever. So, uh, quite quickly moved on

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Moving into accounting while my fingers and toes and eyebrows were all intact. And then, yeah, so I’ve worked, uh, a little, little bit in practice. Um, I’ve worked for yeah. Starbucks and, um, um, big property company and yeah, it’s really just been a nice journey for me in FP&A you know, that’s been, it’s served me well. I think I’m lucky enough to say I’m one of those people that I generally enjoy my job, you know, it’s not every day is perfect, but I, I find the natural motivation is there because I’m doing something that I really enjoy.

Paul Barnhurst:

No, that that’s great. Like you said, the natural motivation, if that’s there, then you’re doing well. Not that every day will be perfect, but you’re enjoying what you’re doing most of the time, that’s a win. From accounting to FP and a, what kind of attracted you to FP and a as you made that kind transition, sounds like you started with accounting and then moved on to kind of finance and FP&A?

Att Dell, I looked at the FP&A team and I thought, wow, they were like the rock stars for me. You know I, I’ve always been really intrigued by human psychology and how businesses make their money.FP&A has been a great combination of those two things

Howard Tunnicliffe

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah, that that’s right. So actually took, uh, my first steps in accounting were credit control role at Dell computers. And then I moved into financial accounting and management accounting. So my aim there really was to get the building blocks in place. I think when I was at Dell, I really that’s my first experience of FP&A, and I just looking at the FP&A team and I thought, wow, what an amazing, they were like the rock stars for me, you know, I, I’ve always been really intrigued by kind of human psychology and, and then how businesses make their money. And actually for me, FP&A has been a great combination of those two things. So you’ve got the kind of influencing element, and, and the relationship building element, but also you’ve got the really getting into the nuts and bolts of how companies make their money.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

So that was, that was kind of calling to me that I spent a little bit of time to get the building blocks in place. So I always wanted to say, okay, I’ve done my journal posting, I’ve done my management accounts. Any then yeah, little tiny spell in practice. Um, and then yeah, kind of out into the, the commercial side was always what drew me in, I think really, and then actually in my most recent role, I feel like I’ve done that commercial side quite significantly. So that’s been kind of eight or so years. I’ve, I’ve worked on purely commercial finance and now I’ve moved into a little bit more of P&L ownership role. So the idea is I can broaden myself out a bit for the FD role, which is, is my next aim.

Paul Barnhurst:

Well, good. No, yeah. I agree with you. It’s good to get that broad experience move around in that sounds like you very much strategically thought about it. The accounting was to help to give you that foundation to make that next move. And you had done the commercial finance and move on to that FD role. So sounds like, you know, you’ve thought about it and had a good path there. And I really liked how you mentioned, you know, enjoy because I find the same as the numbers, right? There’s the nuts and bolts of it, but there’s the partnering and the influencing, there’s the storytelling. There’s, you know what people refer to as the soft skills. I joked about that one time on LinkedIn and told everybody to please stop calling it soft skills. There was nothing soft about it that got quite a, quite a conversation. I think, I don’t remember if we were on that one, but it generated quite a, quite a discussion. So speaking of soft skills, maybe talk a little bit about that, because I know that’s a real, you know, emphasis and kind of passion of yours.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

So, my story about soft skills actually is a little bit outside of work. So permit me to just go a little bit off-piste for a minute or two. It really happened as a result of a relationship breakup that I had. So I’ve been in a long term relationship and yeah, it’s pretty serious and we broke up and like a lot of people in that situation I’ve felt a little bit isolated. So I had to move out the house we shared, I lost some of the mutual friends that we had and I felt a little bit like starting again. So, I actually found, um, quite an unusual role as a, a guy who’s a soft skills coach. So this is more on the personal side. And I found on meetup, he was having a session called how to never run out of things to say, and I thought, wow, it’s 10 pounds.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

So it’s at 15 bucks. And I thought, well, what a great thing to do? What a, what a great use of my time, if I can pick up some tips because when you ever get told how to hold a conversation, when do you ever get told how to never run out things to say it’s a fascinating subject to me. So I went and had some, uh, great time there a guy called Ryan Williams and then ended up having some coach with Ryan, more, more about kind of meeting people, and, and socializing. And then I realized transferred that to work. And actually what I’ve noticed is I’ve got more senior at work, is that it’s the soft skills that really get you promoted. So I think it’s finance people. Most of us have done several qualifications. Most of us were pretty smart at school and that’s sort of how we value our intelligence really.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

And that’s great, you know, that it is important that we need that. I think you need, you need to have like the right level of smarts, book smarts. I think that’s important, but actually what I found in the lower roles, sort of earlier on in your career, I think it’s important as well and, and being the go-to person for Excel can be really helpful, you know, and actually being able to do tasks more quickly is really beneficial when, when you’re earlier on in your career, because that’s really what you’re doing. You are processing tasks and, um, and the more accurately and the quicker you can get them done, then the more value you’re going to add to the organization, but fairly quickly, you know, you get into the kind of senior analyst role head of finance something that you’ve got a team you stop really being that individual contributor.

if you want to unlock your potential in the work sense and, and also in your personal life, then it’s the soft skills that are really going to help you to do that.

