Did you miss the biggest FP&A gathering of the year?
No worries. This special episode FP&A Today has got you covered .
From the conference floor of the AFP (Association for Financial Professionals) in Philadelphia (23-26 October), Paul Barnhurst sums up some of the key themes of the conference talking to some of the participants and key speakers. More than 100 educational sessions tackled everything from using AI to improve FP&A forecasting, to skills in building trust, and essential drivers business should focus on.
In this episode hear from FP&A all-star guest list:
- Bryan Lapidus AFP subject matter expert on FP&A
- Christian Wattig ex-Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and Squarespace FP&A and lead on the FP&A Prep course
- Chris Ortega, CEO of Fresh FP&A, and fractional CFO
- Hector Rubalcava – director of finance at OCC, the world’s largest equity derivatives clearing organization.
- Brian Malambo – Head of Monter Capital Partnership based in Zambia and investing in sub-Saharan Africa
- Mario Vasquez: Director of finance for the EW Scripps Company
Paul Barnhurst:
Hello, this is Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&a Guy, and today I’m bringing you a special episode of FP&A Today I’m at the AFP 2022 Conference in Philadelphia. It’s a three day conference for both treasury and FP&A professionals. And yesterday was day one. It’s the morning of day two, and I’m getting ready to head back over to the conference. I just wanted to highlight a few of the things from today and yesterday. We’ll be interviewing some different guests. Going to have on Bryan Lapidus, Christian Wattig. Hope to have Carl Sideman, Chris Ortega, and other AFP FP&A professionals. So yesterday I had the opportunity to speak with, uh, Christian Wittig. We talked about building trust and how that enables business partnering. We shared the stage together and talked about 120 FP&A professionals about the importance of trust building relationships and how trust allows you to really partner with the business.
How if you don’t have trust, you can’t accomplish all the things we want to accomplish as FP&A professionals, we can’t have our seat at the table. We’re unable to really create the value that we need as FP&A professionals. And so it was a great opportunity to talk on a really important subject. AFP is a great conference for FP&A professionals. If you’ve never attended, highly encourage you to do it. Next year we’ll be in San Diego. And so who doesn’t wanna be in beautiful San Diego in the fall, So you should consider it. Okay, until later. I’m going to go ahead and check off, but just wanted to get started on this special podcast episode for all of you.
Ready? I’m here with Bryan Lapidus from AFP. We’re just wrapping up the conference now. And Bryan, can you maybe talk to us a little bit about the conference, you know, who comes, how you kind of put these things together? Just tell us a little bit about the conference.
Bryan Lapidus:
Sure. So, uh, so we’re here, we, we just wrapped up though it’s, uh, at the end of four days. So I might sound a little bit hoarse from, uh, <laugh> talking, from shouting, clapping. Maybe a little too much fun at the party on the opening night. But yeah, I mean, the conference itself, we really try to cover the breadth of finance, treasury, payments, capital markets. We have six large scale tracks, which leads to more than a hundred educational sessions. Plus we’ve got the keynotes, plus we’ve got the executive institute, plus we’ve got 200, more than 200 vendors on the floor. You can meet whatever, interact with whatever company you want. And I don’t wanna forget this, we have a puppy park.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yes, I did notice the puppy park. I didn’t go over, but I noticed a bunch of people there.
Bryan Lapidus:
That’s part of the life hacks about stress management and relaxing. And I mean, really, I mean, puppies,
Paul Barnhurst:
You’ll leave that. Did you go to the puppy park?
Bryan Lapidus:
I did not. Uh, usually when I’m at a conference, I am running around <laugh>, um, from dawn till dusk. And it’s, I mean, it’s great. This is, this is our Super Bowl, right? Yep. This is a chance for us to meet with members, people we’ve talked to all year, the speakers, like real experts with deep knowledge and a real desire to, to give learning back to everybody. So it’s meeting people, it’s speaking, running round tables. So I did not have a chance to visit the puppy park.
I figured you probably didn’t. I figured you were a little busy, but I had to ask. I, I appreciate, I figured you might’ve been a little stressed throughout the event.
I appreciate you thinking about me. You’re, you’re that kind of guy. I
Paul Barnhurst:
Like that. Yeah, exactly. What can I say? No, <laugh>. So maybe can you talk a little bit, particularly the FP&A track, some of the speakers you had or kind of the events, like what, what kind of topics or subjects did you guys cover?
Bryan Lapidus:
Yeah, well, let me backup and I’ll, I’ll explain how we came up with the track, which will fill in the blanks of the kind of topics. So we have a call for proposals. The next one opens up in, uh, mid-November. And so we solicit the universe of finance to submit to us. And the window for proposals is open through the end of February. And then, uh, a task force will have an FP&A planning task force. We’ll review all the submissions. And then there’s really a grid that we try to fill out. Uh, and you could think about it as on one on one part of the grid, because we’re finance, right – we love a good matrix. So on one part of the matrix, we look for things that fill into the core skill areas that it takes to be great.
