“It’s like a fuse being blown. You can push as much power as you want through the device, but if the fuse is gone, it isn’t going to work. That’s exactly how I felt.”
Alison Allsopp is Head of FP&A at NHS Supply Chain, a crucial cog in the UK’s National Health Service. Prior to this, Alison was promoted nine times in her previous role at credit card company, Capital One. Despite (or maybe because of) this rapid rise up the finance ranks, Alison faced prolonged self-doubt and feelings of “imposter syndrome”. One day she reached breaking point. “As much as it was a real low point in my life, it was a huge turning point.”
In this episode Alison reveals how she managed these challenges in her career and lessons for those facing a similar situation.
Other highlights:
- Spearheading FP&A in the supply chain of the NHS just as COVID-19 hit throwing the NHS into crisis
- The importance of building trusting relationships and being open and transparent
- The secrets to getting nine promotions within a company
- Differences between big business FP&A and public sector FP&A
- The untold role of FP&A’s strategic role at the NHS during the pandemic
- The biggest opportunities and challenges for FP&A professionals today
- The interesting fact that many do not know about Alison
- Her favorite Excel function
- The power of a good Waterfall
- Her biggest advice for someone starting out in FP&A
Watch the full show on YouTube
Read the full transcript and blog
Follow Alison Allsopp on LinkedIn
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
Paul Barnhurst
Hello everyone. Welcome to FP&A Today. I’m your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A Guy, and you are listening to FP&A Today. FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails, thefinancial 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 actual advice about financial planning and analysis. This is going to be your go-to resource for everything FP&A I am thrilled to welcome today’s guest on the show, Allison Allsopp. Allison, welcome to the show.
Alison Allsopp:
Hi Paul. Thank you.
Paul Barnhurst:
So a little bit about Allison. Allison comes to us from the UK. She’s in Nottingham. She graduated from the University of Nottingham, started her career at Capital One, endearing her 18 years. There was promoted seven times, eventually working as head of finance planning, reporting and data before leaving to join the National Health Services supply chain organization where she’s currently the head of FP&A. So Alice, can you maybe start by just giving us a little bit about your background and yourself? Tell us a little bit about your career journey.
Alison Allsopp:
So as you say, I went to the University of Nottingham and when I graduated from there I applied for a job at Capital One and started there in the September after I graduated in their cost team. So I worked as a cost analyst for a period of time and worked my way through various jobs across lots of different parts of finance, covering management, accounting. I worked for a period of time in their emerging markets business. So that was when Capital One had businesses in France, Italy, and Spain. So I had the joy of working with lots of different currencies and different time zones as well. Because we were part of a US organization as well. And had some time in the accounting team as well and took lots of different loads of different types of roles. Some of them sort of sideways moves, some of them promotions, loads of different experiences building just lots of different skills and experience and knowledge that would stand me in good stead in the future.
And it also did a stint in the finance risk office. So not just doing accounting but also some risk management for two or three years before ending up in the finance planning and reporting function, which I really enjoyed, really, really loved and spent some time there and got promoted onto the finance leadership team. But after 18 and a half years, decided that the time was right for a new challenge and moved on to the NHS supply chain where I started in March, 2020 just as the COVID 19 pandemic started to hit the UK. So that was an interesting time to join an organization that’s linked to our national health service. And I’ve been the head of FP&A for almost three years, but for about a year in that time I also stepped up to support the CFO who was doing an acting up role as acting CEO. So I stepped up to support him on the exec team and attending board meetings and that kind of thing. So lots of different challenges during my time at the NHS supply chain so far. But all good, good experience.
Paul Barnhurst:
Definitely. I could imagine quite a few challenges March of 20 as the world changed real quick after you joined, I still remember it was in March, my wife and I went to buy a new car and I’m sitting in the dealership and it was the night a basketball player, they actually played for the Utah Jazz where I’m from tested positive and they started shutting down like the whole world. They canceled the game and I’m in the dealership when I hear this going, everything’s going to shut down in the next week. I’m like, should I be buying a car right now? Am I going to have a job in a week? And I’d already pretty much just was finalizing all the papers and going, all right, well we’ll see what tomorrow brings. Yep. I can only imagine being in the front end of healthcare supporting that, how challenging that time had to have been.
