Anna Oblakova has spent 15 years in FP&A – it is the only job she ever wanted. She started her career in large Russian companies. Beginning her career at VMHY Holding her first taste of FP&A was being pushed into the deep end of M&A, due diligence and business valuations.
Future accomplishments include building an FP&A function from scratch at Bank Zenit where she eventually managed a team of 10 FP&A professionals. Following a career break, Anna moved to France where she is manager of FP&A at Sodastream (bought by Pepsico for $3.2 billion in 2018). In this interview Anna discusses some of the highlights of her career including:
- The reasons for setting up the online resource and blog FPANDA CLUB
- The 50 shades of FP&A Maturity and why it is important to measure FP&A progress
- How FP&A teams can use personas to build better business partnerships
- Why it is vital that key metrics to follow should be aligned with the strategic objectives of the company
- The constantly growing gap between expectations of stakeholders and FP&A teams
- The need for continuous learning to succeed in FP&A
Paul Barnhurst
Hello, everyone. Welcome to FP&A Today I am your host, Paul Barnhurst AKA the FP&A guy. FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails, the financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users. Every week, we welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis and discuss some of the biggest stories and challenges in the world of FP&A today. We will provide you with actionable 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, Anna Oblakova. Welcome, Anna.
Anna Oblakova
Hello, Paul. Thanks for having me on your podcast.
Paul Barnhurst
We’re really excited to have you, so let me just tell you a little bit about Anna and then we’ll start working through some questions here. Anna currently resides in France. She grew up in Russia, she’s worked in FP&A her entire career. She currently works for a large FMCG company, and she also runs the website, FPANDA CLUB blog (https://www.fpandaclub.com/). That’s actually how I first learned about her is I stumbled across the website when I was looking for some content for a LinkedIn post and loved what she was doing there and thought she’d make a great guest. So we’re really, you know, happy to have her. Anna, maybe you could start by just, you know, telling us a little bit about your career and how you got to where you’re at today?
Anna Oblakova
Uh, sure. Thanks for, for asking. Well, I can say that I’ve always worked in FP&A, that’s more than 15 years now. It doesn’t actually matter if my position was called, like FP&A, analyst or something like this. It wasn’t, and moreover the acronym FP&A was not so widely used then, like it is now. But I’ve always performed these, core activities of the financial planning and analysis. And basically yes, I’m, I’m from Russia. And I started as an intern in one of the largest Russian banks. It was a short three months internship, but these three months were enough to to attach me first to the analysis and next to sector of financial services for the next 13 years. Basically when I found my first job right after graduation, it was the common job of an analyst in the medium sized financial holding.
Anna Oblakova
But what was remarkable was that this holding was very active on the market of mergers and acquisitions. And it’s not a big path for FP&A specialists, but for me it was a perfect match because I could straight away start with due diligence and business valuation. And that was a combination of the basics of accounting, financial reporting, understanding insights behind the numbers behind the financial reports to use this to build financial models and to perform investment analysis. So well, I spent, around 6, 7 years, in this company and then I continued to capitalize on my M&A experience and worked in several large and medium sized-holdings. My main challenges in projects were around aligning financial planning and analytical processes, within the group. When the newly acquired companies have to join a large group, they have to follow all these rules and processes.
Anna Oblakova
And so on. That was my responsibility, basically. The latest position in Russia for me was the head of the FP&A in, in the bank , where I led a team of 10 people. Basically building from the ground up the FP&A function. Here I am now in France. As you told me, I’m working at an FMCG company as FP&A manager. And, I support basically strategic and operational decision making, and help the executive team to grow.
Paul Barnhurst
No great. I, you know, financial services is a fascinating area. I started my career with American Express. I was more on the business travel side, but it got a little bit involved in, you know, some of the financial services over the years and supported a few products. And, you know, you mentioned M&A and I can imagine getting an M&A experience early on was probably really helpful in FP&A, because, you know, almost everybody acquires somebody at some point or considers it, or does a merger and, you know, aligning processes can be a real challenge. So maybe kind of talk a little bit about how that has helped you in your career? How would you think, you know, getting that M&A experience early has benefited you?