Uh, and we’ve defined this as in our, it’s really taken right from our FP&A maturity model, finance and business acumen. You have to know the business and you have to know finance and you have to be good at both. So we try to put things in that track. The second is technology and data. It’s the tools. It’s the raw materials that we use to create our magic. And the third area is personal and team effectiveness. So that’s mindset, communications, business partnering. And it’s also really kind of how are you, how are you keeping your FP&A organization top notch? So how do you manage your team? So that’s one side of the matrix. And then on the other side, we try to make sure that we have things that fit the wide variety of our audience. Because we have beginning an, we have college students, beginning analysts, we have CFOs, we have, you know, leaders of large companies, right? We, you know,
Paul Barnhurst:
$300 billion companies and $30 million companies, right? We have a huge range. So, and also, and people at different stages of their career. So the matrix is those three areas that I mentioned from the maturity model set against, uh, tactical, right? Very tactical about what you want to do, how you wanna deliver, and strategic. You could almost think of that as senior level, but it’s really how do you think about the business? And then we also think about mind shifts. So the next generation.
Got it. No, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing that. What would you say to anyone who’s considering coming to this conference? You know, what advice would you offer to them?
Bryan Lapidus:
Do it
Paul Barnhurst:
What I figured you would say. Anything else you’d like to add? Why should they do it?
Bryan Lapidus:
So all of the right, It, it’s a little, it’s a little overwhelming at first because there is so much. So I would say know what it is that you want to get from the conference. And uh, actually some, somebody balanced it out really, really nicely. Said, two-thirds, I want to be better at what I do. And one third he wants to explore something that he doesn’t even know, right? Just truly expansive. And so come here and take one of the sessions in capital markets. Take something in the career development track, right? So whatever your plan is, figure out what you want to get out of it to make sure, because like I said, it is overwhelming. And also invest in networking. And we, we try, we do our best. It’s a lot of people here, but we have, you know, several round tables offered on different days.
We had a happy hour. We try to create opportunities for people to meet. And you know, this is people who often come, especially FP&A people who come here and, you know, maybe they’ll come to the hub and the feeling is often I found my tribe, right? I, you know, I’ve talked to people, you know, the accountants don’t know what FP&A is. My business partner doesn’t know what FP&A is, but I come here right. And all these other people are having the same issues, right? And so this, a lot of people tell us like they love to find their tribe when they come here and it just makes a good experience for everybody.
Paul Barnhurst:
I mean, and I can speak to that, you know, I’ve met a lot of people here and that’s been the best part of the conference. I mean, I’ve enjoyed a lot of the sessions and they’ve been great. But just making those friends and the opportunities. Like last night, a couple of us, you know, some people, two of ’em I didn’t really know before the conference. One I’d seen on LinkedIn, the other I’d never met, you know, four of us went out and just hung out for a few hours, walked around the city, had dinner, you know, that opportunity. And we talked a lot of FP&A in finance cuz we could all relate right? Or that opportunity. Oh yeah, I’ve been through that before.
Bryan Lapidus:
I remember at one of the happy hours I’d introduced these two people and one guy was from an oil major and the other one was the head of FP&A, at a, a startup, uh, an internet radio station startup. Sure. And I just remember watching them walk down the hall and, you know, nodding, interviewing like, oh yeah. You know, working, working with management and getting them to understand, you know. They make a request and they don’t, nobody, they don’t really understand the impact of the request and the amount of hours. They both had that experience. Right. And that cross-pollination of ideas is really fantastic.
Paul Barnhurst:
Totally
Agree. Well, we’ll go ahead and end it there. I know you, uh, heading back today and you have some time to enjoy Philly for a few more hours with the, I think you said the college friends. So enjoy that. And you, I’m looking forward to next year’s conference and I’m sure we’ll be in touch again. So thank you Bryan. Appreciate you sharing a few minutes with me.
My pleasure and loved meeting you in person after talking to you
For so long. Yes. Great. No, it was really, that was another person I really enjoyed being able to meet. Even if we’ve only gotta talk for about five minutes cause I know every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been running one place or another. Yep. It’s been great to meet you and I’ve enjoyed it. So thank you. Likewise.
Bryan Lapidus:
Pleasure.
Paul Barnhurst:
My next guest is Christian Wattig. Christian is a leading expert in FP&A having led teams at Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and Squarespace. He also runs the FP&A Prep course. So, we’re here at FP&A today, the conference for AFP. Can you talk a little bit about your experience with the, uh, conference so far?
Christian Wattig:
Sure. So it’s my first time at the AFP conference. And, uh, yesterday I gave a speech together, uh, with my good friend Paul Barnhurst, who’s that? I heard this here as well somewhere. And, um, we talked about how building trust enables effective business partnering, because as financial professionals you rely on getting information at a time when you can still do something about it. And sometimes that puts people in a vulnerable position because your financial analysis may say, oh, we have to stop the project. We have to, you know, we may, it may not work. So you have, they have to trust you to give you that information. And that was the talk, what the talk was about. Um, going into it, I didn’t really know what to expect because I talked to other speakers before and they said, you can expect between 500 and 200 people to be there.
When I saw the room, I was, um, surprised by how big it is, but I didn’t know if we’d be able to fill it. But, uh, it all turned out well. The room was, as far as I could tell, almost packed, you know, over 120 people there. And it all worked out fine.