Alison Allsopp:
Yeah, it did suddenly change. I joined on the 2nd of March thinking that it was this thing that was in a different country that might turn out to be a little bit like some of the other sort of diseases that were threatened to be something bigger than they ended up being. And then within a week, my children’s Breakfast club and after school club had closed down because one of the key workers had tested positive for Covid and all of a sudden it became scarily real, but at the same time working for an organization that was providing critical supplies into the NHS. So home was chaotic because of the impact on the children and us personally, but also the impact that was starting to happen to our health service and therefore the NHS supply chain as a result. It was a crazy start to a new role and what I definitely haven’t expected,
Paul Barnhurst:
I could imagine, and we’ll dig into that a little further here a little later on, I want to ask more about that because I imagine there was a lot of learnings that one could take away from that. But I want to share with our audience. So how I learned about Alison is our sponsor Datarails. The person on the backend who works with me had reached out, said, Hey, can you have this person on the show? And sent me a link of a Woman’s in Finance episode. You did. And I was really impressed as I watched that, you know, shared a lot about your experience at Capital One and just some of your personal struggles as well, which I could really relate to having dealt with some similar things myself. And one of the things you talked about is how you felt unqualified for the roles you had and struggled with self-doubt. Could you maybe talk about what that experience was like and how you work through that?
Alison Allsopp:
Yeah, so I think it goes back to actually being a child and not being very confident in myself and having a few what at the time when you look back and you see them as probably quite normal childhood things that happen with challenges, with friendships and those kinds of things. But they really shaped how I felt about myself and how I trusted other people. And as I go started going through my exams and I started going through the world of work, I really started to feel a huge amount of pressure that I needed to prove myself and I needed to prove to other people that I was good at my job and I didn’t quite believe I was good enough. I remember going for, after I left university, I went for to a recruitment agency to look for some parts for some temporary work to tide me over the summer.
And they said to me, have you considered a job at Capital One and we think your CV would be perfect? And my response was, I thought Capital One was for really smart people and I hadn’t considered it because I didn’t think I was good enough and they put me forward for the job and I interviewed for it and I got the job. But even then I really struggled to believe that does someone really want me? Do they really know what I’m like and that I can be this slightly chaotic person in my own head? And that what follows you through and it takes, there’s a lot of things that just keep following you through if you don’t address them, they just keep following you through. So each time someone would tell me I did a good job. I thought, are they just being nice to me because I don’t think this is anything out of the ordinary.
Are they just being kind? And it actually started to get more and more difficult because the way that I proved to myself that I was good enough was, well if I get a promotion or I get a certain performance rating that’s been moderated, so no one’s going to give me a promotion if I don’t deserve it. That’s okay. So I started to push myself to work quite really hard to get those almost external validations that I was good enough. But there’s all along, there’s this little voice in the back of your head, you’re going to get found out soon. Someone’s going to realize that you are not actually that good and it’s all going to come crashing down. And yeah, it’s not a nice place to be.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I can definitely relate to some of that in different ways with the childhood and things. You mentioned the imposter syndrome, it was a kid I ran a lot and I enjoyed running, but I enjoyed it more because I got recognition, I was good at it. It was a way to kind of help with those self-doubts than that I loved running for the sake of running. As I got older, started doing it again, I realized I started to enjoy it for the passion of it after I’d worked through some of that self doubt and just being okay, do it because you enjoy it, not because, oh yeah, I came in first to my age group, so look at me so I must be successful versus, because others saw me as doing really good in this case. So I can relate to what you’re saying there and I think it’s a struggle that I think much of our audience can relate to. So with that, you had mentioned on the Woman in Finance podcast that there was a moment where things kind of changed for you, where maybe things came to a head and it really helped you step back and gain a new perspective. Could you talk a little bit to that?
Alison Allsopp:
To that? Sure. Obviously over the years you push yourself harder, you push yourself to prove yourself more and you get to the point where that’s not sustainable because you’re doing more and more things and it’s getting busier and busier. And I think for me was, there’s always been that element of imposter syndrome and lack of self-confidence. But then I had, when my son was born, I had a really difficult time and looking back, I can now acknowledge that as a result of a really traumatic situation, I started to suffer with depression alongside being anxious and lacking self-confidence. And a combination of those two factors started to converge. And my way of working through it was actually just to keep going and push harder and push faster. And I ended up, I was was that person that had the full-time job, I was chair of our parent-teacher association, I was a school governor and I did all of those things I think partly to keep busy and keep proving to other people as much as to myself that I could do it all, and I could be this person.
And it was the anniversary of, it was my son’s birthday, I think it was his seventh or eighth birthday, I think it was his eighth birthday. And all of a sudden it was like I hit, it was always like I hit a brick wall and I’ve read a few books that describe, sometimes describe it as the fuse is blown and you can push as much power as you want through the device, but if the fuse is gone, it isn’t going to work. And that’s exactly how I felt. It was just like I just couldn’t cope anymore. And I remember one day I went into work, it was the day after my son’s birthday and I’d been in floods of tears all the way to work and my boss at the time took one look at me and she said, come with me. And she took me into a room and she sat me down and she said, are you okay?
