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And now, onto the show.
From Data Reels, this is FPA Today.
Welcome to FPA Today.
I'm your host, Glenn Hopper.
Today we have a special guest, Enrique Rodriguez.
Enrique is a multilingual finance director and business leader with over 15 years of experience in Fortune 100 companies.
He has worked collaboratively with Global Functions, directing FP &A, accounting, and treasury teams.
He's headed finance departments overseeing $7 billion in annual spend and managing operational budgets of up to $750 million in billion -dollar business units.
A strategic leader, Enrique has adapted quickly in diverse environments, implementing large -scale financial systems and projects across multiple time zones.
He's served as a country CFO and regional finance director for six countries.
Enrique is a growth mindset and servant leader who enjoys developing high -performance teams.
He's a board member of the Financial Executives International Chicago chapter and leads its Leadership Development Committee.
Enrique, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much, Glenn.
I appreciate very much the invitation, and it's an honor and pleasure to be here in front of you and all your listeners.
Thank you. Yeah, you know, before the show, we were talking about some of your experience, and you've worked with some big, well -known companies, you know, all of our listeners to be familiar with.
Can you kind of take me through your career and tell our audience how you got into FP &A and finance?
Yes, absolutely. Fantastic.
So ultimately, my career began in economics and finance in my home country Guatemala, and ultimately was driven by curiosity about how numbers can actually guide decision -making.
Just probably for the entities that I wanted to make, Guatemala is actually a beautiful country, and it's the cradle of the Mayan civilization.
It's the largest economy in Central America with an estimated GDP of about $104 -105 billion and expected in 2023.
It has roughly a population of 19 million people.
Just giving you a little bit of comparison, it's very close to the population of the state of New York, with roughly about 44 ,000 square miles, similar to the state of the size of the state of Pennsylvania.
Guatemala is also the economy is dominated by the private sector, and with generally about roughly about 85 % of its GDP, we key industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, and services.
So going back to my career, I transitioned into FP &A when I realized that it wasn't just about crunching the numbers.
It was more about telling a story and trying to influence the future.
Working with Fortune 100 companies have given me the fantastic platform to leave transformative projects in finance, procurement, and supply chain.
When I saw firsthand how can FP &A act as the strategic backbone of any type of organization?
Yeah, that's a great answer, and I love that more and more people are saying now.
I swear, I feel like if I were doing this podcast even a decade ago, not as many people would talk about storytelling, but it's so crucial with what we do.
To think the value that we add when we crunch numbers, it's not just about gathering up all the data and putting together our charts and graphs.
It's about interpreting that data and having an objective with it and using the data to help people, to help show the other decision makers in the company what the data means and give them an idea of what the data is telling us.
So I love the storytelling part that you focused on there.
I also want to talk about because you have experience in Fortune 100 biopharmaceutical companies, medical devices, and healthcare companies, and I know a lot of our listeners are from those industries.
For those who aren't even, what are the essential things that finance people need to know about these companies and industries?
What are your main KPIs that you're looking at, the metrics that the CFO wants to know on a daily basis in each of those industries?
Yes. Ultimately, in these industries, it's very important to understand the long timelines and high stakes, and it's absolutely critical.
Just to give a little bit of a sense of perspective, roughly within the pharma and biotech industries, the lead time in order to from inception of a molecule or discovery of a molecule all the way to having the finished product directly at your pharmacy is roughly between 10 to 12 years.
So that's a very long lead time.
So for example, in the biopharma, R &D spend, type the market, regulatory hurdles shape actually all financial strategies.
Going back to the metrics, Glenn, key metrics include gross margin by -product, cash burn during development phases, and also and ultimately working capital efficiencies.
I would say CFOs contract profitability by segment, cash flow projections, and the progress of these strategic initiatives, like new drug launches, is absolutely paramount.
And last but not least, I would say that probably the complexity of these industries actually demands finance professionals who are able to balance the compliance side of it, because we're talking about heavily regulated industries across the board, and not only locally within the US, but even in the companies
that I have had the fortune and the privilege of being part of, in a global scale, it's very important to have that sense of understanding about the different regulations across the board, and the different environments from one country to the next.
Going back to the complexity of these industries, definitely innovation is key.
And strategic planning as well, coupled with the long timelines, is absolutely critical.
And thinking about the amount of R &D and how you have to constantly be looking for the next new drug or innovation.
