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From DataRails, this is FPNA Today.
Welcome to FPNA Today.
I'm your host, Glenn Hopper.
My guest today is Brian LaPitas, director of the FP &A practice at AFP.
He spent over 20 years in finance roles at places like American Express, Fannie Mae, and private equity backed companies.
Now at AFP, he helped shape the future of the profession, running the FP &A certification programs, leading industry councils and creating resources that support thousands of finance pros around the world.
Today, we're talking about certifications, the changing role of the CFO, and what it really means to be future ready in FP &A.
Brian, welcome to the show, Glen longtime listener.
Glad to be on it with you today.
So we were talking before the show.
There's no way we're going to cover everything that we want that we have said out here or not.
We'll get the broad topics.
But the thirty six questions that I have listed out here, I bet we're not getting all that.
All right. Well, we're already setting up the sequel.
I like I like how you played those Easter eggs out.
Yes, perfect, perfect.
So the three things I want to talk about you, But the, the certification at AFP and then the role of the CFO. Cause we were having some really good conversations around this the other day.
And I think our listeners will enjoy these.
So let's start with, for our audience members who are not familiar with, with you and what, what AFP is.
You've had a super interesting career American express Fannie Mae at the PE backed companies, and now AFP, I guess before we get into what you're doing now.
Talk to me, let's go back to the beginning, tell me what drew you into finance and then eventually into shaping the profession through education and certification that you're doing now.
Yeah, it's a long and winding road.
What really kind of put me on that road towards finance was I was working at a consulting company and I was looking at our clients and I was at how they were making decisions.
And what I found is that clients would often come to a decision or a challenge and say, well, we've done it this way in the past or here's our judgment and here is our experience.
and the consulting company that I was with, was they were really great at, was saying, well, that's all interesting.
Let's talk about the data.
Let's talk about the valuation of what's going to happen.
And I remember there's one project in particular, we were looking at whether to make certain adjustments to boats on the Mississippi River, whether there should be double hulls for safety and chemical spills.
And watching the team, I was the young guy on the team, I was the junior level coffee getter, among other things, but watching them take a problem and break it down to the assumptions, the valuation, just the people who were thinking critically about it.
I said, I wanna be that guy.
The guy with the answers, the guys that, with the right questions or the guys that bring everybody together.
And so that really put me on the path of modeling valuation which became finance and FP &A and decision support and all the other things that, you know, that we know and love on FPNA today.
Gotcha. And I keep doing the abbreviation.
I didn't, I forgot my journalistic roots and did not say association for finance professionals.
I'm just saying AFP.
So, your current role at the association for finance professionals kind of puts you right in the middle of, we'll call it FPNA's evolution, and I'm wondering right now, what are you seeing in a profession that feels like the most urgent or exciting, or what are you seeing across the FPNA field right now?
you know from my 20 years in the office of the CFO to now my seven years at AFP, right, I've seen how the profession has changed and how AFP has changed with the profession itself.
So to your question directly, in these seven years, it's funny, there are real trends, there are waves of thought that kind of wash over the consulting companies and the LinkedIn space and everything that's out there.
And so when I first sat in this chair, I have the vantage point that I look at conference proposals that roll in every year, so I see what the market is thinking about.
And when I first started, it was beyond budgeting, and then it was business intelligence and big data and business partnership and storytelling, right?
Literally I can tell you by year what was the theme of the gestalt in the world around all these different topics.
And last year and this year, it's all about AI, And the flavor of AI has changed, right?
So maybe two years ago, our AI was kind of, what is it and, you know, all about machine learning.
And we've really have moved beyond that.
We've, we moved from having AI as a separate track at conference to it's just integrated in everything.
Our financial processes, AI.
Our people and, and team effectiveness.
There's an AI component there.
So it's gone from a standalone, separate world that was a little bit mysterious to, we're doing this today and here's how you do it.
And here's how you embed it in finance.
You know, what's so fascinating to me is to my mind, and you mentioned big data and machine learning, but when machine learning first started catching on, you know, the sales and marketing team were the ones who latched onto it because they had a lot more data I think.
and I think maybe back then we were still thinking of FP &A as all we have is general ledger data and maybe some external information, but we weren't thinking about making use of all the data in finance.
So when you would talk about machine learning and algorithms and doing big data stuff didn't get a lot of attention in the FP &A community.
At least that was my experience.
I mean, did you see that and how do you think or why do you think generative AI and now suddenly it is getting all the attention and it wasn't before?