And I said, I’m fine, the usual, I’m fine. And she said, looked at me and really, and I just broke down. I said, I’m tired of feeling this way. I can’t feel like this any longer. And I went to the GP, I got some medication, I went and saw a therapist and that was a real, as much as it was a real low point in my life, it was a huge turning point to actually starting to address not just that immediate thing that had happened eight years previously, but addressed the stuff that had happened and the behaviors that I’d built up over 30 odd years of my life to become where I’d got to at that point.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you for being vulnerable and willing to share that. I know those kind of stories can be hard and that hits very close to me. And I’ve talked about this before on LinkedIn, a fair amount. I’ve lost some family members to mental health problems, it runs in my family and I lost a brother young when I was in college and that’s when it finally hit me that I needed help. And so I started to do the counseling and the medicine and it’s been a long journey since and it, I’ve seen a lot where it’s helped me. So I appreciate you sharing that and talking to that. One question I’d like to ask is just having gone through those struggles and having hit bottom and then got the help you needed to be in a better place, what would advice would you offer to someone who’s struggling with that self-doubt, maybe struggling in their career and thinking it’s all about proving themselves and they’re trying to do everything.
Alison Allsopp:
For me, the biggest turning point has been to turn the questions back on myself in terms of the, well the, there’s a couple of things. One is to turn those questions back on myself. So one of the biggest learnings for me has been that acknowledgement that I am a good person and I am doing the best that I can do. And I know that, and I’ve always known that and it’s learning that I can’t give more than my best. And if that’s not good enough, then that’s not my problem. That is I’m in the wrong situation or I’m in the wrong role or I’m with the wrong people. So it’s looking at what you value and what is important to you for your values and your beliefs and doing what you genuinely in your heart. And I’m kind of holding my hands in because it’s such an internal feeling and that’s one of the biggest things that I would say.
But also talking to other people, finding people that you trust. One of the biggest things for me is trusting that somebody will tell me if I’m not doing a good job. So I have since been really clear with the managers that I have, the good feedback is lovely to hear. We all to hear when we’re doing a good job. But for me to really believe it and really take it on board and trust that it’s true, I also need to hear the development stuff. I also need to hear the stuff I could do better. And if somebody’s just saying, you’re doing a great job, don’t worry about it, there’s always something we can do better. So I need to know, I have that trust that they will tell me. And that really helped me to relax a bit more into my role and be more confident in what I’m doing.
So I think there’s two things, one becoming comfortable with you and the other one is building those trusting relationships. And as a result, I lead by example. So I try to make sure I have the same conversations with other people with my teams and I talk about this kind of stuff as well because it helps people know where you are coming from and why you might need what you need. So if somebody’s struggling with self-doubt, I would say be honest with people, be honest about how you are feeling and if the person you’re talking to doesn’t respond well to that and almost reject that point of view, if it’s an employer, really question are they the right people to be surrounding yourself with? Do you really want to work somewhere where your true values and feelings aren’t recognized and appreciated? And that’s easy to say because I come from a place where that I genuinely feel that they are, but I found it works. It works for me for sure.
Paul Barnhurst:
Well thank you for sharing that and I appreciate what you said there about one, learning to trust in yourself, be yourself, and also surrounding yourself with people that will be honest with you, that you could have those open honest conversations. So I’m a big fan of having mentors or having those trusted people both inside and outside work that will give it to you straight sometimes when you need it, right? Because yes, it’s nice to hear all the praise, but we all know we have rooms to improve. And reality is we’re typically our harshest critic. I know I am. Other people say you’re doing a great job. And they’re sitting there thinking if only you knew the truth, right? I think you’re laughing because I think you shared some of those same things. They were figured out what I’m really like, I’m out of here. They do know I’m a fraud.
So I’ve definitely had those moments where I felt that way. And so I think it’s just important to have those right people around you. And I really appreciate how you talked about being willing to get help and having sometimes a professional that can help you gain those skills you need. So helping employees know that. One of my favorites episodes we did is we had two people from your, one from the UK and one from, it was Brussels or Belgium, I can’t remember now, but this was months ago. And we talked about mental health and burnout in finance because budging and planning season, we’ve all been there where it can be some really long hours and late nights as numbers don’t tie and just about how to manage that and make sure you have employers that can help you there. So appreciate you take a little bit of time to talk about your experience there and discussing now some of those challenges. So thank you.
