50% of your job needs to be finance transformation: Anders Liu-Lindberg

Speaker A: If you would like to earn CPE credit for listening to the show, visit earmarkcpe.com FP&A. Download the app, take a short quiz and get your CPE certificate. And if you enjoy listening to FP&A today, please leave a rating and review. And, uh, now onto the show from datarails. This is fp, uh and A Today. Okay, so here's what I know. Deloitte recently asked 200 hundred CFOs what was on their agenda for 2026. Over half of them stated Finance Transformation. Gartner then asked a similar group how confident those CFOs were of finance Transformation actually landing. A, uh, third of them said they were not confident at all. So what I gather from that landscape is the money is flowing in to Finance Transformation, but the confidence is lacking. What I'm trying to figure out is why do these transformations fail? That's why I brought on today's guest. This is FP&A today and I am your host, Sarah Schlatt. Today's guest is Honors Lou Lindbergh, who spent a decade inside of finance operations at Maersk. He then spent the next eight years building the Business Partnering Institute. After that he joined as a partner at Implement Consulting Group, where he now advises CFOs across Europe and the US on um, just what we're going to get into today, Finance transformation. If you were listening to the show four years ago, you also may have caught honors on about episode 28. And he said something back then that I want to get back to today Honors. Welcome back to the show.

Speaker B: Thanks a lot, Sarah. It's great to be here. Always happy to be back and talking about one of my favorite topics, finance transformation.

Speaker A: Yes, you write, you write a lot about it. I've certainly have, um, gotten a lot of good information from what you Write both on LinkedIn and with Forbes. So thank you for your contributions for sure. Tell me a little bit about where you are now and what exactly you're doing.

Speaker B: Yeah, so like you mentioned, right now I'm a partnered implement consultant group. We are a Danish based, uh, consultant group with around 2,000 people with offices around Scandinavia, North Europe, but also one in the U.S. uh, and we're not all finance, uh, consultants. We have a lot of different, uh, topics. But we're around 100 people focusing on CFO advisory, um, and that's exactly what I do. Try to advise CFOs and senior finance leaders on how to move forward. The finance function is how to be better at driving value creation in the companies Rather than just, you know, ticking boxes and doing compliance and controlling. Not to say we don't need compliance and controlling, of course we do. But, uh, we need more than that. And that's really what I've been pushing, uh, the finance function towards for years. I would say ages or even, even decades. Uh, but, uh, you know, it sounds like I've been around for so long and maybe I.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think once you near the 20 year mark, which, uh, I'm just shy of, you start to really feel your. And you're hoping you haven't aged yourself out of the game. Right. But, um, you know, there's something interesting in that, that you just said that your company has over 2,000 employees. That's rather large and not all of them are focused just on the CFO suite. And I think that's probably a big benefit for you. Right. Uh, a lot of the leaders that I speak with nowadays seem to understand the whole business partnering concept, at least the successful one. And so for you to have within your arsenal people across the entire organization, or not just people, experts. I'm sure you draw from each other often to help make each seat, including the CFO seat, stronger.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, 100%. And, uh, you know, some of the clients I'm advising on right now, you know, one is on a strategy project. And while I do love to talk about strategy, especially from a finance perspective, you know, I'm not a strategy consultant. Right. So it's good to have some experts there. You know, another recent client, uh, that, uh, we're talking to wants a pricing project. And why, again, while I love to talk about pricing from a finance perspective, I'm not a pricing expert. But now I can draw in all these experts from around the company and that's just, you know, one big playground. So I really love that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that not a lot of smaller companies have at their fingertips or at their disposal. Right. The CFO is wearing so many hats, which I think used to be something that we would brag about, but now it's just exhausting. There's, there's too much work, there's too much labor, there's too much mind share that we need to be able to know where to go to get our expert advice. So it's, it's much, it's, it's needed for sure.

Speaker B: Um, and I think, you know, there's all these statistics going around, around. The tenure of the CFO is trending downwards and it's on the low side of the C suite. And I think all that has to do with the broadening of the role and the wearing of many hats, right? One thing is that it's exhausting. If it was only that, we still have an issue. But the challenge is that CFOs are being asked to do much more outside their remit and what they have been trained to do, where they have experience, and that's really, really hard. And so a lot of CFOs, maybe they flat out fail or they try to leave for better situations, maybe smaller company, less complex, whatever it might be. But, uh, it's really hard to be CFO these days. It really is.

Speaker A: So who's putting the pressure on the cfo? Is it the board? Is it, uh, the CEO? Is it just the nature of the role? Because we see the numbers. Where's that pressure coming from?