Yeah. So one of the challenges, especially with machine learning is because financial data is GAP or IFRS, right, because it is accounting data, a lot of the actual operations of the company have been smoothed out for various recognition issues, and so when you try to take history and plan it forward based on accounting smoothing, you can't, it's much harder to forecast accounting smoothing when, you know, when that's not how the company actually operates.
So part of what's happened is that, you know, whether you call XP &A or just finance moving more into operations, going upstream has allowed finance to get ahead of all of those accounting adjustments.
I guess another element is because it had that base of the general ledger as the data, there was a finite set.
At that point, it wasn't dealing with big data, right?
There was a lot of talk and people were trying to sell big data, but we really weren't working with big data.
It's when you, again, go further upstream and you can bring that an analytical view, that's when you start getting into lots and lots of rows of transactions and incentive.
You know, whatever the data set you're looking at, it becomes much larger once you move beyond the general ledger.
And then the other thing I'll say is What generative AI allows is just an interface that's just more accessible, right?
The early days of machine learning, you really needed a data scientist to help you manage that process and that, right, it was a project.
The, what we're seeing with LLMs is that it's allowing the individual to have and access the data in ways that they just couldn't before.
It's just much more accessible to the layman.
Yeah, and this is I'm I'm already camping it a bit to go to dive into the other topics we're going to cover today.
But I do before we get into those.
You said something when we were talking the other day that that really resonated with me.
You talked about the difference between a certificate and a certification.
I don't know how many of our listeners have the FPAC certification or or know about it.
So let's let's go back and talk about what the AFP does and then tell me a little bit primarily for this audience, the FPAC.
but I know there's also the CTP certification, break that down for me a little bit and for our listeners.
So, the Association for Financial Professionals 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, right?
We exist for the success of the corporate finance and treasury professional.
And in doing that, we have boxed in who our market is and what we do.
Accountants are great, there are accounting certifications and accounting associations.
And CFA is great, very rigorous.
It's great for portfolio managers and for banking, right.
There are lots of certifications that are out there.
Our target market are people who are working for the CFO, people who work for the CFO and treasury and FP &A, and FP &A has lots of different names and business control or in different parts of the world.
But I look at FP &A as the people who help you decide where to put your next dollar of capital.
if you're doing decision support, budget, ad hoc analysis, KPIs and metric and performance management, like all of that, what happens so I know what to do next, that is under our umbrella of FP &A.
And so, we've been in this business for about 40 years and in those four decades, more than 40 ,000 people have earned our CTP, our Certified Treasury Professional, globally recognized.
And that actually, that's our roots was we actually were the treasury organization.
And I was when, when I worked in treasury at American express, right.
I was actually a member.
And then I was really excited when I had a job change and I moved over into FPNA, that they were, AFP was one of the first organizations to recognize that this was a field and it started with conference tracks and content.
And then we've now had our FPAC, our certified corporate FPNA professional.
that's been in the market for about 11 years now and there's about 5000 people who have earned it in more than 80 countries.
So this is we are a global organization, we've been doing this for a while and we understand the difference between a certificate and a certification.
I mean we believe in continuing education, whether that's in our conference or our certs or our webinars or our training classes.
And we have certificates, we call them badges just so that they don't get confused, but what a certificate is, is it says you have studied a course, it's a moment in time, and you have taken a test and you've done well in that course, that's great, and then you go onto your next.
That's an important part of your continuing learning.
A certification is ongoing.
It demonstrates mastery of industry standards.
So, our certification, as well as others shows that you have passed a proctored exam, and you've met other requirements specifically your time and experience in the field.
All right in order to get a certification you have to have two years for treasury, three years for FP &A or masters or PA right, you have to have all those things that show that you've done the work because what a certification shows is you have met a certain level of commitment and competence to this role.
The other thing that a certification does is it goes beyond just the test right, you're bringing your practical knowledge to work and you're keeping up with it.
So certifications have a continuing education component to it, right, and all of the certifications do, right, to show that you are keeping up in the field, so that, whoever hires you knows that you are truly certified.
For AFP, for our both our CTP and FPAC, it's 45 credits earned in a three -year cycle, so 15 per year, or however you want to break that out into your three -year cycle.
I think you and I probably went to business school around the same time, And we were talking the other day about, you know, in the MBA program, you learned to read financial statements.
And I took a bunch of courses where I learned, you know, high finance kind of stuff.
But my first FP &A role, I don't even know if it was called FP &A.
I mean, I'm old as dirt, so I don't know if I don't even know if it was called that back then.
But the NBA really didn't prepare me.
I mean, I don't know.
