Paul Barnhurst discusses trends, challenges and opportunities of FP&A professionals.

by Brio360 Staff

on November 30, 2023

Paul Barnhurst (The FP&A guy) discusses current trends, challenges and opportunities of FP&A professionals.

Show Notes

[01:28] Paul discussed his journey of FP&A and his decision to launch an FP&A consulting firm.

[02:58] Paul shared the type of training services offered by his firm.

[04:26] Paul took a deeper dive into various training services.

[06:27] The primary target customers (and potential students) are discussed.

[08:16] Paul discussed why company can see value and ROI in FP&A training services.

[11:02] Paul touched on some of the recent developments in Microsoft Excel that are relevant to FP&A.

[12:05] The importance of people and process are discussed. Paul provided a quote “I’ll butcher it a little bit, but old processes plus new technology equals expensive broken old processes.”

[15:13] Paul discussed the key differentiation of his FP&A training services.

[18:08] Paul discussed some of the recent trends of FP&A tool which aim to enable siloed data and getting the data together in one place so that analysts can provide better insights.

[22:02] Paul discussed the evolution of FP&A tools. He broadly classified them into 3 generations: the first being the legacy tools such as Oracle, TM1 etc, the second-generation being Anaplan and the like and finally the latest generation of tools which target a broader segment of the market.

[25:43] The conversative nature of the CFO’s choice of tools are discussed.

[28:03] The impact of AI on FP&A (and tools) is discussed.

[31:08] Paul shared his view on the biggest challenges and opportunities in the FP&A space.

[33:37] Paul discussed his perspective on key elements of impactful FP&A professionals.

Books mentioned in this episode

Financial Planning & Analysis and Performance Management by Jack Alexander

https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Planning-Analysis-Performance-Management/dp/1119491487

All About FP&A by CA ASIF MASANI

https://www.amazon.com/All-About-FP-ASIF-MASANI-ebook/dp/B0BPZN4P2B