But at the same time, you know that that is a heavy expense that the company is bearing, but then you've got to also see the life cycle.
And I guess on the from drug release, you've got the days that you have patent on it, and then until the patent expires and that goes away.
So you're managing the cycle of the release drugs and then the R &D as well.
It seems like it would be a lot to keep up with.
So how were the FP &A departments set up at the companies you worked for?
What was the philosophy and the outputs that came out of your FP &A departments?
Yeah, that's a very good question because I would say that specifically within the biopharma pharma medical devices and biotech companies, definitely or absolutely FP &A plays a dual role.
Not only being a value driver, but ultimately becoming a strategic partner.
I would say that probably different from other industries, the biopharma medical devices and biotech industry puts finance overall as a function in a very important role.
As I said, becoming or being truthfully a strategic partner and being that value driver.
Our focus within those industries has always been about agility, collaboration, ensuring insights that are not just accurate, but also actionable.
We prioritize integrating FP &A with other functions as well, producing outputs like dynamic scenario planning, which is key, and specific KPI dashboard that can also guide decisions at the highest level.
Ultimately, this ensures or has ensured being proactive and navigating the rapidly evolving healthcare and retail space as well in the retail pharma space.
You recently presented an interesting webinar about how you implemented zero -based budgeting.
This is a great debate and I think that there's top down in zero -based and then sort of where companies end up meeting in the middle.
But I'd love to hear an overview of the why and how and what people should know about zero -based budgeting.
Ultimately, zero -based budgeting has been a game changer, at least personally for me.
I think one of the critical points that I try to make in that webinar where I had also the privilege of participating is that ZBB is so critical because instead of relying on historical budgets and trends, it's absolutely about how do you rebuild or build your budget from the ground up, questioning every
single dollar that gets spent.
I would say that implementation overall demands or definitely implies a very strong support from senior leadership team because ultimately the level of scrutiny as to each and every one of the dollar that gets spent from bottom up, can be at the beginning time consuming, it can create a little bit of friction.
But ultimately, when you get the buy -in for the business unit leaders, they know that the goal is to actually drive transparency and specifically accountability.
For example, in that particular one of the recent examples that I can mention is that we did identify about eliminating a closely about 15 % reduction in operational costs, eliminating redundant expenses that we would not have been able to actually find without going into this very thorough time consuming
at the beginning, very very thorough and productive exercise of ZBB.
Ultimately, probably my final point here is that the success of a good and effective ZBB implementation comes from aligning stakeholders early, of course, breaking down silos and creating ultimately a culture of ownership over the budget.
This is a finance function overall.
It's ultimately me as a business unit leader being the owner of a budget facilitated by the support and partnership of FBA or a finance professional across the board.
I've been a fan of zero -based budgeting since before I was in finance.
Well, before I was in finance, my first exposure to a budget, I was in the military, and it was coming up on the end of the year on budget time, and this was in the mid 90s.
I'm dating myself a little bit here, but this was during a time of military cutbacks.
I remember my boss telling me, we have to spend this money by the end of the year or they'll take it out of our budget for next year.
That seemed like the most backwards, but I just played the game and I said, okay, well, we're going to buy extra office supplies and whatever we had to do to round out our budget.
But then when I had my first finance role and my first budgets that I was responsible for, it seemed insane to me that we wouldn't do zero -based budgeting.
At every company where I was ever CFO, it was very difficult to get zero -based budgeting put in place.
Because of the size of the companies where I went to work, there was always a bit of a challenge.
Because a lot of times, I would be the first real finance person to come to a company being in the startup space.
The department heads always want to know, well, what was my spend last year?
They can't get past this idea of this.
But then if you move in and the company if expenses haven't been properly allocated and maybe software wasn't applied to, they want to know what their baseline is.
But I've found that zero -based budgeting actually works hand in hand with when you want the department heads to start taking ownership of their budget performance.
Because when they don't just say, take the run rate, add 2%, or take whatever forecast comes from the top down, then they have ownership of it.
And then further, when you tie their bonus to how they perform compared to budget, they go hand in hand.
But it's always a difficult concept to roll out to people.
And it is more difficult, I think, than just being able to go down and plug in, well, headcount plus 10 % and shipping plus 2 .5 % or run rate or whatever the other way of approaching it would be.
So yeah, I don't know.
Have you seen the conflict or people pushing back when you tried to roll out zero -based budgeting before?