Anna Oblakova
Yeah, exactly. I think that M&A experience was one of the main and best parts of the start in my career. Because when you see this from different perspectives from the headquarters and from inside the companies which are targets, potential targets or are acquired, these are different things. You start to understand the various steps of processes, which exist in different companies. And you try to find the best practice basically. You understand where other drawbacks were, and advantages are. And this helps a lot in creating the vision, creating the target state of the function and of the process.
Paul Barnhurst
Now that makes a lot of sense and definitely seeing different ways people do things can be really beneficial. That’s something I’ve really enjoyed over the last few years as I’ve started to be part of more organizations and more involved in things outside of just work and seeing the different ways people think about FP&A, because there’s definitely no right way to do it. There’s some wrong ways it can be done, but there’s no right way.
Anna Oblakova
I agree
Paul Barnhurst
So, you know, I noticed you started a website, the FPandA Club and you know, you’ve written a few articles on there. You have some great tools. Maybe just talk a little bit about what prompted you to start that. What was the impetus behind that?
Anna Oblakova
Yeah, thanks for, for asking. Well, the website started in the beginning of 2021. At that time I had some sort of a gap year, but not in traditional meaning like between the students, between their studies and the start of their career. It was a year between two jobs. What I want to say is that the purpose, maybe the meaning wasn’t the same, but the purpose of this year, this gap year was pretty much the same: to recharge, to take some time off, to prevent myself from burning out and to learn some new things. So, in 2019 I decided to quit my job and go to France, to study at a business school. And then the pandemic started with all these lockdowns and you know, doing nothing. Of course I must admit that, um, the French Riviera wasn’t the worst place to spend the pandemic and the lockdown. But I had some free time to kick off a new project, which I had been discussing with my friend and partner in crime, Marina.
Anna Oblakova
And that was the website devoted to FP&A and the finance function in general, which should have been the resource for a wide audience, a resource for the information on the trends on what’s happening in finance. What are the challenges? And all the thoughts on different aspects of the financial function and the FP&A processes as well as to share experience and tips and tricks with both freshers and experienced professionals.
Paul Barnhurst
Well, I can say I’ve, you know, been on the website a number of times and, you know, I think you have some great content on there. I love some of the survey stuff you put together. I know you’ve also put out some tools, you have an FP&A maturity model, an assessment that you’ve built. Maybe can you talk a little bit about that and what you hope people get out of it?
Anna Oblakova
Yeah, sure. This FP&A maturity model, I basically got the idea of it long before the website, when I had this project to build a brand new finance, FP&A function, in the bank. And, at the beginning, it was just a checklist of some questions to go through when discussing the future, the target state of the FP&A function with business leaders, to understand what worked well, what didn’t work, what their needs were and how their FP&A function can, can basically help them to achieve their goals. And then I decided to create some tool that I can reuse in my future missions, and that can at the same time help to present the vision to understand where we are now and where we’re going.
Anna Oblakova
Generally just a questionnaire on the core activities of the FP&A planning, forecasting performance management, and it’s based on the, five stage material team model of FP&A from the beginning where the FP&A function is not even defined. It’s performed by the other employees of the organization by treasury or reporting, or maybe even accounting. Up to the visionary stage, the Supreme stage of the FP&A function when everything is automated and integrated. And, FP&A professionals are considered to be more like consultants or advisors inside an organization.
Paul Barnhurst
No, and I, I can say I, that I really liked the maturity model. Somebody had reached out to me the other day on LinkedIn and said, Hey, do you have a good way to assess. I’m trying to assess this new FP&A function, and I’ve referenced your website and your maturity model along with another one that I’m aware of. I think FP&A trends group. They have one as well. And, you know, it was just great to be able to have some resources at my fingertips that I could send people to. I think you’ve done a really good job with that. So, you know, I just put a plug in, if people are looking for a maturity model, you know, FPandaclub.com is one place you can go to see one where you can assess how you’re doing, right? Figure out where you are on that scale. You know, is it defined? Is it beginning? Is it advanced? Is it visionary? And it’s gonna be different depending on which part you’re analyzing. Right? No, company’s perfect.