Speaker B: I think the pressure is coming from all sides. Right? You have the external environment which is demanding companies to create value. I mean, the stock market is ruthless, the PE market is ruthless. Even if you're maybe if you're in a family or foundation owned company, maybe it's a little bit, uh, less high paced. But there's so many external factors driving you in one direction. And then of course that impacts the board, it impacts the CEO's view on you and said, I need more from finance. I can't just get the financial statements and that's it. They need to help me or help the company deliver on the vision, on the strategy. And then you have the inside pressure from both finance professionals of all ages and seniorities that they just want to make a bigger difference and impact. They want to go to work every day feeling like I'm not just processing documents, I'm actually moving the needle somewhere. And of course the younger generations, m, they're even bigger on this. So I think the CFO is facing pressure from all sides.

Speaker A: Yeah, certainly, certainly. And when we talk about the CFO being pressured to leave or jump ship or find another opportunity that's maybe more, not easier, but more in a box, right? So that there's not so many things coming at him or her. The downstream impact, though, creates an opportunity for that Director of finance, right, to kind of land grab some of these concepts or skill sets to walk into the CFO suite, where 10 years ago, for instance, example, I was at a company for 14 years expecting the VP of Finance or CFO suite, and it never came because they never left. Right. That's changing for that next generation. And I think that's something interesting, uh, about the side of that coin.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I usually say, but that has also to do with AI and I'm sure we're going to come back to this, right, that uh, there's never been a more exciting time to be in finance than right now. And that's because there's so many dynamics happening every single day where if you are the career minded person, the one that really wants to make a difference, all you need to do is raise your hand and challenges will come at you. Uh, and uh, not everyone is like that and that's fine. I'm not saying we all need to be like that. But the ones like, I guess you and me, we just raise our hand and then stuff comes at us and if we do well with that, you know, then there's no end to the possibilities.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think 10 years ago, 18 years ago, when I was first doing it, that was kind of the anomaly. But I think what we've just outlined here is that's almost the necessary evil now is that if you're in a finance role, um, it's exciting but we need to do more. And so that kind of lends itself into what you said on the show four years ago. I believe that was episode 28. Forget what the title was, but we'll link it. So if you're listening, you can go back and take a listen. But you said that companies treat becoming digital as the strategy. Uh, right. The buzzword was digital transformation and um, you challenged that that was only the means to an end. Right. Right now the buzzword is finance transformation. I think every couple years that becomes the number one priority. Right. Because business changes, the CFO is required to do more. So the CFO feels like, oh, I've got to transform everything. I get that. Um, but then in that same episode, you asked whether anyone has ever really heard of a company that's good at that change management, because that was the other side of that coin and that we always under invest in it. And that's why these initiatives, be it digital transformation, I assume you feel the way about this whole financial transformation 2026 CFO target, um, fails for the same reason. And what I've read from your articles in Forbes, you write about a lot of that same concept and you connect the dots for us. You talk about technical, um, ways that we can ensure that we don't fail. But why do you think that still four years, five years, maybe even 10 years, we're still talking about the same thing even though we've far diagnosed it.

Speaker B: Yeah. I would even say 20 years. I think if you go back to the mid 2000s where you started to really get these big ERP, uh, stacks, uh, and then you looked at finance, uh, transformation strategies and say, okay, what did it look like then? And then you say, what do they look like today? And I think maybe two things have changed, primarily. One is we don't do large waves of offshoring too much anymore just because larger companies have already done it. And if they haven't done it, maybe they're more looking at an AI version to solve it. Uh, and then the second bit is, now I've said something with AI, but at the grandest scheme, not a whole lot has changed. You could really just take, uh, a finance strategy from 20 years ago and take it up today and say, okay, it's still pretty much valid. And I think it's linked to what we talked about before, that all the things we need to change the way finance needs to operate differently is in a way that we as, uh, finance professionals have not trained for. It's in a way that we as finance professionals, and sometimes that's obvious with transformation we have not seen before. So how can people that have not seen it before and not lived it or trained for it, how can they make it happen? It's difficult, right? And so one thing is that you get the big fancy consulting presentations that says, this is how the future looks like at 100k.

Speaker A: No, uh, less.

Speaker B: Yes, yes, of course. Right now I'm a consultant, so I can make fun of it, right? But you get that presentation and say, and I'm not going to name drop anyone because that's just going to backlash, right? But dump that presentation on your desk and say, we've done the analysis and we've coupled it with our best practice view. Here's how your finance function is supposed to be in the future. You figure it out, right? And then they leave and three years later they come back in and they start all over. I'm not saying it happens like that in all companies, but most companies for sure, I don't get it why companies keep going through the same cycles. But then I do get it, because what happens in that three year cycle? New CFO comes in and a new CFO needs to either undo what the old one did or try to actually get things going where the old one failed. And so the whole ranking, right?