Yes, all the time. All the time because precisely every business unit or most of the business unit leaders and so on, are so used to what you just mentioned.
I mean, baseline plus minus 3, 5, 10%.
And that's what the definition of a budget was.
But ultimately, one of the points that I wanted to emphasize one more time, Glenn, is the fact that it's important in any type of ZBB implementation to spend the right amount of time in the initial setup.
Because that is so critical in order to guarantee or at least to facilitate or enable the success of that ZBB implementation.
The definition of the specific categories are going to be the categories that are considered ZBB based or not ZBB based.
And ultimately, in making sure that all the enterprise that is going to be under this new way of budgeting is fully aware about what is or the key definitions and what would be the guiding principles of it all.
And last but not least, ensuring that the submission get done on a timely manner.
Because more often than none in any type of, and probably most of the FNA professionals have been doing this throughout their career, timeliness of deadline submission is very key.
And ultimately, those are the components of a successful ZBB implementation in my opinion.
It's interesting looking at the size of companies that you've worked at much bigger than mine, but I imagine a lot of the issues around it are still the same where you have to be sure that if you are allocating software expense, if you've told them that they have to budget for it, that you're making
sure that you're tracking the expense back to the place where they said it would be.
And both those together foster more discipline and gives a more accurate report.
So I agree with the approach and commend you for doing that.
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Well, what would you say is the most challenging budget experience you've faced in your career today?
Was that around implementing zero -based budgeting or what other challenges have you seen in budgeting?
There has been many countless experiences or difficult experiences, but ultimately, I think for me, the top freak experience has been, I would say managing budgets during a turnaround.
Because I mean, under heavy cost containment measures, I would say that has been ultimately the top experience so far.
It's easier to manage budgets when the business is thriving or is in a growth mode or has a fantastic growth trajectory overall, in addition to being in a favorable economic environment.
However, when the business is in the middle of a turnaround on their constant cost containment measures, your ability as a leader to prioritize and establish consensus maybe with the respective business leaders on determining exactly what are the real priorities and what those expenses that keep the lights
on type of expenses is definitely more challenging or has been more challenging.
Ultimately, managing those expected or unexpected costs, but by focusing on shared priorities and leveraging the details and analysis is key to build that unified budget and support the combined company's goals.
And thinking about turnarounds, and you're giving me flashbacks to my own career.
My first CFO role, this wasn't a turnaround, but it was a startup company that was a retail car wash company.
And I started as CFO, the first CFO at the company in 2007.
We were pretty heavily leveraged.
Each of these units several million dollars to build.
They had a handful of units.
So I started in 2007.
Then we had the financial crisis of 08, 09 when this company was heavily leveraged a lot of new sites under construction.
And all of a sudden you had to get the budget in line because we had all these covenants with the banks and just trying to keep our head above water in all the economic turmoil.
But I will say, I don't know what is that saying of steel sharpened steel or whatever, because we survived 08, 09.
And we kept all these controls that we had in place in the financial crisis until we ended up selling the business several years down the road.
But the tight budgeting and the fact that we had these, in our case, it was the car wash managers were high school educated.
These certainly were not finance people, but we held them accountable for their budgets.
And I swear after a couple of months of managing them to it, you would think you were talking to a McKinsey analyst come in and review the budget with you.
But what we learned in that hard time through 08 and 09 carried over, and it made us fiscally a much tighter company.
It was kind of interesting what could have taken us under that kind of pressure.
The fact that we survived it and maintained that attitude was a huge benefit in that case.
So we were talking a little bit before the show and you mentioned the storytelling part of it very early on in one of the questions, but we were talking about business partnering as well and how finance does better when it kind of gets out of that ivory tower of just sitting over here isolated and,
oh, I'm just the finance person.
This is what I do. Tell me about your approach to business partnering and how you've seen that change, the relationship between finance and accounting and the rest of the business and kind of what your best secret for business partnering has been?
Yeah. That's a very interesting approach to it.
I don't know if it's going to be my secret though, but at least my approach to it all has been highly emphatic and being able to speak the language.
It is critical to understand your stakeholders' gold ultimately, whether it's sales, marketing, supply chain, procurement now, and being able to frame those insights around their own priorities.
So for example, instead of presenting rock -hole state -after -marketing, I would say, I'd like to translate it into potentially ROI metrics that actually resonate a little bit with them or better with them.