It felt like a lot more on the job learning and maybe that's just maybe that's still the case.
But do you think, have MBAs changed as FBNA has changed?
Or why do you think it is that at least when we were in business school, it didn't feel like it prepared as well for FPNA, as much as it did a lot of other roles as an executive.
So it's not just your experience in that it's today.
And I can say that because I run our university partners program, where we are actively talking about how to get our content into, in front of both undergraduate and MBA students, both of them.
and the challenge that and this really started our our flagship program is with kelly school of business at indiana university and they came to us and they said we've got this problem and the problem is you know they are one of the largest one of the largest and one of the top rated business schools but their degrees they have an accounting degree which has a clear vertical you go into accounting and they have a finance degree and everybody who thinks that goes everyone who takes that thinks they're going to be on wall street or in personal finance.
And so they're all going to be bankers.
Right. But the truth is when they looked at their numbers is that that wasn't true.
50 % of their accounting and finance people ended up working for the CFO. And we found this was also true at the MBA level, right?
You learn finance, you learn high finance, but if you're going to be working in the office of the CFO, there's different nuances and there's different ways that you would apply that.
But there's this business schools, just in general, broad brush stereotype are not teaching for the corporate finance track, which is a great opportunity to enhance your MBA with the FPAC or to, or if you were an undergraduate, you can pass the exam and then work and get an accrue, those years of work experience in a, in a certain window so that you can really get that knowledge at the start of your career and then apply it and have a leg leg up in in what you do early in my career trying to figure out what I want to, you know, everybody said, Well, if you if you want to be a CFO, you're gonna have to
go get your CPA, I didn't want to get my CPA didn't I didn't love it?
I loved finance, not accounting.
And then the other certification was the CFA and it was like, well, that's not really exactly right, either.
Because I knew working for the office of the CFO and ultimately being a CFO was my goal.
So this, I mean, it does seem great.
Tell me a little bit about like how rigorous is it?
What's what's the time commitment if somebody wants to do this?
Are there ongoing like CPEs?
Give me a little bit more details about the program and the certification.
Yeah sure, so I'll speak specifically to the FPAC because that's the audience we have here today.
There are two exams and I estimated about 35 to 40 hours to study for each exam.
It was about what I did but I mean I also had experience in the field but that seems about right.
Today we have an online learning platform.
We call it the EPP exam prep platform.
And there are 850 pages of text, 20 hours of video, pre -test, post -test. So you could really figure out which areas you need to focus on.
Flashcards, gamification.
We just revamped it last summer.
It really is a first class user experience in going through and studying the material.
If you have a CPA or a CFA or are CTP, You can actually pass out of, you could waive out of the first part.
And the first part is really multiple choice tests focused on financial acumen.
And so we've done a side -by -side comparison and there's enough overlap that you can waive out of the first part.
If you have an active, one of those other certifications, part two is a little bit, it's a little bit different.
It's a test it's task -based simulation and case study analysis.
So you have to actually bring to bear and demonstrate in an Excel -type tool what it looks like and that you, again, you're showing mastery of the core concepts of FP &A.
The CTP, I'll just say quickly, is one exam, multiple -choice, also, candidates say that it's also about 50 to 75 hours to study for that, but like I said, that's a one -part test. Again, specific for people working in the Treasury practice.
You would think with FP &A becoming so much more of a role these days that business schools would adapt and maybe they eventually will, but it's great that you guys are there to fill the void in the interim.
And that was another part of our conversation that we had the other day that I really wanted to get to is looking at how the, since you and I have been in the profession, how the CFO role has changed.
And, one of the things it feels like to me is what the controller is today, is what the CFO was 25 years ago or so.
I mean, the CFO role has really changed a lot.
And when we were talking about that, you pointed out that it goes back even further than that.
So walk me through, you said that the term CFO barely even existed in 1970.
So kind of walk me through the history as you see it.
Yeah I mean there's data to back up exactly what you're saying.
University of Chicago study looked at 400 largest companies.
In 1970, the term CFO just didn't exist. There wasn't a need for it.
It was the accountant or the controller.
That's because the level of effort that it took just to pull all that historical information and get it in the GL.
But nobody wanted more from that role.
But really, over the next two decades, I'd say there are three things that led to a need, right?
You need to have this CFO. And so the first thing was increasing complexity of financial markets and financialization.
So there were a series of laws that were passed that changed some of the accounting rules and as companies move internationally, they were more impacted by FX rates and then hedging and global markets as they moved.
And somebody had to say, well, what is this?
What does this mean?