Anna Oblakova
Yeah, exactly. And maybe you even do not need the perfect one. The highest stage depends on the financial constraints on the objectives of the company. It may be a startup or a mature company. It depends on where you are and where you want to be.
Paul Barnhurst
No, that’s a great point. No company needs to be all fives or all perfect. Right. The cost to do that, wouldn’t be worth the benefit. You gotta figure out your trade offs, just like everything we do in business. So I appreciate that. So recently I saw you wrote an article about the three marketing tools to adopt, to become a better finance business partner. If I remember, right. It was a SWOT, I think an empathy map and personas. And maybe just kind of talk a little bit about how that article came about. I found that really interesting. I think often, you know, one of the areas finance struggles with is that relationship with marketing and getting close and like you mentioned, right. We tend to be very analytical. They often tend to have more creative people and sometimes we don’t mesh as the saying goes. So what, what was the impetus for that article and what do you hope people get out of it?
Anna Oblakova
Yeah, for me, uh, to be honest that’s about the mindset. The mindset of the finance professionals, maybe because of our rational type of thinking, sometimes it’s very difficult to develop empathy in ourselves. And this is the key for business partnering. The key for what our colleagues with our internal customers want, expect from the finance professional or FP&A in particular. And, in my opinion, like I tried to understand how these marketing teams, which are basically considered to be the most creative and the, the closest to the end user, to the customer. Because they need to understand the needs, and expectations of the users or, nobody will buy the product if they cannot provide them with what they need.
Anna Oblakova
So from the finance perspective these tools and the tool set, which is related to the marketing function could be adopted by, by finance professionals and used in their everyday life everyday work and in communication with other functions, other departments, including marketing or commercial teams or any other executive team as well. Here is how the idea came out and these three tools, they are just, the simplest, I think in my opinion, they are the simplest to use and to introduce and to adopt by the FP&A team.
Paul Barnhurst
No, thank you. And I like that, you know, and I’ve used SWOT, but I’ve never, you know, I’ve never thought of using personas. But I think it’s a great way to understand your business partners, right? What’s the persona of the marketing or the operations, and to help you think about what their needs are. Because, as you mentioned, if we’re really performing well as an FP&A function, you kind of mentioned consultant or business partner, we’re really strategic partners and you really need to understand your business. And I’ve always been a big believer in understanding business, but I really like that idea of using some of those marketing tools to better understand who you’re working with. I’d never quite thought of it that way. So I really appreciate you elaborating on that. And you know, like that idea and for me today, the personas and these other things you mentioned are becoming even more important as I’m, you know, running my own business and doing marketing and it, and all those things that I used to just support. You definitely gain a greater appreciation for what they do.
Paul Barnhurst
So one other article on your website that I just would like to highlight and kind of get what was the reason for writing it. And what would you hope people take out of it is you wrote an article called happiness in finance, or you just talked a little bit about, you know, why people get into finance, some of the challenges. And maybe, can you talk a little bit about that piece?
Anna Oblakova
Sure. Well, happiness in finance was the first article I published on the newly created website and that was kind of symbolic because I must say to our listeners that for me FP&A is the best profession and I would never have chosen anything else. Even if I had a chance, but frankly speaking, it’s not a wellness center. It is sedentary work, in front of the screen all over again all day long. And, by that you know, I mean that it’s not eight or nine hours, it’s far, far more. No wonder that finance professionals have a very low level of satisfaction in their job. And, only 65, if I remember correctly, 65% of finance specialists are satisfied with their work life balance. And it’s, it was amazing to discover this point and, you know, to relate it because many of us really face this kind of dissatisfaction, I mean, among the finance specialists and in FP&A as well.
