“The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) is a non-for-profit with a really simple mission, which makes it really easy for me to wake up and know what I’m doing every day,” says Bryan Lapidus, Director, FP&A Practice at the Association for Financial Professionals. “We exist for the success of the corporate finance and treasury professionals. FPAC, our certified corporate FP&A certification has been in the market for about 11 years now and 5,000 people have earned it in more than 80 countries.”

Returning guest Lapidus joins Glenn Hopper as they discuss the climate for FP&A including:

• Evolution of FP&A and AI
• Certificates vs Certification
• Why business school doesn’t prepare you for FP&A roles
• The impact of Sarbanes-Oxley on changing the CFO role
• Why you need different CFOs at various stages of a company lifecycle
• Why FP&A professionals are so hirable and promotable
• How to become CFO from an FP&A role

Annette DeYoung, Principal Solutions Consultant at Datarails, is an accountant-turned FP&A manufacturing leader. She has deep experience in leading finance teams at manufacturing companies including Berner Food and Beverage, Rockford Products, Fairbanks Morse Engine, and JL Clark. It was at JL Clark, as Director of FP&A, that Annette implemented FP&A Solution, Datarails to mop up inefficiencies and end drain all-late night sessions at the finance department— she liked the product so much she ended up joining the company and has since spoken to more than 1000 FP&A professionals seeking to love FP&A again by removing tedious repetitive processes.

In this episode

• Why I fell in love with manufacturing and finance over my career
• How creativity drew me from accounting to FP&A
• Why a hard-coded accountant attitude was difficult to reconcile with more creative FP&A
• How to create finance business partnerships on the manufacturing floor
• Why I brought Datarails into my finance team at JL Clarke
• The future of Excel in FP&A
• Is finance (finally) making a move with AI?
• The power of getting out of your comfort zone in finance

Connect with Annette on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahdeyoung/

Craig Barry has held senior finance roles at some of the most iconic companies in tech and entertainment, including LinkedIn, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Electronic Arts. At LinkedIn, he led central forecasting, supported more than 10 acquisitions, and played a key role in the company’s integration with Microsoft before becoming Head of FP&A at BioRender- building FP&A from the ground up helping the company scale ARR from $18 million to $50 million. Now Barry is principal consultant at ClearSightIQ.

In this episode

• My winding road to strategic finance
• Junior FP&A Analyst position at Electronic Arts as my first break
• Cost center focus in creative industries at EA with $3b sales
• LucasFilm (pre-Disney) run as a sole proprietorship by George Lucas
• Pixar head of finance for their Canadian operations and production planning
• LinkedIn and focus on “revenue, revenue, revenue”
• FP&A focus on modeling for acquisitions at LinkedIn and “virtual” P&Ls
• Strategy for building out FP&A from scratch at BioRender
• My fractional CFO life