Howard Tunnicliffe

Howard Tunnicliffe:

So you are no longer really, or you shouldn’t be doing tasks anywhere near to the level that you, you were previously. So it’s really about harnessing your team, developing your team, getting the best out of your team. So all the skills like delegation, motivation of other people, you know, making connections across the business are way more important. And, that’s only at my level kind of, uh, head of finance and what I’ve noticed that next step to FD the step to CFO, most FDS and CFOs are a very highly skilled in the soft skills. And the thing that I want to try and bring to finance is that I think at the moment, it’s generally the people that are naturally good at those things that get the promotion. So I think there there’s a lot of untapped talent, I think in finance where people are focusing a bit more on the technical side, which is great earlier on in your career.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

And, you know, you, you need to be good at that, but actually if you want to unlock your potential in the work sense and, and also in your personal life, then it’s the soft skills that are really going to help you to do that. And they’re the things that you need to get promoted. And, and maybe just one other story, which I think highlights that I remember in my first role just a local role at a software, actually a networking company and I reported directly into the FD because it was a pretty small company. And I remember he’d come to me and asked me for Excel advice for the time. Who’s a bit of an older guy and his Excel wasn’t that great. So I was able to save him loads of time, these Excel tips, and it, it made me feel really useful.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

But I remember thinking when I get to that level, I’m going to be really good at Excel because he’s missing a trick here. You know he could be a lot more efficient, but actually he had it the right way around. He was focusing on selling, who was focusing on strategy for the business. And then he had me to do Excel tips for him. So actually to get to the FD role if you’re already good enough for technical things, don’t worry too much. You know, you you’re good enough. That’s going to be good enough. And actually, as you get higher up in the pyramid, technical becomes less important and the soft skills become much more important.

Paul Barnhurst:

I, I totally agree with you, as I’ve always liked to say technical skills, get you your first job, soft skills, get you promoted. It really is. The further you move up, the more it’s about influencing, communicating, partnering, you know, the sales, you mentioned the strategy. It’s good to have that solid background and be able to do things when you need to, but the less it is about learning the latest Excel formula. Like, do I know how to do X Look Up? Do I understand Dynamic Arrays? Yes, those can be fun, but that’s the business. That’s not, what’s going to influence the business. Nobody influenced the business by using a different Excel formula than somebody else. Right. I know. Yeah.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah. I think that’s true. And it’s really about, you need as a business, you need to keep learning those things. So, yeah, it’s great that you have people coming in at these more junior levels and they they’re hungry to learn those things as I was hungry to learn Excel, you know, when I learned it, but like you said, for me, I see these fancy functions that come up now and I think, yeah, it’s, it’s not my time to learn those. You know, it’s not, my Excel is good enough. It doesn’t need to be great. And I’d rather focus my time on some wider topics.

Paul Barnhurst:

No. And, and that makes a lot of sense. So when you think of soft skills and you think of those, you know, those non-technical skills, sometimes I like to refer to them as, you know, kind of those critical non non-technical skills versus just soft. What would you say are most important? Like if somebody asked you, Hey, what are the two or three things I should most focus on in soft skills? What would those be?

It’s a very unglamorous skill and everyone thinks that they can do it, but actually the more that you focus on your listening and work on your listening, you realize that generally people are very bad at it. Thinking about my prior self in earlier roles you’re really getting some good coaching from your manager, but I think about how many times my manager had to tell me the same thing for it to sink in.

Howard Tunnicliffe

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah, I think it’s a good question. The first one for me the cornerstone of everything is listening. And I think that’s, i

Howard Tunnicliffe:

You know, I feel quite embarrassed about that. It’s probably banging the drum for, for six months about stakeholder management, or other things I should do. And it took me, took me way too long to, to improve that area. But thankfully he kept going and thankfully my listening improved a bit. So listening, number one, I’d say a big one at all levels is prioritization, I think particularly through COVID has been so much more work, so much more task, and we sort of lost the human side and we’ve taken on more tasks. I think for me, I try and tell my team at work well, what’s actually going to improve the bottom line? And that should be your priority, you know, and actually you should be challenging me if I’m saying, oh, we’ve got to do this, the regular reporting, and you’ve got something that’s going to really impact on the bottom line and we’re going to make an extra 50K if you do it a week earlier, let’s focus on that.