Anna Oblakova
And well just to, to give some context to it, wasn’t you know, the, something occasional that I lived in Russian now, I live in France. It was maybe the consequence of some sort of a burnout because I had a great job. I had a great team, but something was missing. And for some time I couldn’t understand what it was, what it was. But finally I understood that I need to change something and here I am, I’m living abroad and sometimes blogging. Well, just to give some comments, maybe. There is no shame in stepping back and then thinking of what’s happening, what are the reasons behind this dissatisfaction and what solutions can you find?
Paul Barnhurst
No, thank you. I really appreciate that. I think your comment about, you know, the long hours, right? We’ve all been there during planning season or whatever may be, you feel like it’s 12, 14 hour days, and you’re just exhausted. I know I’ve, I’ve felt that, and I know I’ve left some jobs. One of the biggest reasons is burnout. You just, you get tired. And so, you know, I like that idea of finding, you know, finding your reason, being willing to step back sometimes and recharge. You know, I think as I mentioned to you earlier, as we were chatting before the episode on a future, a podcast, we’re gonna have a couple people that focus on mental health, come and talk about that, particularly that have worked in finance and just how you make sure you’re managing that work life balance for you and for your team, because, you know, you don’t wanna lose your employees, but we also have to get the work done. And sometimes that does require long hours. And so it’s definitely a balancing act and you want people to be happy, right? We wanna enjoy what we do.
Anna Oblakova
So if you wanna know some tips and tricks, in these kinds of things. Well, I’m not an expert at all in the field, but I can just share something which works personally for. Divide into groups: on work and off work as for on work for me prioritization and time management help a lot. Plan in advance your activities and try to, not to be distracted by some minor things like phone calls or emails. Of course, we all receive lots of them, hundreds of them per day. How, I tried to cope with it I created some windows in my agenda , for example, 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon when I read all this inbox coming and try to reply or delegate if it’s a real task or I don’t know, a project to delegate it to the team. It Really helps to reduce the stress level and to focus on major tasks. As for off work activities, if you have a chance to opt for commuting by foot or by bike, that’s a perfect option as fresh air helps to recharge.
Anna Oblakova
And, you know, to even boost creativity, you can get some new ideas when just walking in the street or I don’t know, running, doing some physical activities as well. And what is important for me personally, is to reduce the time of using the smartphone, especially in the evening, we create some rules at home not to use it in bed or after 10:00 PM or something like this.
Paul Barnhurst
That’s some great advice. And I think, you know, on work the prioritization and taking time to get up and walk around periodically, you know, just stepping away from things and letting yourself clear your mind. I know I found that very helpful when I do that, and I do appreciate that on prioritization and then, you know, personal life, I agree with you, you know, getting out and getting some fresh air or exercising can make a huge difference and just putting some boundaries around some things. So you can, you know, try to keep that better balance and keep yourself healthy. So that’s great advice. And I appreciate it. Like you, I’m not an expert either, but I think we all, we all at times struggle with finding that right balance, right? We’re all human, it’s part of life. Exactly. Well, kind of switching gears a little bit, you know, over your career, you know, it sounds like you’ve had a lot of great opportunities, financial services, FMCG company, you know, a few different companies. What are some of the key metrics that you like to measure when you think of, you know, analyzing and providing those kinds of key metrics that a business should be looking at for you? What are some of those?
Anna Oblakova
It depends on the sector 100%. Some things we cannot measure in, for example, in banking, but we can measure in FMCG and vice versa. I’d say that I prefer to adapt metrics to the strategic objectives of the company 100%,and to focus on the metrics that not only help you to assess the performance of the organization, uh, standalone, but to compare your company with the competitors. For example, we can, I don’t know, take cross margin, net margin, classic examples. You can try to find out what are the reasons behind the difference between your company and the competitor, or even not your direct competitor, but the similar company in the adjustment sector, or something like this to find the key success factors and advise your managers on the success factors. What is good in these metrics?