Speaker A: So I wonder then if one of the answers to it is, and I don't know if you've put this in any of your writing, but is one of the Answers Keeping that CFO in seat for longer than three or four years. I mean, to really drive impact, right,

Speaker B: you gotta have some sort of consistency, right? To say, now we make a find a strategy. Let's say we are just making it three years out, but it could even be five years out. And we have a lot of initiatives that are typically interconnected in many different ways. And what often happens is that, you know, after the first three to six months, people are starting to doubt whether it's actually happening. So already without the CFO leaving, you know, people are starting to doubt this. But a lot of them, you know, they may take a lot of time before they even showcase some value. And so if the cfo, for various reasons, let's say they join a company, they take their first 100 days to look around and they take another 100 days together with a consulting company. And you know, they are brilliant consulting companies. So what they put in the report is not wrong. I think it's right and it should happen like that. And so, you know, after six months, they gather all the leaders for the big offside and say, you know, here's the strategy. Maybe the leaders have been involved on the way, but here's the strategy that we're going to execute on. Okay, let's mobilize the company. That didn't take three to six months to mobilize the company. One year in, the CFO has gotten going on a transformation. Then one year passes and already then for various reasons, either, uh, the CFO is starting to look elsewhere or the CEO is thinking, maybe I need a new cfo. And then two and a half years in, the CFO is gone again. You cannot create any traction in this way. You know, it's a bit.

Speaker A: So is the blueprint just too large? Is it too big? Do we need to hone in on low hanging fruit first and attack it in phases?

Speaker B: I mean, that will help.

Speaker A: Not helpful for the consultant, but helpful for the business.

Speaker B: No, but that will help with some of it in the sense that the business or the finance function doesn't feel like it's going nowhere. They actually feel, okay, we are delivering stuff, we are realizing value into the finance organization that is needed to really drive or even fund the transformation. So that will help to keep momentum. Because once momentum is lost, forget about it, it's gone. You cannot really rebuild it.

Speaker A: So I want to dig in to perhaps within your expertise or your experience, two companies that have gone through the same change, one where the exact same change, I mean, of course, different circumstances, maybe Even different industry, but it was, it was a system redesign or it was a process. Like the same concept in the change, one that it didn't land and stick. That would be the first company. And then I want to talk about what the company, where it did work. We don't have to do names. You don't even have to give any specifics that would give it away. But before we get into that, I'm curious for a, uh, CFO or CEO that's listening. They say, okay, this is great. We can, we can break it down and we can attack it in phases. We can get an outside consultant to tell us what to do. But at the end of the day, my finance team is two people, and I'm not talking about accounting. Right, because they've got to keep the lights on with the compliance and the books and, you know, everything else that's going on. So I think, I think the first challenge is the consistency with the cfo, or at least, uh, a deep seated team member. The second would be we have a small team that's already had, you know, has tons of FP and work on their shoulders. How are we navigating that before we even begin our transformation?

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it's hard, right, being a CFO in a small company. Uh, so I haven't been, uh, you know, let's say a true CFO for a full company, but I did serve as a CFO for, uh, a small entity of Maersk during my days there. So I was living in the US with a team of, when I arrived, you know, two accountants. And we had to do full cycle of pretty much everything. Right. Of course there were some group functions or business unit functions that would help with some of the tax maybe or treasury, whatever, but we had to do full, uh, scale everything. And so that required that, first of all, I, as the cfo was able to really copper from A to C, basically. And secondly required that I got the team to accept that we cannot, quote, unquote, just be accountants anymore, or bean counters, as, you know, they were typically referred to, which I think still people get referred to a lot across the US we have to be business partners. And so that didn't mean the accounting would go away. We would try to make it more efficient. And we did. But, you know, the time on the month where they were not doing close or, you know, some of the accounting, we would have to do new and different work. And so I would have to help my team members develop so that they become broader in what they could do. And you Know, I have two accountants, like I said, and one of them, he was just not cut out for it. Not because his technical skills weren't up to standard in terms of being able to do it, but it was that human element that he couldn't really cope with. And so, you know, unfortunately, we had to part ways, uh, uh, and it is hard. Right? And like we said in the beginning, the CFO role is, the scope is so broad these days. Right. And in a small company it's even worse. Right, because you don't even have the team to really help you or just a few team members. So I don't have an easy way out for you. Unfortunately not. It just requires that, uh, you wear all those hats and you do your best. But of course, try to set the right expectations with whatever management that you have. Right. Because they cannot expect you to be able to do the same as the cfo, where you have a thousand people in finance.