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Paul Barnhurst:
So next I want to move on just a little bit more in kind of the FP&A side as that’s one of the things we really like to talk about and something I mentioned in your bio and the impressed me you talked about is that Capital One, you know climbed the corporate ladder relatively quickly. You add a number of different promotions and opportunity to move up. Can you maybe talk a little bit about that experience and then also what advice you might offer to someone who’s looking to climb the corporate ladder, so to speak?
Alison Allsopp:
Yeah, I think for me some of those promotions came when I least expected them. While as much as I wanted that external validation and I wanted the promotions to he help me. Actually, a lot of the ways that I developed and improved was looking for experiences and looking at roles that I thought I would enjoy or that would be a bit different or would give me something new and a new challenge. So I looked for or was offered, I was very lucky that I had, there were some senior folk at Capital One who did really believe in me and I’ve since had conversations with them to understand that piece. But they helped me identify some sideways moves that would give me a breadth of experience that then meant that I could make that next leap, which was really helpful actually because I think when you first start out, and I’ve seen this with other people, you see progression as being one step after another and you see that progression as being a promotion or a job at the next level or something that’s going to move you upwards.
Alison Allsopp:
What I tried to do was look at things that would instead of move me directly straight up, would actually expand my experience so that I had a more stable platform. And that’s the thing that I would advise most people to do now is a sideways move is often as much of a progression point as something that takes you upwards. And if you think about if you’re building a really high tower, if you built it straight like that, it would fall over fairly quickly. So actually if you build it more broadly at the bottom and then start to build up, then you have a really solid foundation on which to build your career and your progressions. And so I felt like some of my early promotions came really painfully slowly and at the time when it was like, oh come on, when is this going to happen?
But the last few happened quite quickly and now I look back, I can see that through some of those development things that I did that gave me a solid base. And then I’ve been able to pick on the things that I know that I’m good at because I’ve tried a lot of stuff and I found things that I enjoy and I’ve found the things that I can now look back and go, actually I’m quite good at that. And use my skills and where I think I see my strength to help me progress and develop as well.
Paul Barnhurst:
I love the answer there. We had on the show a guy who they had worked with Gartner to try to help their employees, it put a program in place to help them advance their career and they said it’s not really a corporate ladder anymore. A lot of times it’s a squiggly line, it’s all over. And he talked a lot about that importance of taking lateral roles and he referred to it as you have a finance passport, if you really want to get a senior leadership, you need to punch different spots in the passport. And kind of referred to it as like a finance athlete versus a finance specialist, And so some of the things you’re talking about, right, it’s building that base. If you really want to get to senior leadership, CFO, head of an organization whenever it might be, whatever your definition of senior leadership is, you got to have a base and broad experience.
And rarely you get all that if you’re just stuck constantly climbing. There’s exceptions, but you really, that broad experience. I know one of the best roles I ever took was the lateral from you is with the different company. But it led to promotions and it led to opportunities that I wouldn’t have got if I had held out and said no, I’m only leaving if I get a promotion. It has to be a bigger title and all those things. But I really appreciate what you said there cause I agree with you. I think often early in our career, like you mentioned, we think it’s painfully too slow, but I’ve been in this role for a year and you said, I’m doing a great job. Why haven’t I got my promotion or whatever it might be.
Well, I want to kind of shift gears here a little bit. I know we talked a little bit in the opening and even before we jumped on the podcast about moving to the NHS, I know you moved in March, 2020. Can you maybe just talk a little bit more about that experience in particular, you know what it was like going from the corporate world Capital One to an organization and it was supply chain, which is a little different from the NHS if you want to talk about that. But just going to an organization that was much more government run healthcare. Totally, I would think different kind of animals so to speak, very different from where you had been and going in at a time that was unprecedented. Maybe just take us a little bit through that experience.
Alison Allsopp:
Absolutely. So for the benefit of anybody that doesn’t, doesn’t know, isn’t familiar with the NHS I guess, so the NHS supply chain is a separate company from the NHS, but it is owned by NHS England. So we operate as a separate business. We have funding from the NHS to operate, but we run as a separate entity and the NHS buys products from us but isn’t mandated to buy products from us. But the aim is that we can procure at a better price because we buy on mass. So gone from a credit card provider with a US parent company, there’s a bank to a company that’s pretty much public sector all intents and purposes. So there are some similarities in a lot of respects in the, there’s a lot of governance. So when you work for a credit card provider that’s owned by a bank, there’s a lot of governance around what you can and can’t do.
There’s a lot of regulation, there’s a lot of reporting that you need to do to your parent company. And when you work for the public sector, there’s a lot of governance and there’s a lot of reporting that you need to do to your owners and prove that strong financial governance and robust reporting. As much as you’d think they’re very, very different. There are some similarities in terms of that robust nature of what you have to do, but just for slightly different reasons. I think the biggest difference for me is going from a company that is a public limited company and you have sort of private shareholders to one where you are responsible for managing public money and there’s a huge. In the UK there raise a huge passion around the NHs. So actually in the UK there’s a real banks and credit card providers are the bad guys and you are bad and you are evil and in the NHS is almost our baby and it’s something that we need to protect and nurture.