“I draw the link for my team and say, okay, you should be looking to pay your salary 2, 3, 4, 5 times over, and look for those opportunities.”

Howard Tunnicliffe

Howard Tunnicliffe:

So just being able to put the busy work to one side and realize probably 1% of your time is responsible for almost all of your impact on the bottom line. So let’s try and do more of that for a start. But when we get the opportunity, let’s just go full board and say, you know, one thing that I love about FP&A is we’re trying to pay back our salaries. You know, I’m trying to draw the link for my team and say, okay, you should be looking to pay your salary 2, 3, 4, 5 times over, look for those opportunities. And it’s possible almost every business, you know, it is possible to do that. Um, so I’d say listening, prioritization’s key. And I think also relationship building, oftentimes you, you only realize your lack of network when you, when you need it, if you haven’t nurtured it and that might be at work, or it might be, you get made redundant. It’s happening a lot to good people, you know, there there’s no rhyme or reason to, if you’re working in the travel sector, then you’re, that’s loads of redundancies there.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

And, and it’s just luck of the draw, really, whether your business is COVID, resilient or not. So yeah, I think relationship building’s really key. And that one also has some nice benefits outside of your job as well. You know, I, I feel whenever people leave a job, they almost everyone says in their leaving speech, it’s the people I’m going to miss. But do we spend enough time, day today investing in those relationships versus doing tasks? I, I don’t think that we quite do. Yeah.

Paul Barnhurst:

Lot to discuss there. I see you had kind of three main points as I heard that there’s listening, which I a hundred percent agree with is just critical. So important. Something I’ve really been trying to focus on, especially since I’ve started doing a podcast. Sometimes I find myself wanting to think of what the next question is. And also I’m like, wait, but I need to recap what they just said. I’m like, oh, I’m not listening. So it’s a hundred percent true. My head’s nodding and the other person on the other end’s like, oh yeah, he’s listening. But the reality is sometimes I’m not. It is, and when you said it takes energy, I was just thinking, you know how draining Sometimes it can be after doing a podcast, just from really trying to focus in. So that’s critical. I think that’s a great one.

Paul Barnhurst:

And it permeates our whole life. I loved how you said, Hey, if it’s going to get us $50,000, ignore the monthly task and focus on what’s going to make money. And I used to run into an issue that happened a few times a year, where we’d have a forecast due. And I had to finish commissions for our sales team. And I always told my boss, I’m paying our people first. If they don’t get paid next Friday, we might lose someone. But if our forecast is a day late, nobody’s going to be hurt. Never once did they complain? They always said, yep. You’re making the right decision. So I think that’s a great one. The prioritization and third one networking. Cause you never know when you need to fall back on your network. That’s something I didn’t know how to do early in my career. And really only in the last couple years with LinkedIn and other things, have I really started to build what I would call a real network. And it’s been valuable.

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New Speaker:

So how would you recommend somebody go about improving those skills? I know you have a course, you teach, but you know, maybe that’s one way people can learn, but just give a couple thoughts of if I’m someone who I know I need a focus on being a better listener or prioritization. I know I need to get better on the non-technical skills. What advice would you offer there?

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah, well, I think it’s actually quite difficult to start. And I think that it’s part of the reason why a lot of people don’t start because those technical tips, you know, it gives you that little dopamine hit. You can, you can understand it. You can try it out. You get that little kind of energy from learning a new skill. Whereas actually the soft skills are quite a lot harder. So as you mentioned, the courses, that’s really the reason why I set up the courses is because it’s hard to learn how to kind of build rapport. It’s hard to learn how to network as a finance person. So that that’s kind of the aim of the courses is to kind of tailor the soft skills to a finance person specifically. So hopefully lots of, kind of real world examples of how I’ve used those skills and how you can use those skills.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

But I think otherwise, I’d say on like, LinkedIn’s a great resource as well. So, um, yeah, by all means kind of follow me and just getting into really good conversations about soft skills. And like I said, there aren’t too many places where you can have specific conversations with finance people about soft skills. So I’d say, come and come and join in the conversation on LinkedIn. That’s great. And then I’d say otherwise, um, probably the self-help books, um, you know, you generally find those in the nonfiction section as there’s a lot. Um, so I’ve been reading some things, attention and prioritizing. There’s a, there’s one called

Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism,, , and Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence And that’s great books. It’s really about kind of slimming down all of your activities that aren’t really that worthwhile. And, and he, I mean, he’s achieved so much in his life and it’s about prioritization for him.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

And also  Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog. It is a really good book to

read on prioritization and there’s various, yeah, rapport building books says

influencing books. So I would say worth a, having a poke around, um, have a

Google. Typically these books are quite timeless. So you’ll see there aren’t

many books on influencing that really the cream rises to the top over time. So

I think it’s worth, worth having a, a look around and then you’ll, you’ll

generally see the ones that are popular and then they’ll definitely be worth

your time. You know, you’ll learn a lot from those books.

Paul Barnhurst:

No, that’s great. Great advice. And I appreciate the prioritization ones. There’s a few there I hadn’t heard of, but yeah, I have a few books on my shelf back here, I think emotional intelligence and some others that are, you know, some of those self-help books and they definitely can be a good read, but you know, the key is learning to implement some of them, which is usually the hard part.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah. Agree. And, and that’s a great shout, actually. The, is that the Daniel Goldman emotional intelligence one, I

Paul Barnhurst:

Think Travis Bradberry emotional intelligence 2.0,

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Okay. So yeah, I’ve not read that one, but I’ve read emotional intelligence, um, Goldman that’s. Yeah. That again, that’s a very well known one. Yeah. And that covers so many different areas. So I, yeah, definitely recommend that one as

Paul Barnhurst:

Well. Great. Yeah, no, I’ve heard of that one. I know it’s a good one. I think I’ve read a little bit of it, but for sure. So switching gears here just a little bit, I know you’ve been, you know, you’ve worked for The Economist nearly for nine years now. So how does kind of FP&A, maybe talk a little bit about FP&A The Economist, like what functions fall under FP&A, how do you guys think about it there?

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah. So it’s definitely been a journey for us since I’ve been at The Economist. So we started out and we really had quite a lot of hybrid roles. So you might have a bit of accounting, bit of management, accounting, and a bit of FP&A, and over the years, we’ve really kind of concentrated on more centers of excellence approach now. So at FP&A we’ve got a separate kind of accounting function and then we’ve got a commercial finance stream. So that was the one that I kind of used to be. And so they’re, they’re very close to the trading close to the sales and marketing teams. Um, and then FP&A for us is more about the budgeting forecasting kind of P&L ownership side of things and the reporting. We still do, um, some business partnering, but that’s kind of is more with data teams or group finance or the tech team functions.

Paul Barnhurst:

Got it. Okay. Now that, that makes sense. That’s what I always find interesting is, you know, every company structures it a little different, even what, just what FP&A owns, right. What’s part of finance, how do you break it up between, you know, business partners and the different things. So thanks for sharing a little bit about that.

The Economist has come up with iconic ads but sometimes budgets need to be cut. “I have had to go to some marketer and say, oh, we need to cut your budget for next quarter, by 20%. But, here are the reasons why, and that’s always been really well understood..”

Howard Tunnicliffe:

So, yeah, and I, I’d also say just, sorry, Paul, just follow on from that. No, please. In terms of, kind the forward look for us really. So I, I think the, the one reason that’s, well, one of the reasons that’s kept me at The Economist for so long is that the finance and the business are really well integrated. So, you know, at times I’ve, I’ve had to go to some marketer and say, oh, we need to cut your budget for next quarter, by 20%. But, here are the reasons why, and that’s always been really well understood. And, and that’s testament to the senior leadership at the company for kind of making sure that the message is, is spread by. I’ve found, there’s always a can-do attitude. Now, if we need to turn something around quickly, if we need to make a big, positive or negative adjustment to spend, or how are we going to do that?