And, the talk went well.
Paul Barnhurst:
Well. Yeah, I would agree. The talk went well. I know I enjoyed presenting with you. If there was, you know, maybe one key takeaway from the presentation that you could share with our audience, what would that be?
Christian Wattig:
To me, the best way to build trust with your business partners is to extend it first. Right? Trust them first. Show that you trust them. You know, and it may not be, maybe people sometimes don’t, don’t realize. You know, how to show that you trust people other than telling them all the time. And so in the talk, we talked about different ways to do that. For example, by making yourself a bit vulnerable, by admitting mistakes, talking about feedback you got and talking about how you are working to implement it. Because that shows that you’re someone who sees feedback as data, you know, data that helps you to improve what you’re doing. And, uh, it’s a great way to show that you trust people with, you know, somewhat sensitive information. And then from there, once you establish that trust, your relationships improve, which means that people are more likely to share information with you, which improves collaboration.
And then FP&A and finance teams can do things that they couldn’t do otherwise. Like, um, spotting trends before it’s too late, you know, before the month end close so that you can have a conversation about, okay, what can we do about this? How can we drive the business forward? And then your business partners will see you as a strategic partner, as someone who does want to do more than just cutting budgets and measuring, you know, forecast accuracy. And then they’ll trust you more, which means there’s more better relationships, more collaboration, more you can do. And this is like a flywheel that just keeps spinning. Uh, and that’s, that’s really what was at the core of the
Paul Barnhurst:
Talk. Yeah, I remember talking, you know, the flywheel, there was a slide that you shared about that and, you know, starting with trust. And I really like how you pointed out that it starts with extending trust to the business, showing that, look, we trust you, we believe in you, we’re here to help you. Versus that adversarial where you’re in there challenging them all the time. Like, uh, okay, your guys’ numbers are just wrong. Right? Right. We’ve all, we’ve all been in those meetings or probably have done that before and it just doesn’t work. So, last question. Shifting gears here. What would you offer as advice to someone about the conference? Like if they wanted to come, would you say it’s, you know, worth it? Good, good, good experience for you? What would you say to people who haven’t been here?
Christian Wattig:
So I was surprised by how well it’s organized. You know, the information you get, the map is super, super helpful mm-hmm. <affirmative> because there’s so much going on, right? There’s so many sessions, so many talks. Some of them happen in parallel, so you have to plan it beforehand. But, if you do that, there’s a lot you can, you can see, you can go to the exhibitor floor and learn about all the different software platforms so they’re available. And you can learn from FP&A experts who come here and give talks. I mean, yes, there is a large portion of treasury activities here, but the fp a part keeps growing. They had test sessions this time and yeah, I would recommend people to check it out.
Paul Barnhurst:
I’d agree with you. I’ve really enjoyed it. You know, just came out of a talk by Microsoft around machine learning. It was just fascinating how they’ve done to improve their finance. Right? And it’s always good to learn from big companies that have those resources that can do things that a small company can’t. Right. You know? Yeah. So. Well, I appreciate your time and just taking a few minutes with me and I’ll let you get back to enjoying the conference. So thank you Christian. Thank
Christian Wattig:
You Paul.
Paul Barnhurst
We will be right back.
[Datarails ad]
And now let’s get back to our episode. The next person I spoke with is Chris Ortega. Chris is CEO of Fresh FP&A, is a fractional CFO, and has had many high-profile roles in finance. So Chris, how’s AFP 2022 been for you so far?
Chris Ortega:
It’s been amazing, man. And I think the most amazing thing I’ve had so far here is just like the number of quality sessions, right? I mean, where we were, I was talking to so many attendees about this and just like the diversity of sessions, the diversity of topics, the diversity of content. Just tremendous leaders. If you’re accounting, finance, FP&A, treasury person, uh, this, this is being like, almost like too many sessions where it’s like, feel overloaded. There’s a certain time that you wanna go to like two or three different sessions. So, but overall, it’s been really, really good. Great networking, great connections and good to see people back at, uh, big conferences.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, this is the first conference I’ve been to in a long time and it’s good to see people back and it’s great to finally meet the famous Chris Ortega. Oh man,Fresh P&A. I’m like, wow, I actually got to meet him today. I will mention I got to hear him speak today. So yeah, he, he did awesome. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your presentation?
Chris Ortega:
Yeah, yeah. So I talked a little bit about financial transformation. I had a 30 minute lunch session and just like walking people through the framework, right? Like the six pillars, people, process, partnership platform performance and profit optimization. And just walking through people around it, what’s important for them, demystifying it because I think a lot of finance organizations don’t really know the playbook and path to be able to do. And yeah, it was awesome seeing you in the front row.
Paul Barnhurst:
I was trying to find something to throw. No, I’m just
Chris Ortega:
<laugh>. Yeah,
No, it was great seeing you did a really good job. You bring the passion and I love that. Yeah. Anyone who sees you on LinkedIn and knows you, knows you come with a lot of energy and I think that’s great for sure. Sometimes finance can be very low key. Yeah. And it’s nice to see somebody that has that passion. So I thought it was, thought it was great.
