We take a deep dive into the finances behind the agricultural and food beverage sector with Brad Mooney, Director of FP&A at California Dairies. FP&A drives success at California Dairies which produces 40 percent of California’s milk (300 family-owned and operated members ship 17billion pounds of high quality milk annually) and is a manufacturer of quality butter, fluid milk products, and milk powders (including Challenge and Danish Creamery and milk powder brand, DairyAmerica). In this episode former Marine Corps turned FP&A leader Brad Mooney talks:

• Building the plane as we flew it building FP&A
• The metrics of “Timing yield and supply” at California Dairies
• The Four Ps in finance building
• Effectiveness of planning and forecasting in a supply-driven business
• My view of FP&A Development
• FP&A as therapist

Colin Moss worked for more than 10 years at Mars, which produces some of the world's best-loved brands including Royal Canin, M&M’s and Snickers. In this role, he partnered with the global Finance leadership team to design to stand up the new FinTech function, strengthening the connection between Finance and IT and leading a portfolio of 40+ initiatives, establishing resource and financial management disciplines (before that he was at famed confectionary maker Cadbury). In 2025 he took the leap to set up his own business, CM Strategies working with organisations navigating growth and complexity, helping them redesign how the finance department partners with the business and builds capability .

His message about the function of FP&A is resonant and powerful: “One of the ways that I've seen it described is that your business, and leadership team is, is the “head”, and FP&A is the “neck” because FP&A is showing that team where to look. In this context, FP&A is helping what's the context we're operating in? What's the strategy that we're executing against? And what does that mean for where we focus? What do we put our attention on? And that can be showing up in what KPIs we look at, but also what processes we need to improve.?”

In this episode

• Path to creation of my own business (in a “hard to leave” business)
• Early audit roles as the foundation of my career
• My early lessons about business partnership at Cadbury and Mars
• Lessons from global finance transformation at Mars including KPI design and management reporting
• Power of judgement in FP&A

Find out more about CM Strategies at www.cmstrategies.co.uk

After two years in the host's chair, Glenn Hopper passes FP&A Today to its new host, Sarah Schlott: a 20-year FP&A leader. The two swap stories on their unlikely paths into finance (including Glenn's forgotten 2006 indie film ), then dig into what's next for the show: more curiosity, more challenging of FP&A's "sacred cows".

Glenn's new book: The AI-Ready CFO: A Strategic Guide to Evaluating and Implementing AI, Automation, and Analytics https://www.amazon.com/AI-Ready-CFO-Evaluating-Implementing-Automation/dp/1394415885

Two recommended follows for AI content

https://www.youtube.com/@AIDailyBrief

https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@matthew_berman⁩