Right? There's a great quote from, um, I think it's Bob Eisner, the CEO of Disney in the eighties, he said, somebody has to convert all of this to English.
Someone has to say what this means and the impact on the business of all of these tax changes and internationalization.
So there had to build out somebody who could talk to the business and explain how they're financially, how their business results would look in an increasingly sophisticated world.
Second kind of milestone was really as financial markets changed, there was a need to bring that financial view inside.
And when I'm specifically talking about where the corporate Raiders today, we would just call them private equity firms, but it was a threat in the eighties and nineties that you had these barbarians at the gate, right?
That was the book barbarians at the gate, who are going to come in and raid your company and kick out the CEO and put it in, kick out the board and say, there's wasted money, there's trapped capital.
You have the wrong, you're overly diversified and you have a, you're a conglomerate with these different businesses that some are core and some are not, CEOs turned around and said, well, who is it that's inside my company that is thinking about maximizing the financial value of my company?
And it wasn't marketing and it wasn't tech and it wasn't HR, right?
They all have incredibly important strategic roles to play, but who is sitting next to the CEO who could say.
Here is the financial value.
Here's how you maximize the value in order to provide that strategy that the markets were demanding.
They had to bring that inside.
And so the CFO kind of elevated for that, but again, it wasn't, it couldn't be nested in the accounting group, right?
Because the accounting group was still doing a very critical job of financial control.
So you start to develop these internal financial analysts.
And I know I'm giving a long -winded answer but there really was a third thing that happened.
And the third thing we're still living through today and it's only accelerating.
And that's the data revolution, the data impact.
That as it became easier to collect the data from different parts of the business.
All those things I mentioned before about moving upstream to collect the data or the ability to have your accounting done in more sophisticated ways.
it actually freed up some of the resources in this CFO organization to move people away from the rear view control and get into the GL point and take some of those same financially focused people and move them out and have them forward -looking.
And so now the CFO has more resources, they have a mandate to maximize financial value, and they have demand from the business to be that advisor.
And you put that together, and we have this whole role of the CFO as a business advisor.
And the CFO says, I need someone who could help me make these forward -looking financial capital decisions.
And so that's the creation of FP &A that AFP built out, has created the content and the exam, and now that we're all living through, right, it is how do you bring that financial acumen on a forward -looking basis so that the business, the CFO can be a partner to the business.
Yeah. And it, you know, it goes back to what we were saying earlier about, you know, the, the whole big data that everybody was talking about, but we weren't sure how to access it, how to use it, how to apply it to finance.
And it also feels like, and this is anecdotal I don't have data to back this up, but post Enron Sarbanes Oxley, there was, so that would've been what, was that around 2000?
Was that, uh, I can tell you exactly when that was.
Cause you know, you're, uh, you're, you're digging into the, again, the early part of my career, right?
So Sarbanes Oxley came out of the wake of the Enron scandal, which is around 2001 or so.
Actually my, one of my first jobs at American express, I went through a financial rotation program.
And one of my first jobs was in audit and risk.
And it was to put in place the entity level risk assessment for Sarbanes Oxley controls.
And you're right, that had such a huge impact, right?
So the goal was to look at all the processes that led to financial reporting.
So the CFO had to look at a process view inside every company, right?
It wasn't just about the GL, it was certifying every step that gets to the general ledger.
And the CFO now had a mandate to go and work with the business and to work beyond finance and beyond counting and really understand the business and set up systems and processes that would move data all the way through and that opened the door for the CFO to say, well, that's really interesting.
Why are you doing that?
How about this? Let me bring some of my financial acumen to bear on what you're doing in the business and really expanded the purview of this CFO. Yeah, I think prior to that, you could be a mile deep, but an inch wide.
You could say you could be in this ivory tower of I'm just a bean counter.
I don't, I don't know, ops, I don't know marketing.
I don't care about all that.
But when you're signing those financial statements that you know, and taking ownership of everything that's being reported, you suddenly do need to become that expert across the business, and that changes how people look at finance and how, I guess, business partnering evolves out of all that, I mean, it's just, you have to really get into the business, and it used to be, I could be an accountant for, you know, a CPG company or a service business or a SaaS company, it didn't matter, it was just, you know, it was all just the accounting part but since you have to know that full broad spectrum and this goes,
and I've got a whole other soapbox about Office of the CFO that I think we should own all, not determine them for everybody, but be the arbiter of and reporter of all the KPIs and you know, for a company.