So it’s a very different mentality to when you tell people that you work for the NHS versus you work for a credit card company, but also there’s a real passion to the people that you work with when you work within the NHS. I would say the majority of people that I work with all have some history with our NHS or their families have history with the NHS and most people are, we’re all united actually with a common purpose to want to drive benefits into the frontline so that the frontline can really succeed and spend the money on treating patients and improving patient care, improving patient outcomes. And that’s the thing that we as an organization, we feel really passionately about and it drives everything that we do and it’s, it is, it’s wonderful to work for an organization that has such a social purpose and a real passion amongst its workforce.
And I did, there was a lot of that within Capital One as well. Capital One really wanted to not be the bad guy of credit cards and banking. Capital One wanted to be change banking and be something that was good. So there are similarities, but there are a lot of differences. Working in FP&A and there is a massive focus on in Capital One, on the analytics and really being and deeply analytical. Within the NHS, there’s a lot more around how are we spending our money? Are we getting value for money? What benefits are we driving? And really wanting to understand how we’re spending our money and what we’re going to get for it. It’s the real, so what, it’s not just X millions or thousands of pounds. It is ‘ and what does that mean?’ For every pound that we spend, that’s a pound that the frontline can’t spend on a nurse or on a patient directly. So real, there was a big difference in focus.
Paul Barnhurst:
So a lot to unpack. There are a few things, I had a laugh when you said the Capital One and the big evil bank. I did things a little differently, but I worked for American Express for eight years, so I can relate to that. And before that I worked for the government actually in supply chain, in procurement, writing contracts. It wasn’t in the healthcare, it was in the military, so it was with the Navy. So just some of the things you said in the government and just the different thinking as you’re going through all this. And we’re going to get a little bit reversed, a little different, but I can relate to a lot of what you said there. But something else really kind of touched me there or struck a nerve that you said is just the idea of every dollar the healthcare supply chain spends is one less dollar to help treat somebody. That goes to the frontline as you mentioned. So how does FP&A contribute to the strategy of the national service supply chain and also the NHS as a whole? And then maybe even more specifically, how did you manage that during the pandemic? Because I would imagine the supply chain, I know it the US was stretched to its limits, masks, beds, a lot of things. So maybe just talk a little bit about in particular first just how FP&A helped manage through the pandemic and the challenges that came to the supply chain.
Alison Allsopp:
When it comes to the typical things that you think about during the pandemic was PPE, so like say masks, aprons, gloves, those kinds of things, a lot of that fairly quickly was carved out and a separate entity run by the Department of Health was created because it was just identified that this very quickly that was there was just going to be on such a massive scale that it needed to be managed as its own thing and dealt with by itself. So what NHS supply chain was left with was a lot of what was left with everything that wasn’t PPE. And that actually changed quite, we still had people that were involved in PPE, but it changed quite a lot. And it was constantly changing because as you imagine, hospitals and all healthcare settings were overwhelmed with what was happening with covid. So things like elective surgeries and all those other things where we would normally provide products into the hospitals and the trusts started to drop down. So from an FP&A perspective, there was a lot of needing to reforecast on the impact that would have on our business. So there was greater demand for beds, but there was less demand for surgical instruments because fewer operations were happening and fewer cancer treatments were happening, even those kinds of things. So we were having to help advise the business on what was changing and how demand for our products was changing and what that impact was on our funding position and the programs and projects that we needed to run and all those kinds of things.
So I remember joining a focus group with people in lots of different organizations. It was several months after the pandemic hit. And we all talked about having to the constant budget cycle and ending up having to almost re-baseline budgets multiple times. So I think the value that FP&A added during that time was that constant clarity of in a very constantly changing environment, what does this mean? What’s different? What’s changed? How do we need to focus our resources, how can we change what we do and really just move with the times very, very quickly and provide different models of different scenarios and how are we comparing against scenario A, B, C, D, et cetera. So that was quite a busy time, even though we didn’t have some of the core products that you might imagine that we would need to be looking at during that time.