Anna Oblakova
They can be calculated on the enterprise level, on the department level, on the product business unit, as you wish. This is very useful and can tell a lot about the performance. But, what I would like to emphasize is, it’s not only about the metrics of the company, it’s the metrics of the finance function as well to benchmark your performance against your peers. There is a lot of information now on the web, based on the various service, for example, the length of the budget cycle or the number of iterations companies usually have, the cost of the finance function of the FP&A in percentage of the revenue that may be interesting to integrate in your life as a professional.
Paul Barnhurst
Thank you. There’s, you know, a lot there, but there are three things in particular that stuck out to me. And the first I really liked, I’m just kinda looking, I wrote down the ideas, you know, adapt your metrics to the strategic objectives. And I love that because you’re tying it back to the strategy, which is so important in FP&A. We’re planning to align business objectives with the strategy, not to come up with a number that we try to hit. Obviously we wanna hit our budget or whatever we set, but it’s really that alignment process. So I like how that helps bring that together. The second is the idea of benchmarking, you know, both externally, so we can benchmark our competitors, but also internally, I really liked how you said, you know, benchmark your FP&A function. You know, how many rounds of the budget review do you do?
How does that compare? How long does it take you? You know, what’s your cost as a percentage of revenue? I know I noticed on your website, some of the infographics, you had mentioned some of those things and kind of what the standards are. So somebody’s curious, I think, you know, you can go to your website and look at some of that. I remember I was looking at one of them this morning, you know, and I think it was like four times the average, or maybe best in class four rounds of a budget, you know, kind of the bottom performers was something like 11. And, you know, somewhere in the middle was kind of average. And I think I’ve been on just about every one of those and probably even higher than the 11 before. So, you know, as we probably all have.
Paul Barnhurst
And so I think there’s some great, some great content there. So thank you. That is some really good advice. So as you look at FP&A, and, you know, I know you’ve been working in 15 years and you mentioned, you know, kind of the beginning, a lot of times it wasn’t even necessarily called FP&A right? That term is for many companies in many different regions, pretty modern, we’re seeing, you know, a transition in that area. So when you think about FP&A, and you think about where it’s at today kind of going forward, what do you see as maybe the biggest opportunity for FP&A, and then the biggest challenge?
Anna Oblakova
Yeah, it’s an interesting question. Well, the opportunities. For me, FP&A is itself an opportunity because it’s kind of a mix of different skills of different activities. And the advantage of FP&A as a profession is the diversity of tasks, a variety of tasks, but at the same time, it’s a challenge as well. Because for me the thing that is most challenging for us as FP&A professionals, is this constantly growing gap between the expectations, which evolve every year, the expectations of our stakeholders and the skill we have, and we need to develop as well, constantly as well. This gap is kind of growing. It’s very difficult to keep up with this evolving variety of responsibility and the complexity of tasks as
Paul Barnhurst
Well. I completely agree with you. It’s very challenging. I saw an article and I wish I would’ve kept a link to it. I didn’t, I just kind of saw the headline, but somebody had commented that they had done a study from, it was about two, three years ago, I think, pre COVID to something recent. And they looked at FP&A, and saw how many skills on average, they were asking for a job. And it had gone up on average somewhere between two and three skills, which is like 20 something percent. Think about that in just, you know, less than three years. I mean, it just feels like we’re constantly being asked to do more and more and requiring to upscale, understanding BI understanding analytics, you know, planning tools in addition to Excel, and, you know, being able to extract data and statistical analysis and just lots of things, in addition to wanting all these soft skills, right.
You have got to be really good at business partnering. You’ve got to be really good at social skills. It can seem overwhelming at times. So I definitely think that’s a challenge. I know it’s been a struggle for me sometimes to, okay, where do I focus my time? And how do I best stay up on my skills and drive value for the business? So I think that’s a great, great one dimension. So, you know, we’re kind of coming up toward the end of the interview here. Just a few more questions for you. So one, we like to ask people, this is kind of a fun one that we ask everybody is what’s something that not many people would know about you, something we wouldn’t find online, maybe on, you know, on social media or your website or something.