And because if you're, if you're trusted to report objectively the financial results, you should also you know, that should carry over into the other metrics, the operational metrics and the sales metrics and all that, but that's a battle for another day, I would think.
That's a separate rabbit hole.
And I think, you know, you mentioned, sort of the corporate raters and all that too, and I'm thinking about you and I both coming up working for private equity backed companies.
It was very stressful at the time, especially in my first CFO role.
However, I think the way PE, and I know they get a bad rap today and all that, but it's the way private equity looked at businesses really shaped the way that I looked at businesses too.
And it helped me to understand really to adapt that more, you know, put more effort and energy and focus into your modeling and understanding the levers that you pull that are going to drive the results and understand just, it made me a different CFO than if I were not in that, didn't have that pressure from the PE people constantly, you know, questioning everything, everything that I did.
Yeah. There's a little discipline that comes from the market, right.
And there's discipline that comes from the PE firm, the PE firm is, So, they're never more than a call away and they're always sitting at their spreadsheets and kind of looking at you and it really a black and white view of make this number move, report by the metrics, because everything that they do is they want to get in, expand their multiple and get out.
And so, it forces a certain discipline on the CFO to then push that out through the business.
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When we were talking the other day, you mentioned the private equity -backed company where the CFO eventually became the CEO, and thinking about what that says about how the role is changing.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Yeah. Yeah. So that was my, my first stint at a, at a PE back company and the company went from, you know, it grew quickly.
And the CEO at the time, um, kind of knew everything a little bit of the Jack of all trades, but he was also like, You know, a little bit of a visionary, but a little bit of you never really knew where he was going to go at a certain point in time.
At one point, the sale of the company didn't work, it didn't go through and the PE firm decided, okay, well, we're going to try this again.
And what they did was they actually elevated the CFO to the CEO role.
And some of the reasons really stood out.
It was, they wanted somebody that had an operator mindset, right.
that knew how to put together the company and understood on a quantitative numerical basis how it worked.
But also, the CFO often is that role of the safe hands in the company.
And so they wanted a little bit more stability, operational excellence.
And this particular CFO also was really aware of the limits of what he knew.
And that made him a really good manager.
And so what he would do is he would say, okay, I recognize that I don't know everything.
So I'm going to really lean on the expertise in my marketing team.
I'm really gonna lean on the expertise in the board and what they could bring.
And so he did a really good job managing the company because his background wasn't the visionary in that particular space.
It was management operations, financial control, and that view of really the respect that he had of telling truth to the board. and so all of those things made them a very valuable and successful CEO. I don't know why this, whenever I hear stories like that I think about, and this goes back to Sarbanes -Oxley too, when the CFO had to become this, the voice of the adult in the room, and I, for some reason, the example I always get is that the CEO of WeWork, the guy that was running around barefoot, the long haired guy, and they went through like three CFOs in like three years too and I just, I think
about that like, the world needs these visionaries and these sort of iconoclasts or whatever they come up with these brilliant ideas.
But when you, you know, when the business gets to a going concern and you get out of that, you've got to have that sort of professional.
And I think that the CFO, I would like to see data on how many CFOs become CEOs today, because I think it is it makes a lot of sense in that whole mindset of being a CFO. It makes a lot of sense as a CEO of a company, as far as being a steward of how to carry it.
Now, I guess, you know, maybe someone on the other side might say, yeah, but we're, you know, finance and accounting people, we're too risk averse.
We're not really wired for it.
You need to be able to, you know, gamble and all that.
And, you know, again, probably a topic for another show, but...
Someone gave me a really interesting viewpoint.
You need different CFOs at different times in a company's lifecycle.
And it's probably also true of the CEO, right, when the company is smaller, you need the charismatic person who could rally the troops.
And at some point, the company grows to scale and need to operate it right.
Same way that the two CEOs of Google, at some point knew to step back and bring in Eric Schmidt as the experienced operator.
Sometimes when you're looking at the CFO, you need the capital person, right.
Go out, raise money, talk to investors, get through your ABCD rounds, go public.
At other times, and I've worked at other companies that have gone through $6 billion accounting restatements, Right?
They brought in a specific CFO who had done that before, and he didn't want to be there for more than two years.
So he was there for two years.
Readed the books, new processes, went off to his next one.
Right? At other times you want the operator CFO, you want the maximization CFO. And what we see today, someone had just posted this yesterday on LinkedIn.
It was, there's a new title.
It's C O F O chief operating, a financial officer, right?
Because finance has that control mindset and because they have the access to the data and as you say, the KPIs and the metrics and performance management aspect, right, there are blending of the role of the COO and the CFO together.