Howard Tunnicliffe:

And everyone sort of mucks in and that’s great. So yeah, really enjoy that side of things. And then I think the other relevant thing is our transformation project. So I think probably every company in the world is doing a finance transformation project at the moment, sort of a little bit precipitated by COVID there. And, and that’s really interesting to me because again, in the past, I think we would’ve seen that as quite a technical project, and there’s no doubt, there’s a lot of, a lot of technical things that we need to do. A lot of development and a lot of quite intricate mapping, um, and, and, uh, mapping of processes and mapping a P&L, that sort of thing. So definitely a technical side, but actually my role is, is actually more about kind of the motivation and the hearts and minds aspect of that, because what I’ve found, I think, I think it’s quite natural that we are quite scared of change as humans, even if, even if we think we are not, I think we probably are.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

And I think that, again, that’s natural because we are risk averse as humans, because again, we are prehistoric beings and we’d rather survive than get a nice treat. You know, we are very much, uh, looking to, to survive and pass on the genes. And I think generally when, if you come to people in a work setting and say, oh, we’ve got this new tool and it’s going to be great, and it’s going to give us all these efficiencies, everyone around that table is thinking, am I going to get made redundant? You know, so I think that’s a natural human reaction. And even if you’re not thinking that you’re thinking, how is my role going to change and am I going to enjoy it? So even with the technical, um, implementations, it’s really important to bring people along. So that’s, that’s, I think the soft skills element for me, that’s really fascinating, um, in terms of bringing people with you.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

But also the other side is some of those more technical roles, um, the entry level technical roles. They’re not necessarily going to be there not just in The Economist, but in finance. You know, we’ve been talking about AI and automation for a long time now. And, and it seems like it it’s, it’s coming, you know, it’s, here-ish, um, only going to grow. So what we need to make sure is that if, if roles are being kind of no longer required because of some of the transactional roles are no longer required, because we’ve got this new tool, we need to make sure that we’re training those people that are in those roles, because, you know, we had the privilege of doing entry level roles and learning the trade and moving up and that’s, that process is going to be accelerated. So I think we just need to recognize that people need some help with upskilling, and again, I think typically that’s soft skills, you know, we can’t be a financial accountant for 50 years nowadays, you know. Things just move on more quickly than that. So, yeah, that’s it, it’s another interesting side, the training. So what skills are people going to need now, and in five years, and let’s start kind of getting them on those training programs, because as you said, the doing of soft skills is always the challenging bit.

Paul Barnhurst:

Yeah, no, thank you a lot there. And I particularly appreciate talking about, you know, digital transformations and how technology’s coming. Still. Communication is key. Now we had someone who spoke specifically Francesca Valli about digital transformations. And one of the big things she mentioned is one of the key parts of any digital transformation on what’s often missed is change management, right? As she said, change management, change management, change management, which you can sum up to communicate, communicate, communicate, you know, influence and involve people.

Paul Barnhurst:

And, you know, those are all soft skills. None of those are technical skills of how do we set up the architecture? What tool do we use? What functions does it have that all gets back to what you’ve been, you know, preaching as we’ve been talking, is those soft skills. I appreciate that definitely critical thing. So I’m curious, you know, you’ve been with The Economist for nine years now, and I know a lot has changed in the last, you know, 20, 30 years since the advent of the internet in online news in magazines. So how have you seen things change at The Economist and how has FP&A, you know, helped the business manage through this, you know, kind of constantly changing environment of how we consume things today.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah. As you said, big changes really over my time. So, you know, The Economist it’s got a great history to, you know, to our printed edition. So 1843 was the first one. So yeah, that’s, yeah, it’s incredible to work for a company, um, that, that has that storied history to it. But really in my time, we’ve kind of moved away from print first. So, you know, we were a weekly newspaper and we were very print focused. And, when I joined, it was really about maximizing volumes of subscribers. So, you know, print advertising was going really well. And we’ve got, you know, quite, quite a powerful kind of niche of, of quite influential high profile people. So people were willing to pay a lot for the print advertising. We know that’s declined over time and digital has grown, but it’s a little bit tricky to capture that digital revenue because you’re up against Silicon Valley’s finest and you know, they’re experts in what they do.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

So there’s been a lot of, um, transitioning. So now we’ve got, um, an app, Espresso, which has a daily component. So five kinds of finishable stories every day, and there’s a quiz on there and there’s, there’s some audio as well. So, that was a big change for us , moving into something with a daily component and just generally the digital element. So all of our subscribers have a digital element now. And it’s really about building those products that can rival the best companies in the world. You know, we should, we need to support our world class journalism with world class products and a world class customer journey as well. So, yeah, lots, um, lots gone on that. We’ve already done the kind of product and tech to, to get, um, uh, kind of make that shift as well.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

And we’ve done a big change on the back end. So we’ve migrated on to a new system as well, to help us be a bit more nimble in the new world. And, and your question around sort of FP&A what do we do well, I think what I’ve noticed is we just need to be a lot more nimble ourselves nowadays. So we’re, you know, the demands on us are increasing every day. We just need to be able to do things as quickly and as accurately as possible, you know, turn things around and allow the conversation, and then the conversation moves on and we need to reiterate as well. So I think a big change for me has been maybe more of our roles have been about budgeting and forecasting. It’s been a little bit more fixed, you know, almost probably a bit too much finance-led over time.