What about you? Like, I, I mean man, you haven’t been to conferences, like how’s it feel for you to be here? Like
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, it’s been good. It’s been a lot. It’s been a lot of fun. I’ve enjoyed it. You know, it was fun presenting.
Chris Ortega:
Yeah, your topic was awesome. Business partnership like that. I mean, that was you, your session was like literally one of the kickoff sessions. It was like you had the keynote and then you had the second two.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, agree. Yeah, we were first one in the morning Monday. So Monday Christian and I, Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So, uh, changing subjects. I have a question for you. Not related to the conference, but you’re coming up on the end of the year, if you can believe it. Q4 already. Almost November. Holidays are here. So two things. One, what’s your key learning for this year? And if you were to offer a second, if you’re offering AFP people some advice or just finance FP&A people as you call it financial partnership and advising. Yeah. Not planning an analysis. And you pointed at me. Thanks Chris. If you’re offering people advice for next year Yeah. Like what to focus on, either what you’re focusing on or what people should focus on, what would that
Chris Ortega:
Be? Yeah, so the first part of your question, like the highlight from this year, I think like a, people getting back just all the different conferences and like thought leadership that I’ve done this year. Just like having the community of people, right? And the community, like really excited to get back together. That’s been like a key takeaway for me. And also on the, the finance FP&A and CFO side, I meet a lot of people that are really open to this modernization aspect, right? Like this wave that we’re in this opportunity to leave a legacy, this opportunity to redefine what it means to be an FP&A a finance or CFO professional. You see a lot of appetite towards that. So I think those are like my takeaways looking forward to next year. If there was like one place, like we have to get back to the people aspect of it.
I mean, you talked about this in the partnership side of it, right? Like we have to get better connected inside the business and speak in the business’s language. And I think to me, I really like Q1 being a very important quarter, right? Like that to me is gonna be the definitive period about what organizations are gonna do regarding the recession or everything else going on, right? Like you see people like finalizing a lot of their budgets. Q1 is gonna be that justification of like, are we, do we decrease on spend? Do we do those certain things? So I think that first Q1 is gonna be like a real pivotal, do we, do we pivot on a lot of different strategies, whether that’s people or business strategies, or do we continue to persevere what we have before? I think that to me is where I think q1 a lot of people are gonna be focused
Paul Barnhurst:
On. No, I agree. And I, I think, I like what you said is, you know, there’s really a pivotal time as far as transformation using technology, right? I mean, as much as we all love Excel, it’s not an enterprise platform application. Right? Right. And companies need to realize there’s a use case for it, even with an enterprise. Definitely. It doesn’t go away. It’s part of that, It’s a key part of the tech stack. But we also need to look at leveraging, whether it’s ML, AI you know, the different processes, the different tools that are out there, the good bi, there’s so much great technology. And, you know, it’s becoming more and more affordable with the cloud and even geared towards small businesses is finding the right opportunity. And it’s being smart about it. Cuz like you said in your presentation, you know, technology is an enabler. I hate when people think it’s the solution. <laugh>. No. That means you’re gonna waste a bunch of money, as you said, don’t buy it if you think it’s the solution, just stop now and save your money. Yeah, yeah. Right. And it’s just, it’s so true. We’ve all seen it where it yeah, oh yeah, this will solve our problems and you implement it and Okay. Nothing changed.
Chris Ortega:
Definitely. Definitely. So, and I think for me, you’re, you’re 100% right, And like to me it’s about, um, yeah, there are laws of technologies, right? Where there’s budgeting, planning scenario, workforce planning. One of the things I took away from the conference is meeting all the different, AR like treasury solutions. There is a prevalence of just like core technologies that finance should be leveraging. And I think like getting people to understand that that’s not gonna solve the problem that’s being meant to scale it. Exactly what you said, like that to me is what I, I I, I’ve done it. I’ve been in, you know, roles where I made the mistake of thinking technology was gonna solve all the partnership and people problems that we had. And I think when organizations start to realize that technology is meant to scale on those pillars that we just like, you know, I mentioned in my session that to me is where, where finance and FP&Aand CFOs are gonna win.
Paul Barnhurst:
I agreed. Realizing it’s scaling and realizing transformation is a mindset, you know? And really what we’re trying to do is evolve. It’s an evolution. And scaling. It’s not about, oh, I just go through a transformation, then my problems are solved. <laugh>. Yeah. If that happens, it doesn’t happen in life that way either.
It’s like your diet. We all try to go through a transformation and if it’s not a complete change, an evolution in your lifestyle, you just gain the way back. Right?
Chris Ortega:
Right. If you don’t, like, I love that analogy. If you don’t make it part of your every day and like you’re intentional about monitoring and tracking and progressing towards it. Transformation is never, and if I share this with clients, it’s never an end point. It is merely a point of like a journey that you’re gonna continue to evolve, you’re gonna continue to develop, you’re gonna continue to have wins, failures, and everything in between. Uh, and failures too, right? So I think to me like that, that’s the most important takeaway is like, this is a journey. We’re all, and we’re all at different places of the journey, right? You may have some organizations that are really far along. Regardless of where you are, the most important thing is like starting the journey.