Anna Oblakova
Well, I consider myself to be a good cook. Well and that’s to be honest, that’s a tip on work life balance, because cooking helps me to relax after work. It’s something creative. So it’s not an additional opportunity for creativity. You never know what’s coming out of your dish. What It looks like or what it will be, what it will taste like. So, well, it helps me a lot to be honest.
Paul Barnhurst
Good. Do you have a kind of favorite recipe or type of food, or do you like baking or what, what kind of cooking? Maybe
Anna Oblakova
I’m not baking. Definitely not.
I tried different cuisines and recipes. So, based on the first maybe it was more European cuisine. Now I’m trying some French recipes, but here there is a trick. I have not eaten meat for several years. So, um, more, more fish based, food
Paul Barnhurst:
Fun. No, I I’m a huge, I, love fish and, you know, I eat some meat, but I definitely like a good, you know, vegetarian meal and I haven’t cooked most much lately. I used to do quite a bit of it and enjoyed it. I might need to get back to that. So thank you. That’s a good one. And it’s definitely a good way to keep yourself healthy. Because when you cook your own food, you know what goes into it, you can control the ingredients. So it’s definitely a good skill to have. So, you know, here at FP&A Today we’re big fans of Excel. Our sponsor, Datarails is an FP&A tool that focuses on keeping you in Excel and let’s face it. It’s what finance uses, right? It’s the dominant tool. And so with that being said, what’s your favorite Excel function?
Anna Oblakova
Well, I presume your guests usually name something like INDEX MATCH or VLOOK UP.
Paul Barnhurst
You know, we actually haven’t heard either of those yet. Surprisingly,
Anna Oblakova
Really? Yeah. So , well, I’d go with IF ERROR, I don’t know if that surprises you or not.
Well, errors can ruin any report or presentations decks and tables. So it helps a lot.
Paul Barnhurst
Yes. I have written IF ERROR many times and I get done sometimes with the variance column and I’m like, oh, wait, I’m getting all these divisions now. I better stick that IF ERROR formula around it when I forget. So I think that’s definitely one everybody’s used a lot. And I remember when it came out when I was first, you know I was kind of learning Excel after grad school and I’d have to do the IF IS ERROR. And I was so grateful to see the, IF ERROR, I’m like, oh, this is so much easier. Right? You know, even just something as simple as that. So it’s kind of fun to watch how Excel has, you know, developed over time. So last question here, what advice would you offer to someone who’s starting out in FP&A today? So if they were just starting their career, what would be the advice you’d offer them?
Anna Oblakova
Well, be curious and focus on lifelong learning, not only on the, you know core knowledge competencies, like necessary and finance, of course it’s must have. But try to spread your knowledge around maybe some project management, both agile and waterfall help a lot in managing budget cycles. And change management with all this digital transformation in the other project around the finance function. Well, strategic thinking and business acumen. Read a lot of articles on some consultants or on products. Whereas business models appear quite regularly, new models we’ve never heard about. That would be my advice.
Paul Barnhurst
That’s some great advice. I love that, you know, being curious, right. Just be willing to learn, be willing to explore, you know, learn to think strategically so that you can be that business partner and really drive value for the business. Because at the end of the day, you know, I know that that’s what I wanna do as an FP&A professional, you know, the standard stuff, the variance commentary, the reporting for me, that’s just the stuff you have to do. I think the area where you really, at least I find interesting, is that partnering and making a difference in driving the business forward. And that really does require strategic thinking, being critical. And you know, thinking beyond just your profession and always learning. So that’s great advice. And I really appreciate you being on the show today. I’ve enjoyed talking with you. I’ve really enjoyed reading some of the stuff on your website. And like I said, I’d recommend it to anyone out there. Who’s wanting to learn a little more on FP&A a it’s, you know, one of many great resources that are available to people. So I appreciate you taking the time to write that and put that together and for being on the show today. Thanks. Thanks for joining us. I really appreciate it.
Anna Oblakova
Thanks to you, Paul, for inviting me.
Paul Barnhurst
You’re welcome.