The other thing is, I would say, the additional point there would be having the ability to build trust and showing that you've invested, you're really invested in their success is absolutely critical.
So as I said, not really the secret, but just my approach throughout all these years has been precisely that coupled with a lot of the emotional intelligence, making sure that you're meeting your stakeholders where they are.
And I would say last but not least, doing on a regular basis the start, stop, and continuing type of discussions and meetings with stakeholders.
It has saved me countless challenges with the business by simply having those really down -to -earth conversations and understanding exactly what has been working well, what is not working at all, and what are the things that they would have expected us to work on.
I think ultimately, the definition of excellence and value can be different depending on the stage of your business relationship is, but ultimately, it's about putting all the cards on the table and having that frank and direct conversation.
Yeah, well said, well said.
So we've talked about two things that early in my career, between storytelling and business partnering, those weren't really defined.
But now, they are just part of what we used to just say, I work in corporate finance, but they've all rolled up to be what is part of FP &A, financial planning and analysis.
And I'm wondering what it is, my background I came up through FP &A, I didn't come up through the CPA and audit side, but to me, that's where I would...
If you told me I could spend half a day lost in a spreadsheet building a model, I would say, great, that's perfect.
I fully agree with you, yes.
So what would you say?
What do you like the most about FP &A?
Ultimately, I do love the problem solving aspect and also the strategic impact that you can actually achieve as an FP &A professional.
As you know, and as probably all listeners may know, FP &A is like being the GPS for a business in a sense.
You're guiding decisions with data, you're guiding decisions with strategy, and you're trying to establish and have a certain level of future vision, a foresight.
So someone unfamiliar, probably, I like to describe FP &A as the team that actually connect the dots between the numbers and business strategy, ensuring the organization actually stays on track towards its goal.
So those are the factors or those are the things that actually I love about FP &A.
And what do you think right now?
I mean, I end up talking so much about technology.
I'm always looking for ways to get more efficient and automate, but I do think while a lot of maybe there's fear out there around, is AI going to come take our jobs?
And for me, I haven't seen yet that there's not going to be a human in the loop.
But what I do see with technology and automation is opportunity to sort of the mindless data entry, the lower level parts of our job being automated, but opening us up to be more strategically focused, because we don't have to spend all of our time building those models or crunching the numbers, because if we
can find an automated way to do that.
So my focus has been there, but I can get sort of granular and singular and where I'm looking.
So I'm wondering, from your perspective and from someone else out in the industry, what would you say are the biggest challenges for FP &A right now and opportunities out there?
I would like to start with the opportunities actually, because for me, that overarching cloud, and it's not a cloud, it's something that is present.
I think I was reading a piece or an interview, a very recent interview, when they were asking Bezos about AI.
And they said that it's a complete vertical.
So it's where we are now.
And this is just the beginning.
So for me, that's the biggest opportunity, leveraging AI and analytics to transform forecasting, all planning processes, becoming a more proactive driver of business decisions, and ultimately influencing long -term strategy at the executive level.
I think ultimately, those are the biggest opportunities that I see.
And going back to challenges, I think the challenge is actually keeping up with everything that is this rapidly evolving technology.
It's deciding or trying to sift through the multiple sources of information that you get staying relevant as a strategic partner in this fast changing markets.
I think those for me, that is basically the challenge in making sure that you're able to keep up sifting through the noise, because something that I have started to see more and more during the last month is very difficult to actually try to understand what should be your source as an using AI.
I mean, is it going to be the most current one?
Is it the new kit on the block, as I said?
I mean, ultimately, I think my recommendation would be just use, try them all and use what actually works best for you.
There's multiple out there without naming any, but just best, what works better for you, try them all.
It's a trial and error type of thing.
And those for me, going back to the question, is that the challenge?
Is keeping that rapidly evolving technology?
Yeah. And I talk to people all the time about AI and its impact on finance and well, obviously not just finance, but on all of our jobs.
And I'll have people say to me, especially people who've been doing their finance job for a while, they'll say, I am a domain expert in finance.
You're saying now I have to go become a machine learning engineer.
Where does it end? But the truth is, it's whether you like it or not, if you don't want to be carried away in the wave of this technology, then you need to understand how to use it.
So I think that it is.
I mean, that is the challenge is not just which tool to use, but understanding sort of the basics of how it works and all that.
And I do think that our role in FPNA will be shifting in coming years as more does get automated.