Speaker A: Right, Right. So then I'm going to say that these two things, the CFO tenure, um, being reduced and a tight team that's already carrying too much, uh, that's at least a portion of this one third that either doesn't have the confidence that it will land or, um, half where it fails. Or maybe it's the reason why half won't even say I'm focusing on finance transformation. Half of them are saying, we're surviving and working on increasing revenue. This year. You're already using AI for your FPA. We've got ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot. They're all incredible. But here's the thing. AI is, uh, only as good as the data you feed it. And right now you're probably getting confident sounding guesses that you would never dream of presenting to your board. So imagine typing in a prompt and getting a board ready dashboard backed by your real numbers or a P and L. You'd stake your reputation on. Finance OS, consolidates your ERP, CRM, HRIs, and spreadsheets into a governed data layer. Every AI output now accurate, governed, repeatable and auditable. Find out why nearly two 2000 FP and A teams run Finance OS, with hundreds joining every single week. Learn more at datarails.com financeos I think,

Speaker B: you know, coming back to, I think your question before, in terms of these two examples, if we should go there, um, you know, what is the difference between these two companies? They probably both have, you know, great finance strategies. Like I said, you know, you can of course always debate and challenge, but they're probably right. Both strategies they probably have a good, uh, plan as well. Maybe one company has a little bit better plan than the other. Right. Because that's already when the problems start. That how do we detail this plan out into specific initiatives, how do we scope them, how do we sequence them so they don't all come at the same time and so on. So already there you're starting to see the two companies fall a little bit apart. Right. Uh, but what really makes a difference at the end of the day is that people in companies that transform successfully, they are doing different work. Right. So they use the systems that they have not been given in the right way. Maybe not to the fullest extent. You know, let's not go crazy. But they're at least using the new systems in the way they were imagined and it's yielding the benefits that were expected. They follow the redesigned processes and don't default to the old ones. And they're excited about, hey now, before I was spending 80% of my time reconciling spreadsheets. Now I'm spending 80% of my time with business leaders trying to figure out how can we solve specific complex business problems. And they're excited about that. Whereas in the company, okay, so it's

Speaker A: still falling back on the change management. Right. So your experienced consultants will know the, the best use case, the best practice to, to give you. Um, but the real, it's, it's not so much what system are you using, what process workflow are you using. It's, is it being adopted? So how do you fix that? And, and, and so let's take one company where it didn't land and get into kind of the nitty gritty of that. You came into, um, a transformation project. And what were they asking you for? What did it look like? What was the job that you were there to do?

Speaker B: So typically you come in and oftentimes the company has already selected the new software, which is a big issue on its own, and then they want to ask you to help redesign the processes.

Speaker A: I mean, in fact, the software is already in. Like I've been in that situation before, at least this.

Speaker B: Yeah, maybe it's already in or it has been selected and now needs to be implemented, but they're bringing you in to help redesign the processes just seconds before the tool needs to start being implemented. Right, Right. So everyone is running towards trying to just get the process in, new process in place. No one has actually worked in new process yet. At the same time, you're bolting on a new system which no one has worked on, right. So the time it hits the user, you're getting a new process, you're getting a new system. And by the way, except for like a three month hypercare, whatever and uh, uh, two virtual seminars, that's about as much training you get in how to use it and how to follow your process, it's humanly impossible to succeed when you run it like that.

Speaker A: Right, okay, so how do we run it to where it can succeed?

Speaker B: So for me, and you know, there's probably different schools of thoughts here, but for me, process first fix the process, then find the right tool system to use. Maybe you can even use assisting systems. And I'm saying you need to get a new one and then involve your team along the way so that it's not big banks, not uh, necessarily a surprise to them. Maybe they have been told something new is coming, but that they know this is coming, they know what it's going to look like. They have been able to ask questions and challenge and been involved along the way. And then of course, when it gets there, don't just plan with this system hypercare, but plan with people. Uh, and process hypercare as well. Where you are running this, the process, let's say it's a quarterly forecasting process, for instance, right? You're running this process three, four times before you let go from a program perspective and say now the implementation is done.

Speaker A: Okay. And when you say you, right, you're speaking as the consultant or as the CFO or the executive that's sponsoring.

Speaker B: I'm telling the CFO to do it like this. You can see, right?

Speaker A: You say, hey you Mr. CFO, executive sponsor, you can't let go until XYZ.