We’re much more agile in our approach. For instance making sure our models are not too big and not too small. They would rather have 80% of the answer today instead of a hundred percent of the answer in a week’s time.

Howard Tunnicliffe

Howard Tunnicliffe:

And now we’re much more kind of business-led. We’re much more agile in our approach. So it’s really about being able to kind of run some scenarios and, and making sure our models are not too big, not too small, you know, but, but typically it’s about giving people. They would rather have 80% of the answer today instead of a hundred percent of the answer in a week’s time. So it’s just finding that balance between something that you’re confident enough in, but knowing the business well enough that you don’t need to kind of check and recheck and then delay it by too long.

Paul Barnhurst:

What I took away there is really one of the biggest things is being more agile, being more flexible, which gets into sometimes technology gets to, into having those good driver based models, you know, gets into the soft skills as well, of how you communicate that and, you know, understanding of risk tolerance, right? Cause we all know finance people in general are risk averse. Like we talked about earlier, it tends to be in our nature. We tend to be kind of know people and, you know, we had, uh, Christian Wattig, his episode was released today. And one of the biggest things he said is finance has to be willing to take risks. That was one of the pieces of advice he gave. And your example of the 80% is the one hundred percent really going to be that much better in a week. Is it going to change the decision?

Paul Barnhurst:

And if the answer is probably not, then go ahead and be agile and get it out. If you’re confident, it could make a big difference, then maybe you need to wait. But, you know, I agree with you there, a lot of good advice on that front about being more agile, being more flexible in today’s environment. So, you know, question here, you know, within subscriptions and with The Economist, maybe what are some of the key metrics that you like to track? Are there any kind of unique metrics that you guys look at to help guide the business?

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah, I think we’ve got some, some interesting ones. So being sort of mainly subscriptions based business as I mentioned earlier on, I think in the past, the ad revenue was so much of a bigger proportion of our total revenue and now that’s what flipped. So actually the subscriptions of the cover price is where we make most of our revenue from. So we are now kind, we move, we talk about moving from volume to value.

Paul Barnhurst:

Yep.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

So now we’re looking for, so customer lifetime value, and this is quite a nice one actually, because it’s, it’s not that often that you can use your studies in your work. You know, some of the more complicated things, but actually our customer lifetime value it’s a three year net present value calculation. So that’s , it’s quite nice to use some of those concepts and it’s really about making sure we’re bringing, bringing on people that are likely to stay with us, you know, that’s what we want, that kind of longer term relationship with us. So yeah, lifetime value is a big one and then also some, some more short term metrics. So subscriber engagement is key. We talked about those digital products and one of the benefits of being more digital is you can tell how people are engaging with your product, what they like, what they don’t like. With the print copy it’s always difficult. You have to do some customer research. It’s a lot, um, you know, can, can you remember exactly how much of a newspaper you read? You know, it’s just not very exact. So as a data, you know, data driven-person, it’s great. Now we can get really great data how can we get to activate their espresso app, you know, and use that on a daily basis and build that daily habit and, and build a stronger connection with the brand. So that’s great. So yeah, subscribing great subscriber engagement, and that’s our lead indicator as well. So that if you, if you’re engaged more, you’re more likely to renew your subscription, which is what we want. And then I think another interesting one is, is what we call the year one retention rate. So of the people that started a year ago, how many are still with us, and if we see that going too low, we’re probably after the wrong people or, you know, we need to kind of retarget and if that’s going too high, generally, that’s good. But there’s also a point at which maybe we can, we can reinvest some of that money and we can kind of spend more on marketing and, and grow the business. So yeah, all these things are, are kind of in flux as we go, um, keeping an eye on those metrics, but they’re, they’re the sort of, um, the key ones that we’ll look at those three. Yeah,

Paul Barnhurst:

No, that makes a lot of sense. A lot of your key kind of SaaS subscription type metrics, even though I get, you’re not a subscription as a service per se, like technology led your journalism and there’s an advertising component, but still a subscription business. And thought that was interesting when you mentioned, three year, uh, lifetime value to an MPV for customer lifetime value at three years, you know, I hadn’t, hadn’t heard of a company doing it that way, but I could see where there’s a lot of value in that and you’re taking that time value money. So a very, very good way to look at it. So thank you for sharing some of those metrics. I found that interesting. So now we’re going to, you know, kind of shift gears here a little bit, and we’re going to ask, this is a question we ask everybody, so you’re going to get a, there’s a couple of those we like to ask everyone. So the first one is what is something unique that you can share with us? Something we wouldn’t find out about you online?