And it's just encompassing all of that in order to deliver the metrics and the management of the company.
And actually a couple of the CFO roles I had were CFOs slash DOO because there were turnarounds or whatever.
And really the main driver was we have to get the company financially stable.
So we want someone with that finance mindset to get into operations and, you know, maximize it and all that and prepare the company for sale or or raising money or whatever it was.
So that that made sense to me.
And it it coming into a company as a CFO, I think I would always freak the company out because I would, And, you know, first thing I'd want to do is go look at the data and people and processes just outside of, obviously you have to understand the finance structure, but then let's look at from the sales process to our prospects and leads, and what, you know, look at the, where the data's going, data and processes is going all the way from that first contact with a potential customer, all the way through one and into the system and all that.
And wanted to see all that data so that we can under understand it and be able to report and know which levers to pull and where the inefficiencies were and all that.
So to me the finance and operations were very tied together.
Yeah, that makes, I mean, you have to map the mission to the money, right?
You can't just be focused on the money.
It doesn't just appear there.
It doesn't just fall to the bottom line, right?
It gets there through a certain path.
So mission to money and the levers is that you have to move that are critical to understand.
I think you would have made a great COO.
I mean, everything that we're talking about now, we've got the CFO, you've got to be part strategist, part technologist, part diplomat, you know, depending on what the lifecycle of the business.
So, as we talk about all this, and as we've talked about the evolution, what does this mean for the next generation of FP &A leaders?
Like, what's, and I think it would be interesting, I mean, you're really right on the forefront of this with the certification, because you've got to be thinking every day about the skills that FP &A professionals need that they can need to build now to kind of stay relevant in the years ahead.
And I guess the certification has to sort of evolve with that as well.
But what do you, what do you think those skills are and how are they different, even than they were just a couple of years ago?
I think it's important to have a clear mindset of what the CFO does in order to, to fit everything else in, because you, you don't want to, you don't want to over -index right, I think of the CFO is the steward of capital managing its sources to uses right in that whole process.
And so within that, that job breaks and the CFO job is getting bigger and bigger, which is a whole other conversation.
But it's, you know, there's so much, so much a part of that.
So then there's the, where it was, we call that accounting and audit where it is.
We call that treasury and AP and how it circulates and then where it's going for FP &A.
So if you're going in FP &A or you want to go into FPA, I think you have to understand where you sit relative to the other parts of finance.
One of the great things about FP &A is people move throughout.
The idea that you're going to be, you're on a ladder and you move up the corporate ladder and you take your boss's job and you just keep going straight up, that doesn't really exist anymore.
Ladders are replaced by lattices and people are moving around different parts of finance, as well as different parts of the company outside of finance.
So the best FP &A people have experience in FP &A and outside of FP &A, and you really it's really important to pull together that broader view.
Within that, so FP &A, your view is where do I put my next dollar of capital?
You have to understand finance, right?
You have to, you have to know what finances, what it does, and you have to understand the processes that you go through by which you deliver your finance acumen.
So if all you overdo is index on the technology, you're going to forget the finance part.
Right. If all you do is technology, you're a technology person.
You have, it's technology to serve that goal of next dollar of capital to its best use, understand finance, understand finance processes.
Don't leave that behind.
There's also the personal and team effectiveness component to this.
There, you have to work with people and if you're in FP &A, you're probably spending 70 % of your time dealing with non -finance people.
And that's really different from being in accounting, where you're spending 70 % of your time working with other finance people.
So if you're working with non -finance people, you have to brush up on your communication skills.
How do you create a presentation that speaks to other people, but you call it storytelling or communication, putting together a good slide, right?
It's not just about the slide deck.
It's about getting the, the point of view across, right?
We are delivering analysis and insight.
We don't deliver data, right?
That's called a data dump.
We're not the FDD department.
We're not the financial data dump or FP &A.
We deliver finance planning analysis insight.
So you have to deliver that.
The technology side is how you get it done.
It's what you do backstage that makes you effective on stage in dealing with your partners.
And so what I would say to people who are working in finance is all of this.
Understand the whole role of the CFO. Understand finance, understand technology, and understand the people component of your job.
And that's why these jobs are so hard to find.
That's why it's a little bit of an apprenticeship, right?
You need a good leader who can help you with all these things.
Because it's hard to find one person who's good at all three of those very different goals.
Sometimes FP &A is about putting together the right team.
Sometimes it's about coaching people to be good at all those different elements.
But honestly, that's also why it's the sexiest part, the sexiest job in CFO organization.