But then the expectations of what we output will just be higher because the lower end stuff will be automated.
Yes, absolutely. Well, one question we always like to ask our guests is, this is an opportunity to brag on yourself.
And I know that a lot of people don't like to do it, but we do like to, we talk about the challenges that we all face in FPNA, but we also talk about our successes.
So what would you say is the best achievement of yours, something a forecast, an analysis or something that you did that you would give as an example in a job interview.
This could be like an analysis or strategic piece of advice that drove action and led to better customer outcomes with a tangible benefit, basically.
Yes, fantastic. I would say one of my proudest achievements has been being the CFO of our country were with the support of my team and with the support of the leadership team working hand in hand with me as a CFO.
We were able to actually minimize and save the company close to a billion, a million dollars on inventory write off for a product that in the blink of an eye, the Ministry of Health of that particular country decided that that drug or that vaccine was something that they did not believe in, or we were not able
to have proof or prove them that it was effective enough to minimize the exposure for the population that we're targeting.
Long nights, I would say to say the least, but in a country where in the middle of a very highly political charge environment, a change control regime, difficult access to currency, and ultimately this operation was an operation that we were not able or was has not done in the past.
We were able to minimize that inventory write off by re -exporting something that we had been inventory that we were currently holding in our country, re -exported back to other places around the world.
And probably for the professionals out there, it seems to be very straightforward.
But when you're in the middle of an exchange control regime for a very tight, importing permits and so on, asking a central bank that we no longer needed those dollars that they granted us, and because we needed to give them back in order to re -export the product out of the country, that was, I would say,
a very tough and long process in order to have those high -level, high -stakes discussions with the central bank, the central bank president, governmental authorities, trade compliance authorities and so on, and ultimately having the success of minimizing that write off.
Wow, and that is significant.
And that's one we're having that data and being able to show the data -driven decision making and being able to tell that story, I'm sure, was a huge part of that.
So Enrique, what's top of mind for you for your career at the moment?
Is there anything you're trying to new that you're trying to learn or master at this point?
I would say keeping up with all the latest developments, technological developments that have that direct impact in the FBA practice.
I'm definitely focused on learning, which is, again, impossible to master, but learning AI -driven finance tools and trying to understand how can they elevate the FBA function overall.
I'm also investing in leadership skills, as always, to better empower teams.
Then ultimately, it's all about those tools that can enable you to be more effective, not only as a finance and FBA professional, but also as a leader.
Those are the things that I'm continuing focusing on learning.
And you've been working with FEI.
Can you tell us a little bit about that organization and what you're doing with them?
Yes, thank you. FEI is the Financial Executives International Organization, and I'm part of the board of directors of the Chicago chapter.
Our goal is providing precisely senior executives for high -quality of content with high -quality of speakers and also providing a, I would say, a network of professionals, like -minded professionals, in order to continue to learn and develop themselves.
And who would you say has had the greatest influence on your finance career?
This could be a mentor or a training program or a book or some other source that you've found very inspirational in your career.
Yes, I've been very fortunate to have had in my career several mentors, but I would say a mentor very early in my career taught me the value of storytelling with data.
I think that is something that I'm never going to be able to forget.
And that's why I wanted to mention that right off the bat.
He definitely emphasized that the numbers were not the end, but just the beginning.
It's also, obviously, how you interpret the numbers and present them that actually drives that impact.
From a book standpoint, I would say, Glenn, two books come to my mind.
First is the hit refresh book by Satya Nadella, as you know, the currency of Microsoft, where he shares his personal journey, including his childhood in India, his experiences at Microsoft before actually becoming the CEO, and his vision for transforming the company's culture and ultimately the future.
So that's the first book.
And the other book that I like to mention is the book called Shoe Dog, which is a memoir by the creator of Nike, Phil Knight, where he actually shares the inside story of Nike's early days as a startup.
And it's evolution into one of the world's most iconic and profitable brands.
Nike is in the middle of transformation as well.
But ultimately, when you go back into the inception, it's just a fascinating story and highly recommend both books to your audience.
That's great. It's always amazing to think about these massive companies like Nike is today.
Thinking of them as at one point being that startup and just what it takes to go from that to the scale where they are.
It's a couple of great book recommendations there.
We already talked a little bit about budget challenges.
We talked about your achievements.
But one thing as we wind down budget season here, and hopefully by the time this errors, everybody's just about got the final version of the 2025 budget put to bed.