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Okay. So, so I’m, I’m going to carry out this and this sentence will get less interesting the more that you dig into it. So if we just wanna leave it where it is, then that’s the pinnacle. But so I have held a world record (he was one of  331 pupils from The Oaks Primary School who set the world record for the Most people in a thumb-wrestling chain!)

Paul Barnhurst:

Man. I am really tempted to dig into that, but you know, I’m going to leave it there just for fun. Because I have a feeling I’m going to tell people they can DM if they want to ask more questions on LinkedIn. So you might get a DM from me. All righty. That’s great. So move, moving on here. As you look back over your career, what accomplishment are you most proud of? So if you’re in a job interview and someone says, hey, what’s the, where are you most proud of in your career? What are you going to say and why?

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah. I’ll give you two if I may, or, and yeah, maybe depending on, on the interview. The first one and probably the truest answer to me is, is seeing people develop in my team and, and hopefully being a part of that. So yeah, we recently done, we’ve brought a few new people into the team and, and I just find it a really gratifying process. So, you know, we’ve all been on the other side of the interview table and it’s the biggest thing in your week. You know, it might be the biggest thing in your year. It might be the chance you’ve been waiting for and haven’t been able to get before. So actually kind of bringing people in spending some time with them, developing them and then seeing them move on either internally or externally, you know, that’s great. And I think I’m getting to the stage of my career now where I’ve managed a few people and, and still in contact with most of them watching them progress.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

So, the aim is that at some point in the future I’m going to be interviewed for a job by one of my previous direct reports that I’m going to say, right, it’s payback time. Now you need to give me this job for the coaching that I gave you earlier on. So that’s a really genuine answer for me. And that’s the thing that increasingly in my career, I, I get so much a kick out of and then more on, on a project or task focused answer that I was, I was lucky enough again, my manager gave me the opportunity to lead our last pricing strategy review. That was about three years ago. And that was a really interesting project. It was massively cross functional. It was, it was the biggest thing that we did in that whole year, looking at all of our prices, all of our markets, trying to standardize, making sure that, you know, we are offering value for money and, and we are kind of maximizing the shareholder value as well.

From The Economist Annual Report 2022: Th FP&A-led pricing strategy, led by FP&A, was done back in 2019 but continues to impact the company’s success.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

So it was, I think that was a kind of two or three month project. I was hosting all the meetings I was talking to the C-suite, a really amazing opportunity. And, again, that really, it led to  it was the biggest profit driver again in that year and the next year for the business. So when we talk about paying back your salary, I think getting that right was massive for me. And again I’d say, um, actually having the opportunity to do that was amazing. So that’s something that stayed with me with my team is giving people the chance to, to step up, um, because you, you never really know what someone’s capable of until you give them the opportunity. So that’s what I’m trying to do more of maybe, as you mentioned about taking risks, is maybe pushing someone from your team up a little bit before you think they’re ready and, and letting them have that room to grow.

Paul Barnhurst:

That’s a great answer there, appreciate both of those, the pricing, but in particular the people. And I really liked how you talked about, you know, seeing people develop and being able to help them, and then the part about pushing people and you never know what they’re capable of till you really give them a chance to shine. And it’s amazing what people will do that you never expected. I know I’ve seen it where like, I would’ve never expected that from that person and they just, they amaze you in what they can do. So there’s, there’s so much to be said about having trust and building people up. So that’s great. I’m not surprised you gave that answer with your focus on soft skills and, you know, that fits along that line. So I really, I appreciate that. And it’s, you know, all consistent with who you are, and I think people will be, you know, lucky to get to learn more about you from this episode and, you know, the courses and the content that you have out there. So thank you. This is another question we ask everyone a little more technical this time, but it’s one, we have a little bit of fun with here and it’s, what is your favorite Excel function?