Paul Barnhurst:
Agree. Well, thanks for your time. And we’ll get to see how much they can take out the, uh, <laugh> music. Yeah. Doubled in volume on us during the middle. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, hopefully they can hear it. It’s just a concert that we got going on.
Yeah. I know. You’ll get a concert with Chris <laugh>. You wanna sing for us before we end?
Chris Ortega
Uh, li’s what’s my favorite? Oh, I’m trying to find the beat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Finance, Finance, finance. I don’t know.
Paul Barnhurst:
And on that note, we’ll end. Thank
Chris Ortega:
You Paul. Thank you so much, man. Love everything that you’re doing with the FP&A. If you haven’t already, make sure to follow Paul. He’s a tremendous thought leader in the FP&A space. I love everything that you’re doing. It’s in a privilege and honor to meet you, bro. And, uh, yeah, man, wish you nothing but great success and continued support, brother.
Same here. I love what you’re doing with fresh FP&A and I love seeing your post, just the energy you bring for the finance and accounting community. So keep, keep doing what you’re doing and I’ll say the same to you. People should follow you if they’re not following you. So go find Chris or take on LinkedIn and click the, uh, click the button there and follow ’em. Awesome.
Thank you so much.
Paul Barnhurst:
All right. So I have here with me Hector Rubalcava from the event here at AFP 2020 Philly. Hector is director of finance at OCC, the world’s largest equity derivatives clearing organization. Previously he was an FP&A leader at Amtrak and BMO. So gimme your first thoughts, Hector, how have you enjoyed the conference?
Hector Rubalcava
First of all, this is my first time coming to an AFP conference. And it has by far super exceeded my expectations. Definitely having the opportunity to do an interface kind of engagement, get connecting with subject matter experts, kind of working on that continuous improvement mindset, right? A lot of organizations now are actually doing what they can so that we could stimulate, so we can motivate, entice people to basically disrupt the norm. And one way to do it. This is a very strategic vehicle to be able to give us the tools, the practices, and overall being able to take all that and convert to best fit approaches. So absolutely happy, very satisfied, and definitely looking forward to next year.
Paul Barnhurst
Great. I, I feel similar. It’s been a great conference, you know, listening to the different speakers. And for me, one of the favorite things about networking, you know Right. Getting to meet you in person. I’ve seen you on LinkedIn and getting to meet other people like Chris Ortega, Bryan Lapidus, Christian, Wattig, Carl, a lot of people that we see around LinkedIn. So what made you, like, what made you decide to come? How did you decide to come to AFP? Well, first of all, I am an FPAC practitioner. I am part of the board of council for AFP. And then I’m also part of the, um, the event planning for, for this conference. I’m very active with a lot of practitioners out there, constantly meeting with, uh, with Bryan and a lot of subject matter experts like yourself. I’m a big fan of yours.
Hector Rubalcava
So what made me come is basically, again, just kind of having this opportunity. As soon as I found out I was gonna be in person and the company actually OCC sponsored my travel, I basically pitched how it would actually bring value and motivated me to basically come in and, uh, be able to find ways to take back to my team and how to focus on that value creation kind of life cycle. So that would, that’s what really motivated me. Just that appetite to continue learning, keep, you know, improving on our processes and our activities and not just only focus on the output, but more overall looking at it from a framework standpoint. And, you know, becoming more effective and efficient on the stuff that we’re doing so that we can not only deliver and exceed our financial expectations, but also from an operational standpoint.
Right? How do we become that business, you know, tactical partner? And that’s what I wanted to hear from a lot of folks here in this org and then these kinds of sessions that we had. And it has been extremely valuable for me. I
Paul Barnhurst
I love that. The extreme value, you know, tactical business partner, I like how you said that. And be able to take that home and, you know, teach it to your team and learn, learn, grow. You mentioned you’ve done the FP&A C, the certification. What made you decide to do the certification and how has it opened up opportunities for you? Maybe talk a little bit about that.
Hector Rubalcava
Absolutely. So, you know, I figured I’m a CPA as well, uh, certified public accountants. And since I’ve been in the field of FP&A for the past 16, 17 years, sure.
I figured that one of the most credible, reputable, best in class certification within finance was FPAC. And I said, All right, well if I want to excel, if I wanna learn new tools, new disrupted ways, mindsets and connect with people, I should become an FPAC certified member. So back in 2019, I decided to make a decision. It was a team effort because I convinced my wife and said, Hey, listen, I’m gonna have to disconnect for a bit and be able to prepare, study plan, and become a FPAC. How has it opened doors? Right away. As soon as I became a certified, FPACs I started to basically take some of these creative ideas, innovative solutions, and started implementing back and Amtrak organizations. So trying to basically come up with different sort of, uh, you know, ways so that we could create value.
And that really opened not only that, it gave me credibility. I also started becoming more of a business partner, started getting buy-in and trust from my internal stakeholders. And that also opened up doors with other organizations outside. That’s how I basically joined OCC. My market value, uh, became very strong and I was able to basically excel and, and be able to shoot for a higher position.