Paul Barnhurst:
Sure, yeah, I could see having PPE carved out was obviously a huge thing that you didn’t have to deal with, but it didn’t mean your budget had completely changed. It’s something you’re probably used to buying. So there was changes for that. And then for all the other things you mentioned, so that constant forecasting. Yep. I mean remember when the pandemic hit? I worked for a company that one of the big things we dealt with, we dealt with the automotive industry and we had a lot in Europe where insurance claims all of a sudden nobody’s driving, nobody’s on the road, there’s no transactions around claimed for accidents and things. And so all of a sudden a 90% drop and trying to reforecast, okay, how long does this last? What does it look like if it’s three months? If it’s six months? Well what about this scenario? What if it gets worse? What if it gets better? Imagine all those type of things you’re probably constantly going through. I mean, what advice would you offer having gone through that experience, what do you think are some of the most important things to manage in such a fluid environment where you know, never know what the next day is going to be like, so to speak?
Alison Allsopp:
I think one of the biggest things is to make sure that you’ve got those relationships built with other areas of the business. So making sure that your business partnering is really, really strong and make sure that you are plugged into all of those different things so that you hear about things quickly in that constantly changing environment. If you don’t hear about something for two weeks, the world’s changed several times in that two week period. But if you’ve got those really strong relationships, you are plugged into the right conversations or the right meetings, the right forums, you’re getting the right reports or data from the various sources, you can spot those trends and you can spot where you can add value. And I think that’s the big piece that FP&A can play. A lot of people see finance people as holding the purse strings and that kind of thing, but I think FP&A is so much more than that.
And the way that we operate within my team is we need to be partners with the business and we need to support the business through tricky times we’ve been through. And building those relationships is the key to making that happen both in a crisis situation, in the pandemic situation, but in a business as usual situation. And then you can see much more quickly and much more easily how you can add value through analysis, through reforecasting . So what does this mean to us? How do we add value as an organization? We need to create business cases because things have changed and we need to get some additional investment or we need to pivot and do something differently. And that really being plugged in helps us to support the business in their decision making and not just be seen to count the numbers and tell them off when they ever spent against their budget.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I saw something much when you said, tell them off, it was describing what the rest of the business thinks about finance and it said one of them was finance feels like you’ve personally attacked them. If you ask for money to provide cream cheese and bagels out of breakfast, it was kind of the idea. It is like, yeah, right. Well I want to spend twice. Oh no, no, no, we can’t do that. And obviously that’s not what we want to be known for. It’s like you say, we want to be known as a partner where we can help bring value and figure out how to help them get through these difficult situations with keeping a financial lens in mind. I mean obviously we’d all like to have unlimited money, especially in a situation like the NHS, right? We’d like to be able to fund everything and do everything for everybody. But the reality is it’s just unfortunately resources are limited and I think we have such a key role we can play there, especially when we partner and build that trusting relationship with the business, that’s when we can really help guide them through the challenges. And speaking of challenges, I know the last few years have obviously been a big challenge, but what do you see as maybe some of the biggest challenges moving forward for the NHS and NHS supply chain?
Alison Allsopp:
I think some of the biggest challenges for the NHS at the moment are resources generally. So there’s a real challenge around having sufficient nurses and resources for those that work in the hospitals and for various other services around the hospital trust. So there’s a real challenge around there being enough funding to even keep things moving as they need to be. So there are really long waiting lists, there are challenges around having the right number of people, but at the moment in the UK, there are strikes happening over not just pay but pay and conditions and working conditions and those kinds of things. And there’s a really challenging time. Our NHS has been through so much over the last three years and there’s just no breathing space for them to recover and deal with everything that’s happened in the last three years and to repair where things are.
And organizations like the NHS supply chain, I think a really critical part in helping the frontline to put its money where it really needs to put its money. And we can really play an important role in not just pound savings on products and that kind of thing, but in really having some insight and support in terms of driving genuine value to allow the NHS to have more money to spend on the things that it really needs to spend the money on and to improve the way that we interact with the NHS and those kinds of things. There are huge challenges and the economy is going to be one of the biggest challenges I think that faces not just the NHS, not just the NHS supply chain, but the broader whole, but across the whole country, across the world is the inflation
We’re seeing record levels of inflation and those kinds of things. So there are huge challenges from all different angles and I think that economic situation also creates challenges because it challenges our people. So we have colleagues who will be facing personal challenges as a result of the economic situation, which then makes coming to work kind of difficult because they’re dealing with a whole bunch of other stuff as well. So yeah, you’ve got challenges from all different angles. But I think funding is one of those really big things. And I don’t envy those that hold the purse strings at the most senior level trying to decide where the money goes because that is a really difficult thing to juggle.