Howard Tunnicliffe:

All right. So, as you know, I’m not, I’m not the best at Excel. I’m not your X lookup guy just yet, but so the function I like, yeah, I like the most is SUM Product.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

So it is actually one that I end up using quite a lot in, in my career. And it’s a little bit of an unusual one. So I think it just gives me the feeling of being somebody, you know, I’m like, yeah, I’m, I’m the person that knows Excel. So yeah, if you give me half a chance, I will be showing someone SUM Product. And I don’t know if people maybe, um, maybe it’s worth explaining what it, what it does. But for example, I might have, um, a list of products in a column, um, with a revenue per subscriber, and then I might have a percentage of volume. And what it’ll do is it’ll blend those two it’ll times the two columns together, and then add up each individual row and it’ll kind of, um, blend it for you. So, yeah, that’s my, uh, that’s as exotic as my Excel skills get, unfortunately,

Paul Barnhurst:

SUM Product is a great formula. I appreciate that. So two things with that. First, I recently did an Excel training and as we took the person through and we were customizing the course, the one formula that he specifically asked for and requested was SUM Product. He’s like, I want my team to learn this. That’s a great one to choose. And the second comes from Jordan gold Meer. He was, uh, I put some Excel jokes on LinkedIn the other day, and he said, what does an analyst put in their hair? SUM Product. So there you go. Did the dad joke of the day. I got a few, I got a few, uh, courtesy laughs. So we’re good. So L last question here, before we let you go, we’ve really, I’ve really enjoyed the time with you, and I’m excited to be able to, you know, share this episode with our audience and get them the opportunity to get to know you a little better, but if somebody was starting their career in FP&A today, what’s the one piece of advice you would offer them.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah. Well, again, it’s not, it’s not too glamorous, but I’d say just two words. Listen well.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

And I really, I really think that if I’d have had that advice, I would be way ahead of where I am now. It’s taken me a long time to get there. I think as we talked about earlier, just respect the fact that listening takes a lot of energy, you can’t listen well all the time. I think you just need to tap into the times when you really need to be receptive. And particularly with your manager, you know, sometimes different people are, are they give feedback in different ways. And I think what I’ve found from my own journey as a manager and also from people that have managed me is sometimes it’s a bit too subtle. So if your managers start to say some things and it seems a bit strange, or you don’t understand it, just try and clarify with them. Can you give me an example?

Howard Tunnicliffe:

And it’s a little bit what we talked about earlier on about saying back to people, and that’s what you are brilliant at for by the way with this podcast is, was actually listening and repeating back. And it feels a little bit stilted when you start doing it. But actually imagine as a manager, you’re having your one to one, or you are, you are prioritizing with your, one of your team and they say, okay, well, if I’ve understood, right, these are the three things that I need to work on first. You’re just going to be thinking, yeah, great. We’re aligned. This person is listening to me. You’re going to go far. If you’ve got the attitude

Paul Barnhurst:

That is great advice. And I, I would agree with communication. And the first part of communication is listening. You know, so many people think it’s about giving the answer and how you say things, and those are all important. But if you don’t listen first and really listen and understand you’re not going to, you’re, you’re just going to fall short of who you can be and what you can accomplish. So I really appreciate that advice. And I agree with you. I would encourage anyone no matter where they’re at in their career to spend a little more time on listening and see how they can improve it. Because we can all get better. I know I can. I’m sure my wife would say I can too. So

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah, I don’t think we ever get to the end of the road with listening, you know, you’re never perfect at it. And um, yeah, I’m not sure if anyone’s asked you this before Paul, but yeah. What, what would be your, your answer to that same question?

Paul Barnhurst:

Yeah, no, that’s a great question. I think the one piece of advice I’d give listening would be right there. I think I’d go with communication in general, learning to communicate and primarily oral, but learning to present, learning to listen, becoming a better communicator is probably the number one thing I would, I would say to people.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah, yeah. Really beneficial. And the thing that I like about that is it’s so useful outside of work as well. And I think we know, we know we’ve got a good fit with work when we’re learning skills in work that we can transfer out and we are learning skills out that we can transfer in. And, um, yeah, if you’re a good communicator, I’d rather be a good communicator than smart. I think you’re, you’re going to have a much more interesting and better life. I think.

Paul Barnhurst:

No, I, I agree if I had to pick between one of the two, I would, uh, definitely choose communication over just, you know, raw intelligence, right? Because conversations are one of the greatest joys in life. Being able to sit down and have those heart to heart and conversations with people, both professionally and personally, right. We, some of our, some of our best friends will come from work relationships over the years. I know I’ve made some great relationships professionally to become personal relationships. So that’s some great, great thought there. Well, we really enjoyed having you on the show today, Howard, and appreciated your time. We’ll go ahead and let you go so you can enjoy your evening. I know it’s nighttime over there for you over on your side of the pond. I’ll go enjoy my afternoon, but thanks again for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

Howard Tunnicliffe:

Yeah. Great. Thanks for having Paul. It’s been really fun.