Paul Barnhurst
That’s great. So it definitely sounds like it’s, it’s paid off in a number of ways in absolutely different ways. Good to hear is I’m, uh, scheduled to take it next year. Oh cool. Let me know how it could help you out. We’ll do that. So co couple other questions here for you. Won’t take a ton of time. One, I’m gonna ask you that we gotta get one person in this episode because every episode, if you listen to FP&A Today, this is a question we ask, What’s your favorite Excel function?
Hector Rubalcava
Excel function? I like IndexMatch. I completely, I don’t, not a big fan of VLookups. I like that. And I think there’s an even more enhanced feature now. I think it’s called X. Yes, XLOOKUP.Which is pretty similar. I think it’s a little more agile. So yes. Anything that is going to facilitate and accelerate my processing, I’m a big fan, so keep, you know, learning a couple of tricks and a couple, uh, you know, good ideas. Things that I actually read and listen to from, you know, LinkedIn like yourselves and being able to apply it. Because if you don’t apply, you’re not gonna remember it. Agree. We see tons of things. It’s the actual only learning that happens in the application.
Paul Barnhurst
Yep. Exactly. Without it, it’s just in one ear, out the other. And we’re all guilty of it.
But that applying makes a difference.
Hector Rubalcava
And looking forward, what I’m going to be entertaining and honestly putting together are slicers. So I I learned how to do ’em. What relearned re you know Sure. Re rethinking, relearning. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and uh, cause I used to do ’em before, but now I wanna be able to implement and put them together and some kind of a senior management reporting, uh, deliverables. So more to come on that. I’m gonna be exploring that kind of avenue and hopefully keep adding value, you know. Well, I appreciate your time today and thank you Paul. We’ll go ahead and sign off and go back to the reception. Thank you. Have a great, uh, rest of the, uh, afternoon. Thanks.
Paul Barnhurst
Hello, this is Paul Barnhurst back with you, your host of FP&A Today, and this is a special episode from AFP 2022. It’s Wednesday morning and I want to summarize yesterday’s conference. We had some great interviews with Chris Ortega and with Hector today we’ll have interviews with Brian Lapis, as well as Carl Sideman and Ben Juan. And yesterday there were some great conference speaker events. So I attended Chris Ortega’s event about the six P’s of transformation. I attended Carl Seidman’s event with three other speakers where they talked about distributed finance and structure and how you, uh, manage a finance team that has multiple locations, Talk a little bit about centers of excellence and got a lot of great advice. And then at the start of the day, yesterday I attended a great session by Microsoft, which I’ll share more about on LinkedIn as well.
Microsoft made it available during that session and they’ve made it freely available as open source. The algorithms they use for forecasting, they call it FIN. They share the process they use. And they talked about how they’ve substantially improved their revenue. They use it for their business revenue, their consumer revenue. And they’ve even started using it for their real estate OPEX and shared how efficient they’ve become and augmenting their forecasting with AI How the people can enter numbers themselves. They can see the AI numbers, they’re able to override ’em when it makes sense. But they found in general is the AI, machine learning has been more accurate at predicting their forecast than humans. And it was great to have them share that. It was probably one of my two favorite events from yesterday’s conference. And then at the end of the day, the final event was a keynote address by Adam Grant, who shared his thoughts from the book.
Think Again. And he was a fabulous, fabulous presenter. Great stories as he talked about the importance of being a scientist, how we need to think and act like a scientist versus being a preacher or a politician or, you know, others like a prosecutor was the other one he shared. And talked about the importance of that, of being open-minded, of being able to rethink and change your views. Talked about the importance of having a disagreeable giver in your life, somebody that will give it to you straight, that will help you grow and learn. I’m gonna sign off for now, but be back later today with some more great interviews. Alrighty. So I’m here with Brian, Malombo. The conference has just ended and I’m just gonna chat with him for a few minutes about his experience at AFP. Maybe you can start with telling us where you’re from.
Brian Malambo:
Uh, thanks. Thanks. Uh, my name is Brian Malambo uh, from Africa. I run a private equity firm called, Monter Capital Partnership, which is pretty much, um, investing assets across South Saharan Africa.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. You know, what brought you to AFP? Why did you come to this conference?
Brian Malambo:
Uh, firstly I’m a member of the Association of Financial Professionals. And then also I had an interest in, uh, in a number of things that, that I’m doing totally related to, to my business also participating in discussions at the, the, the conference.
Paul Barnhurst:
So was there a presentation that stuck out to you this week? Or maybe, you know, kind of a key learning that you could share?