It gives you such visibility into the entire company.
You have an understanding of, if I work in IT or HR or whatever, I don't get that visibility.
And it's yeah, I agree with you.
I mean, that's where we put our careers, so I'm right there with you.
And people who are really good in FP &A will get poached.
Right, when I was at American Express, I had this job role, it was very central.
We were developing a new product and I was the person with the model.
And in order to get the model together, I had to talk to the back office over here and I had to talk to the people, it was an international product.
So I was talking to people in different countries and timezones and the marketing team and all these things and putting together.
And what we see is that people get pulled out and sometimes come back.
FP &A is a good way to seed other parts of the company with people who are quantitative and rational and understand business and strategy.
And it also, it makes you a better FP &A person to have P &L responsibility to have that and then come back to finance because you understand what's on the other side of that cell, right?
What's on the other side of that number and how it gets there.
It just makes you a more well -rounded person, which is what the best FP &A people are.
You know, with everything that's come along in FP &A, so much automation has also changed.
I'm not even talking about AI yet, I just mean SaaS tools that are everything from AP to AR to expense management.
I mean, there are automation tools out there it's been the story for the last decade or more, definitely, where so much of what we used to do was data entry and it was not maximizing.
Like nobody goes and gets a masters in finance or accounting because they love entering data.
So as that goes away, we've been able to focus more on what we went to school for and really add that strategy and value.
And I think the interesting thing right now is automation continues.
It's getting more and more is being automated.
Now when you throw generative AI in it and this talk of agents there's gonna be whole swaths of positions, I think that in the very near future we'll be able to be replaced with automation.
It's early and there's a lot of talk about it now but we're riding that hype cycle up.
I don't see the massive impacts happening today, I think we all just kind of sense this is the direction we're going But how do you see AI and automation reshaping the way that FP &A teams operate and, you know, obviously human judgment is still a big part of that.
But what do you, what are you seeing?
What do you, if you look in your crystal ball and let us know?
You know, at AFP, we have a wide range of companies and members and they are all across the spectrum from some of the most technologically advanced companies that are out there to people with one person finance.
And so the distribution of where people are is on the spectrum.
one of the fun parts about API, I like to think of my job, I do a lot of recycling.
I talk to some of the people who are on the most advanced parts, and I put them on webinars and bring them to conference and then take what they say and try and move the media.
That's what I think is, how do we take the best of what we're doing out there in FP &A and finance and bring it to everybody and move everybody forward. We really are at a wide range, and our survey research shows that there's a small group that's on the leading edge, the bleeding edge, the leading edge, in 2025, you know, 40 % of people said, responded to our survey and said, this is it, this is the year we're really going to start our pilot.
Right? I mean, we're two and a half years into the GPT, you know, go, go live and people like, all right, now we're going to do our pilot.
People are all over the place and that's really the challenge that they face.
And there are different flavors of AI and there's different ways to use it.
But when people really ask me like, how do you get started and what do you need?
The first thing I do is I quote this guy, Glenn Hopper, and he says, you need BI before AI.
You need to get your data right and your processes right.
Need to understand your infrastructure before you can use the tool.
I believe that the technology is there today to do a lot of the things that people dream about.
But it's held back.
It's like having a, you know, having a Ferrari driving through a school zone.
It's being held back by poor data, poor processes, concerns about security, policy inside companies that really limits what people can do, right?
What we're trying to do at AFP is show the art of the possible and give people an opportunity for tools and engagement with AI outside, almost a third space, right?
Give people an opportunity to play with the data and the tools outside their company, using safe data sets and safe spaces, so that they could bring that back.
But companies are all over the place.
It's not built into our processes today.
Yeah. And it's, I don't know, as you know, I live and breathe this stuff, and I'm trying to figure out ways to make it work right now, whether it's productizing some of this stuff or doing bespoke implementations, and really it's data engineering right now.
It's data governance.
It's getting the data foundation straight.
And then once you do that, sure you can put a chatbot on top of anything and interact with the data that way, but it's gotta have the data right first. So I wanna put a bow on this whole part of the show.
What's your advice to someone say they're five years into their FP &A career and they want to be tomorrow's CFO with everything we've said like, what are the key takeaways, where would you tell them to focus right now and to be sure that they're on the best track to do that?
I think that for people's careers, I think that in your first five -ish years, it's important to understand the breadth of what finance does, what's out there, what it means, how it comes together.
Somewhere between five and 15, you're really developing expertise, right?
You kind of have your head down and then when you become the CFO, I think then you are in management and you're trying to be successful through other people, right?