Paul Barnhurst:
It is for sure, and you can never win. No, you’re always someone’s going to be unhappy because there’s just not unlimited funds. So I could see funding being a real challenge. I think the other one you mentioned makes sense to me is just the stress on the system right? There really hasn’t been a break over the last few years and so you have people wearing down and so you know, want to be able to do everything you can to help preserve those funding and make intelligent decisions. But there’s also that very human side that’s a real concern of just the people and the challenges of being stressed for a couple years in ways that you probably haven’t been for such a long time in your life, in your work environment. And then to have the personal come behind of the economy and the inflation creates some real challenges both on a professional personal relationship for people. So trying to also, how do you manage that as an organization? And so speaking of that, how do you manage that with your team? How do you make sure that you’re getting the work done you need to and that everybody’s in a good place?
Alison Allsopp:
I think it comes back to something I’ve said earlier, communication talk. Knowing your team, spending the time to get to know individuals, but also creating that space where they feel safe to talk about things. Making sure that, and it goes, it’s not just about now, it’s about the work that you’ve put in before this point. And it goes for any situation. I firmly believe in putting people first and talking to my team and understanding who they are, where they come from and what they bring and what worries them, what makes them tick, what worries them. And the more you talk to people, the more and the more you open up and the more you are vulnerable with them about your own situation, the more likely they are to talk to you. And I do very much try to lead by example and provide that opening to say, yeah, I’m struggling here, I’m finding this really difficult.
How about you? How are you finding it? It gives them that almost that opening, that permission to say, yeah, I’m finding this really hard and I’m really tough right now and it be working. I’ve had members of my team that come and talk to me about stuff. There’s probably a whole bunch of stuff that they don’t talk about and if any of them watch this back, they’ll be sitting here going, no, I’ve not told you this. But I do try to encourage that sort of environment and that culture of being open and honest and I try to provide different forums that work. So when I first started I had some one-to-one time with each member of my team. When somebody new starts, I try to make sure that there’s time, there’s on-to-one time with them, even not just my direct reports. People who are direct reports off my direct reports. Time that we all come into the office together, time that we all get together and just actually chat. We don’t have any agenda. We have once a fortnight, we have a team drop in session and we just sometimes use it just to talk to each other and that helps to build that environment of trust and of sharing and of talking to each other.
Paul Barnhurst:
A couple things that stood out to me there, if I was summarize first you mentioned communication. Then the whole idea of just being open and honest within communication, that transparency and then making sure you have a culture that everybody feels like they’re involved and part of the team essentially are doing activities, doing things to make sure everybody feels like they’re important to the overall mission. I think those, that’s great advice there and I really appreciate that and appreciate a little bit about the NHS. So I’m curious, I could tell you have a real passion for working routines. You’ve obviously worked a lot in finance. What particular is it about financial planning that you love? What’s kept you working in FP&A for as long as you have?
Alison Allsopp:
I love the fact that you see all different aspects of the business. So you get to see so many different things as not just the business as usual, not just the things ticking over. You get involved in if different projects you get involved in new things that are happening, but also you get to sort of support on solving some problems and you get to potentially make a real difference to the decisions that the business makes. So done right you can be part of that decision making and help to write the business cases that will get you additional funding in the case of the NHS and sure, yeah, it just feels like you can have the opportunity to be at the forefront of the things that are happening and the things that are shaping the future of the business. I find it really interesting because you get, there’s a real variety and no two days are the same. It’s it, the best of both worlds. You get some numbers, but you also get to engage with other people and talk to other people and find out what’s going on.
Paul Barnhurst:
And that’s what kept me in finance. I loved it when I really got to work with the business. I enjoy the numbers, but feeling like it made a difference. You’re involved in that decision making and you can help drive things forward. I know for me that’s something kept me as in FP&A as long as I have, so I appreciate that answer. We’re coming up here toward the end of our time. Just have a couple more questions and these are ones we kind of ask everybody. One is, what do you see as the biggest opportunity and then maybe the biggest risk for FP&A going forward?
Alison Allsopp:
I think one of the biggest opportunities is using data and tools that will give us greater insights. So there’s so many different tools on the market and different things that you can use to help you analyze your data in better ways. So I think there’s a real opportunity to use data more and to use those automation tools as well so that you are not having to sit in a spreadsheet and kind of churn through. So if you can actually use that data, use that automation to then make better decisions. And so you can use your time to add that layer of human, the bit that people need to do, which is that oversight and the sense check and the so whats of what the data’s telling you. So I think there’s a real opportunity to unlock there. I think there’s also a risk in that there is so much data that you get completely swamped and you can’t see the wood for the trees and you can’t do anything with it.
I think there’s a risk that people don’t want to move with the times as well. There’s a real, I think we need to make sure that skills keep up with the tools that are available. And I think it’s really, from a personal perspective, there’s a bit of a tricky one because you want to be better when you want to do more and you want those exciting things. But equally that also means that some of those skills that we’ve really valued over the years become somewhat redundant. And I think one of the risks that we don’t move with that and we hark back to the way that we used to do things and don’t embrace those things and see the opportunities that they can really unlock. So there’s a couple of risks associated with that opportunity.