Brian Malambo:
Yeah, I mean, given the kind of business I do, and I’ve been in financial services for about 20 years now. Uh, come, you know, starting out in 2002, um, and over the years I’ve learned that obviously function. The issue of trust in business partnerships is very, very important. My current business is Monter Capital Partnership Um, I’m, I invest my money alongside other people’s money, my clients. And in doing that, it’s obviously a function of, um, you know, trust is a very big, uh, big part of getting that, getting that going. And it’s not only from the, from my investor’s, uh, side, but also the businesses in which I invest, the platform companies. Yeah. It’s very important that, um, there’s that level of collaboration between our business, our funds, as well as the, the companies that we invest
Paul Barnhurst:
In. So everybody knows Brian was in the session. He was right in the front with, uh, Christian and myself. Well, we talked about trust. Exactly. And so you asked a couple questions there of how do you build that trust with, you know, the partner organizations and make sure there’s that trust relationship. And it’s so critical in business and it’s a really hard thing for finance. You know, often finance is kind of viewed as that organization that is back supporting things and is gonna say no to everything. So people are like, Wait, I don’t wanna deal with finance. Exactly,
Brian Malambo:
Exactly.
Paul Barnhurst:
What have you found worked for you in your portfolio companies? How’s that progress been coming on, you know, making sure that trust is there between the business and finance?
Brian Malambo:
I think a couple of things, uh, Paul, but I think one, one thing that stands out, uh, for me is the, is the transparency between myself, my, my business and the, and, and the other, uh, companies. We can do so many things. Trust is earned and spilled over a period of time. But obviously the issue and the ability of someone to come clean and, uh, deliver the good news as, uh, the bad news as much as they did with the good news, that is a key factor that contributes significantly to building trust. If, uh, for instance, my accountant messes up, messes up the numbers, gimme a report, and then now later they discover that they’ve realized that they made a mistake. It’s important that at that point immediately bring that to my attention rather than wait for me to figure it out or even if they think I’m not gonna figure it out.
So if someone does that, they come clean, uh, without having to wait to be reminded or to be found out. You know, trust in that, in that sense. And the same thing goes to companies they are investing in, if there’s something that is going on and if they anticipate that something’s gonna go wrong, they’re going to perform worse than they had, uh, project and communicated. The best is for them to raise it at that point. And then, you know, the conversation they change is to prove the quality of the relationship and the trust, uh, develops.
Paul Barnhurst:
I totally agree. Just, you know, put everything out on the table. Be honest. Nobody ever benefits when you hide anything. Rarely, ever will you fire somebody for making a mistake. It’s almost always for trying to cover it up or not being honest or forthcoming about it. Right. Because I love it, I’ll tell this story. I think I told it before the CEO of IBM, this guy had made a 10 million mistake Yeah. Back, I wanna say in the seventies. And he walked in, had a meeting with them and he goes, All right, I’ll pack my bags. He’s like, Why? He goes, he’s like, Cuz you’re firing me. He’s like, I just paid for a 10 million mistake. Why would I fire you now? You just had a learning experience. Yeah. Like, you’re not gonna do that again. I’m not gonna go through that with somebody else.
Paul Barnhurst:
It makes a lot of sense. And I love that example cuz sometimes we think, oh, we screwed up. But you know, celebrating those mistakes and learning to grow and develop trust is a process.
Brian Malambo:
Yeah, absolutely. And another thing that um, that has been very important, uh, for is the functional diversity. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, obviously before I set up my, um, you know, Monter Capital partnership, I came, I came, came together with, uh, with other colleagues, um, that I invited When I came up with the idea, I had initially set up a company called Long One Capital which is, it’s also a private, um, equity firm, but it’s just, I invest my own assets in there. Then it’s now a holding company of several other businesses, which I’ve invested in with other people. But obviously now with, uh, with Monter Capital, we’ve gone to different places. We deal with people from different and diverse backgrounds. So the issue of culture then comes into play and those are discussions we had at the conference and we shared a lot about, um, uh, embracing diversity, inclusivity and uh, just ensuring that DE&I I is, uh, is brought into Qantas and, and I was very happy to have this conversation with, someone from Amazon.
It was a great, great conversation everybody. I was very, very happy to, to hear that and also to get to learn about how others are embracing diversity, how they’re incorporating that into in their ESG and their investment processes is just a phenomenal thing
Paul Barnhurst:
That makes a lot of sense and I appreciate it. Well I just wanna thank you for your time and just taking a few minutes with us today. I really enjoyed getting to meet you here at the conference and learning a little about you. So thanks again Brian for chatting with me for a few minutes.
Brian Malambo:
Yeah, thank you both for having me on this podcast.
Paul Barnhurst:
So I’m here with Mario Vasquezat the conference on the last day. So Mario, tell me what brought you to the conference? Why’d you come?
Mario Vasquez:
I’ve been nine times now, actually every year since 2014 I received the FPAC certification in 2014. And while you need continuing education credits to keep it active and I, I figured out that you can knock out all of your yearly required credits with just coming to this one conference. So I was like, sounds like a good idea. So that’s what brought me the first year to the conference. And then I actually at the conference I realized how much you could actually enjoy the sessions in person, really good topics that they cover and you know, meeting vendors and getting to pick their brain on what they have as new features or what’s coming down the pipeline because then maybe go back to the office and pitch those ideas. So those were some of the first things that brought me in and why I enjoyed it and kept coming back. But then my absolute favorite is kind of like how I met you and got to hang out and talk. It’s networking right? And then you, now you have new relationships again, bounce ideas off each other. Well what are you guys doing? How did you do this? And again, you bring that back and actually put it into action at the office.