And management through other people.
So there's a bit of an hourglass shape to your career of breadth, expertise, and then breadth again.
But because things are changing so fast, you kind of have to be head to heads down on your job and on your company, right?
You have to be good at what you do and you have to make your boss happen.
You have to be productive and add value where you are.
But you can't be so focused on that that you forget to pick your head up.
And this is where, with things like listening to your podcast and coming to conferences and reading outside is so important because if all you know is what you do on your day -to -day job, you only know one example.
You have got to pay attention to your career and to your constant learning.
And so going to a conference allows you to have input from so many other people from so many other sessions, right?
We've got to... we have our big conference coming up.
there's gonna be 130 different educational sessions in Boston in October, 2025, right?
And all different matters.
All the different tracks that we have. And that's great.
It's the potpourri of everything and you get to see that.
We have another event that is just FPNA focused.
It's gonna be next March in Indianapolis.
And that's going to be like a deep dive on everything that's FPNA, right?
You've got to get out from behind your desk.
You've got to get out from behind the one instance that you see at your company and see what other people are doing, listen to other people, and take advantage of the practitioner network that surrounds you to keep those sources of input coming to you so that you keep growing.
Trenton Larkin Perfect.
Really well said. So, all right, we're at the time of the show where we delve into our, our boilerplate personal questions here.
So the first one is, you probably, if you're a listener, you know, the questions that are coming, but the first one is, what is something that most people don't know about you that we couldn't find, you know, by looking you up online?
I'm not good at like talking about myself online, so that'd probably be almost anything, but it's springtime here and it is biking season.
So I had my bike on a trainer all winter.
I'm gonna take it out, get outside, get up through the kind of the wine country in Maryland.
And I'm gonna work towards a big ride in DC over labor day weekend where they shut down the streets and everybody's out.
And so it's been a while since I've done a metric century ride, but I'm looking forward to, uh, to trying that again.
Very cool. I actually was on my trainer this morning doing a Zwift ride because I had my first meeting was at seven 30 and the sun's not up till about six 15 here right now.
So I had to get my, uh, you know, watching a sci -fi show and sitting on the trainer and my, in my game room for the ride this morning, but looking forward to getting out some more too, and what we'll have to ride together, I'll have to, sounds good.
And now that I put it out there and it's public now, now you got to hold me to it.
So, And now we gotta connect on Strava, I guess, right?
Are you on Strava? When I write with my daughter, she's on Strava, but she is now old enough that she puts me to shame.
All right, next, everybody's favorite question.
What is your favorite Excel function and why?
So I'll try and give one that I haven't heard on previous episodes of your show and it's the combination of the watch window or the ability, which is one way to do it, or just when you click on view and you can have two different instances of the same model at the same time.
So often you're working in one part and you want to know what's happening somewhere else.
So I'll just take my screen and I'll have called my inputs in one place or outputs, or I'll just use the watch window feature as well.
I'll just be able to see and fine tune how things are working, whether the calculation's coming through correctly.
But that ability to see two parts of the model at the same time is really valuable.
That's great. That's the first time I've gotten that one.
And I actually, being a former CFO, it's been a while since I built a big Excel model and needed that functionality.
But I was having flashbacks to now you've got all your assumptions and drivers on all these different tabs and you're changing it here and you're having to click back and find, well where was it?
And sometimes it's not even in the same spreadsheet where you're trying to run down the impact of all the formulas.
Yeah. So that's a great one.
All right. I guess last question, Where can our listeners go to learn more about the F - Nevertheless, the F -pack and how can they connect with you or AFP directly?
So for AFP, obviously we have, we have our website, a f p online dot O R G.
And from there there's links to our, our FPAC, our CTP, our conferences, our webinars, right?
We have a ton of stuff in front of a firewall that's free and accessible to everybody.
So our website is there.
I also post content several times a week and so I'm easy to find on on Linkedin.
So Brian Lapetus on Linkedin, Brian with a Y.
There are a couple other Brian Lapetuses out there interestingly, they're great guys, but make sure you get the one who's working in FP &A.
All right and we'll put your LinkedIn in our show notes too, so they can find you.
And you and I, we should plan, I think we missed it this year, but the Stokesville Strata is in March. It's a hundred.
It's a, they've got a metric century.
And I think you can either do 31 or the metric century, but it's a gravel grinder race.
We can train for that for next year.
We can go do that together.
I'll put some shocks on my bike.
Well, Brian, really always love talking to you.
Loved your insights and really appreciate you coming on the show.