So what would you say is the worst or most challenging FP &A experience you've had in your entire career?
It could be the biggest mistake you've made.
And what did you ultimately learn from it?
Yes, multiple mistakes across the board.
But I would say the toughest has been during a very tough environment leading a finance team, where I was supporting a procurement organization in an early level of maturity.
I think my mistake was ultimately underestimating the need for early stakeholders alive.
And it sounds simple and trivial.
But in specifically in mid -size or large size companies where you as a professional are working in a matrix -like of environment, early stakeholder alignment can never be disregarded.
If you do, which happened to me, it specifically led to delays, frustration across teams, miscommunication, and ultimately impacted the success of the project that we were trying to implement.
Ultimately, what I learned was how important clear communication is, as I mentioned, having a very definite early buy -in and making sure that you anticipate resistance.
Those are the critical lessons learned from that difficult experience.
Great advice there.
And so that we don't end on the challenge part, we do have a couple of fun questions that we always like to close on.
And the first is, what is something that not many people know about you?
Maybe something that we can't find by Google -ing you real quick.
Okay. Yeah, that's definitely a fun question.
I would say the first thing is I'm a big movie buff.
And not only that, the second fun fact is that I'm a big Star Wars fan.
Those two are things that probably you are not going to be able to find online.
But one fun fact that I would like to mention as well, going back to my beloved home country, Guatemala, one of the original episode four scenes in Star Wars was actually filmed in Tikal, which is considered to be the cradle of the Mayan civilization.
And for those of you who are Star Wars fan, is when Luke Skywalker and the rest of the crew actually are going to fight off the first Death Star whatsoever.
They're just departing the planet of Yavng.
It's a moon I believe.
And that's one of the things that I would like to highlight based on that you're not going to be able to find online.
Yes, that fact, yes, about Guatemala, but not about me being a very passionate Star Wars fan.
That's great. That's great.
Well, you're in good company.
I'm right there with you.
Okay. Yes. Fantastic.
Yes. I remember. All right.
And our last one that we asked everyone, what is your favorite Excel function and why?
Oh, okay. Favorite Excel function and why?
A double cross Excel, I would say, more powerful than VLOOKUP.
It's index match. I would say it's more flexible, more scalable, maybe, especially for dynamic datasets.
It's been definitely a lifesaver for me in large, complex analyses.
I think for me that has been the ultimate tool for problem solving in Excel, index match.
And I love hearing you say that as a CFO because I was talking to another CFO the other day and we were joking about, I said something about VLOOKUP and he said, well, you just dated yourself.
And I said, what do you mean?
He's like, yeah, 25 years ago when you were in Excel, people were doing VLOOKUP.
He said now, it's all index match and everything.
So if you ever say VLOOKUP, people are going to know that you're an old school Excel user.
Yeah, but I'm glad to see that you made the transition.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
I had to. And ultimately, one of the things that I highly recommend to us professionals on FBA from SFA to CFOs is just leveraging AI that is now built into either Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
It's just amazing to see how now in a very simple exchange, you can just have the power of Excel or Google Data Sheets to actually do the analysis for you rather than mixing and matching and having to make sure that your variables in the formula are accurate and you're expecting the result that you
have. So leverage AI also when dealing with and doing those complex analysis and in dealing with the dynamic data sets as well.
Yeah, I'm going to be super interested to see where Copilot ends up in the next 12, 18, 24 months when they...
Because Microsoft invested whatever, 13 billion in OpenAI, and then whatever other investments they have and competitors, they're going to get their money's worth from that.
And what I do see is maybe a clippy from the 90s will make a proper comeback.
This time be a true helper.
Yes, this time, yes.
Hopefully. That's the case.
That would be very funny to bring it back.
Well, Enrique, finally, how could our listeners get in touch with you to learn more?
And I know you've been doing some webinars and stuff too.
So just if people wanted to follow you and continue engagement with you.
Oh, thank you very much for the offer, Glenn.
I think through my LinkedIn profile, hopefully, we're going to be able to actually link it within the sites.
That would be the most effective way to reach me to be honest.
Okay, well, this is a lot of fun doing this episode and really appreciate you coming on.
And we're looking forward to wrapping up the year here.
And thanks again for coming on.
Thank you very much, Glenn.
It was a pleasure and an honor to be part of this audience and be part of your show.
Thank you. All the best.