Paul Barnhurst:
So yeah. No, it was great meeting you. Just so our guests know here, Mario and a couple of us went out last night, had dinner and we went and did the rocky run. Yeah, that’s right. Saw the rocky statue from the movie and a few other fun things like that. Saw the city. So I agree with you. Great. So can just for a minute move, tell our audience what you do in FP&A a kinda what your job is, what you, what your role is?
Mario Vasquez:
So I’m director of finance for the EW Scripps Company. I support the networks division so if anyone knows ION television, that’s our bread and butter network. And then we have eight other television networks and so I do budgeting and forecasting. So that kind of normal stuff that you would think of in FP&A I mainly support revenue. And then I do have full P&L though on all of our entertainment networks with like, you know, programming costs to program it and paying for Nielsen costs for ratings, all those big kinds of expenses. But then also about 80% of my time is spent on, hey, should we do this new line of business or we have this new product idea that we might wanna launch or should we buy this company.? So I’m spending lots of time modeling different scenarios like that and it’s perfect on the session we just left on making decisions on those big projects and so that’s what I, I spend most of my time
Paul Barnhurst:
On. Yeah. And so everybody’s aware the session we just last was Carl Seidman, he walked through how to value a project and talked about, you know, the balance between the financial and the non-financial and how the work you wanna do up front to make sure you, you know, what’s going on and you have a good idea what it’s gonna take to really make it profitable versus well this sounds good, we’ll give it a try and then getting yourself in trouble. Right?
Mario Vasquez:
Absolutely.
Paul Barnhurst:
So did you have a favorite session from this conference? Or maybe just one or two kinds of key takeaways you’ve taken from the conference?
Mario Vasquez:
I’m really interested in AI and machine learning and I’ve been asking lots of questions about that, you know, walking around in the exhibit hall, talking to vendors about it. I was going to every session I saw that had that as a topic. Yep. Because there was more than one talk about it at dinner Monday night. We talked about it some last night. Right. And it’s, that’s been my, my favorite, you know, so I guess there was the session with Microsoft. Talking about machine learning. So I found it really interesting. Probably my overall favorite session, but all the sessions I went to were great. So, but yeah, definitely that one was my favorite because that’s where I am. I wanna learn as much about that as I can because I’m definitely, I’ve never done it. I’m not an expert in it and I wanna learn about that and ideally go get approval to start doing that because that’s where I want to free up my time to spend more time doing the analysis, less time creating the models and everything like that that I do. Because it takes time to do that. To do it right. You
Paul Barnhurst:
I agree with you. One of my probably favorite sessions as well, maybe my favorite was machine learning. You know, the Microsoft one they talked about FIN and they’ve made it open source and you know, I needed a recap. I did a couple minute recap this morning of the conference and I mentioned that about yesterday. Okay. Cause I just thought it was a really good session so we’re kind of on the same page, you know, I was like, yeah, I might have to go look into that a little bit. Anything else you would add from the conference? What would you tell people who are considering coming?
Mario Vasquez:
If you’re in fFP&A, treasury, anything in finance really it’s a great place to come for networking, learning, you should always be learning, right? If you’re not learning, then you’re actually going backwards, you know, So absolutely should come. Next year it’s gonna be in San Diego, amazing location, beautiful city, great weather, and you know, think about the certifications, right? So it’s a great place to come if you’re thinking about either their certifications. Also they have classes on it, you can talk to people about it and even if you’re, say you’re CPA and you’re not interested in another certification, you get CPE credits for everything. Aga it’s just a great place to get that continuing education credits and network and just have a good time.
Paul Barnhurst:
And another great way to get CPE credits is by listening to our podcast and asking a couple questions. There you go. So you gave me a perfect tagline, Nice to remind the audience. Great lead
Mario Vasquez:
<laugh>.
Paul Barnhurst:
So thank you for taking a few minutes, Mario, I’ll let you get back to the conference. Thank, but I enjoyed talking with you.
Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you.
Paul. Barnhurst here again to wrap up the AFP 2020 Philadelphia special episode. First time at the conference, great experience. Bryan Lapid and the people at AFP did an awesome job. Lots of people there. Both treasury and finance, Lot of great interviews we had. We interviewed six, seven people. I talked a little bit myself, you know, just some final thoughts, a lot of great sessions and I loved the sessions. But what I found most valuable from the conference was networking and learning, getting to meet others. You know, for the first time, getting to meet people like Carl Seidman, Chris Ortega, Christian Wattig, Bryan Lapidus, Hector Rubalcava, Juan, Mario Vasquez, Brian Malambo, and others. Just meeting these people, getting to learn a little bit about them and about why they love finance. And watching them get excited for different sessions and seeing the things they can take back to their companies. So I really encourage you, if you’re on the fence or deciding, Hey, should I attend AFP or should I do the fp and a certification? As you listen to this episode, think about it. It might be worth the time, either the certification or the conference or both. If you have any questions about the certification, feel free to reach out to me and hopefully next year I’ll get to spend some time networking with you at the conference. So I’m gonna go ahead and sign off. But I hope you all enjoyed this episode. Thank you.