Paul Barnhurst:
I think that’s well said. And I agree with you, huge opportunity with data, but with it comes a lot of risk getting lost in the forests, so to speak, as you said and not upskilling. Yeah, because the more data we deal with, there’s some technical skills that you need to have to unlock those insights and if you’re not learning, you get left behind. So I think that was well said. And I agree with you. This questionnaire here is one of my favorite, we ask anyone and a little more personal question we ask people, what’s something unique that they can share about themselves with their audience? Something we wouldn’t find out about you online?
Alison Allsopp:
Say, one of the things wouldn’t, I don’t think you’d find out about me online is when I was at school, well I’m a qualified swimming teacher and gymnastics teacher. So my part-time job great when I was 16 was teaching swimming and gymnastics to five year olds.
Fun. Where? Lot of lessons you learn from that.
Alison Allsopp:
Yeah. Put me up having kids for a while.
I could believe that. Oh, fun that. Thank you for sharing that. That’s a great one. Next one, our sponsor is Data res and they’re a financial planning and analysis platform that is built around Excel. So we like asking everybody what’s their favorite Excel kind of formula function feature. What’s your favorite thing about Excel?
So I was talking about this with somebody at work. So I think my favorite formula is really boring. I love a VLookup because it just makes life so much easier.
Paul Barnhurst:
That is one of our most common answers. So you’re not alone.
Alison Allsopp:
I also like the ability to draw a waterfall chart because I remember the days of having to draw out on a piece of paper, having to work out my stacked bar chart and how big my stacked bars needed to be so that I could get my waterfall to flow properly and add up. So I very much appreciate the waterfall function now as well.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I’m a big fan of the waterfall. I remember. So I remember doing the stack bar, but I had a boss and he’d found it online and it worked great, but he had used a scatter plots with error bars to build the waterfall chart and it actually worked better than a bar chart once you got it all set up. But if someone had to try to understand it, it was good luck because it was definitely not simple. So I was glad when the waterfall chart came. So I remember going, how did he come up with this? And I found the article and I’m like, this is not your intermediate level Excel stop. So I think everybody was grateful and I’ll share a story with that I think make you laugh. Well, I was doing a training and we were walking through the waterfall chart and we showed that that could be done in Excel and one of the guys goes, there’s a chart now. We’ve been still doing it the old way. This is just like a month ago. And he was like, all right, this training was worth me just learning that. If I got nothing else out of it. He’s like, you paid for yourself. And I just kind of laughed cause it’s, he dealt with the pain that you dealt with drawing then figuring out how it works. Yeah. So I’m with you. That was, I think, a favorite for everybody.
If you were to offer advice to someone starting their career today in FP&A, what advice would you give them?
Alison Allsopp:
I would say seize every opportunity that comes your way. Take those opportunities to expand your knowledge. If you think even it’s a sideways move, what can you take from that situation? What can you learn and seek out all those opportunities to learn stuff, have different experiences and broaden your horizons, broaden your knowledge, broaden your skillset, because all of those things when you add them up will really help you in the future roles. There’s bits that I’ve taken from each one of my roles and each thing that I’ve done that make me who I am today. And I think that breadth of stuff that I did early on in my career has really helped me to succeed now. And I think the other thing that I would say is just be true to you and focus on what to be true and the values that you hold dear to yourself. I spent a few years being told I needed to be more something and actually I have become, I think, a better leader as I have trusted my own instincts and I’ve been more authentic and true to myself and I feel I’ve been more successful by being true to myself than being what somebody else told me I should be.
Paul Barnhurst:
And I think there’s great advice there. I really love the part about being true to yourself. Well, I’ve really enjoyed our time. I know we’re, we’re out of time here. I can see you getting dark. See you get dark throughout the time. We started chatting as nighttime there, so I know we need to let you go and enjoy some time with the family. But last thing, if somebody wanted to get ahold of you, if they wanted to reach out, is there a good way to connect with you?
Alison Allsopp:
Yeah, so I’m on, I’m on LinkedIn so people can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I do try to read messages that I, and respond to the messages that I receive through LinkedIn. So that’s a good place to contact me.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. Well on that note, we’ll go ahead and end. But thank you so much for your time. I’ve really enjoyed interviewing you and getting to know you and just chatting with you here. It’s been a great conversation. So thank you for carving out some of your evening for us. I really appreciate
Alison Allsopp:
It. You’re most welcome. Thank you for inviting me. I’ve enjoyed it.