Speaker B: Of course you can. You can, uh, you know, have the consultant stay on for a year and then that's uh, that can sometimes be the right solution. Uh, but you know, the accountability to do it sits with the cfo.

Speaker A: Mhm. Okay. And so is there anything specifically different that the CFO that's helping to move the project forward, is there anything specific they're doing that the others aren't? Is it just meetings? Is it following up? Is it doing some of the grunt work themselves? Is it removing hurdles? What are they doing? Right, like to say just hey, stick with it. What does that mean?

Speaker B: Yeah, but I think it's all of those things, Sarah. I mean it's visible sponsorship, right? It's not just, you know, I'll come in every quarter to sit in a steer co and uh, share my feedback and then you figure it out. There has to be visible sponsorship, right? You are ultimately owner of this system. You are ultimately owner of this process. Of course, some of it gets delegated. And in, uh, a normal run of things, you are not involved in all of these things. But when you're trying to make a big change, process and system, typically at the same time, the CFO or the senior finance leader is not sponsoring this visibly. By being involved, by communicating, being part of town halls, maybe even having a session where people can see them working themselves in the system, all these types of things. Then people will feel like, well, we're just left to our own to figure this out. And probably when we go to present to the CFO the first time, he or she will say, why is it like this? Why didn't you? And so on and so forth. Well, we did the best we could, right? Uh, and for all parties, it's just not good enough. Right? And so the CFO needs to visibly sponsor this and do all these things that you mentioned.

Speaker A: So they need to make sure that they have the time for this project as well. It's not just a pie in the sky dream that someone else is going to bring to fruition. Like, you've really got to drive the horse here, the horse and plow. You got to get to it.

Speaker B: If a CFO wants to see the final transformation here, she needs to make it 50% of their job to do that.

Speaker A: That is a great number. I'm glad you threw a number out because we all have different, um, perceptions of what active involvement means. I mean, 50%, that's a lot, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, uh, so I recently worked with a company where they were undergoing big finance transformation, and they still are. And here even the CEO was visibly sponsoring this transformation. Of course, everything wasn't perfect and whatnot, but that was really driving the change because even the CEO was saying, finance, you need to transform. And I'm there with you to make it happen.

Speaker A: So I'm, um, I'm thinking back through some of my clients who have kind of thrown. And I, I always ask for their nirvana state. And I would say 10 years ago, that didn't get me into as much trouble as it does now. When I ask for, hey, what's your nirvana state? We'll see. You know, I'll, we'll think about that while we're designing. Now it's like everything, including the kitchen sink gets thrown in. How do you, as, uh, being inside the company, so CEO, cfo, finance director, as well as outside of the company, the consultant, how do you ensure that your. What are the tactical steps that you take to make sure you're focusing on the right problem and the right transformation now? Because no one wants to wait five years for a transformation. They needed transformation five years ago.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, uh, and I guess all consultants will say this, right? But you have to. You have to understand your finance function really well. If you don't understand really well, you will not know where to start with the transformation. You cannot just take a finance operating model and look at all the elements and say, you know, let's just transform everywhere. Maybe everything needs to be transformed, especially in the world of AI, But. But you can't start there because it's mayhem, right? It's too many things at once, and the organization cannot cope with it. So it's going to fail. So you have to.

Speaker A: So are you looking at where is the biggest time drain so that you can open up your analysts to do better, different work, or are you looking at where's the biggest cash drain? And so to support the company, that's what we're going to. Maybe it's cogs and inventory, um, versus something that supports bill in revenue.

Speaker B: I think the reality is that most finance functions, they have to fund that transformation themselves. Which means if I'm a cfo, I must be looking at the inefficiencies first, because if I don't do that, I'm not going to be able to fund this. So when I was at Maersk, for instance, right, we did a lot of offshoring from local countries to, uh, our service centers, which of course played on the labor arbitrage back then, and that helped us to fund the transformation. You can always talk about. It's of course, sad for people that lose their job on these things, but that's life sometimes, right? Uh, so we were able to fund our own transformation. But the day a CFO goes to the CEO and say, I need $10 million for my transformation, and the CEO says, yes, of course, take it whenever the sun rises in the west, right?

Speaker A: Can I work there?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Right.

Speaker A: It's such a great company.

Speaker B: I mean, I'm not saying that CEOs are not willing to invest in finance, never. But it's just not the way it goes. You have to prove it first, and then maybe you get some more funding afterwards, or maybe you get to keep what you freed up, right? So, uh, yes, it would be nice if we could start looking at cogs and, uh, revenue and whatnot, but that's not going to fund our transformation. That's going to Fund company improvements and transformation. People will probably be happy about that. But a finance function that is not transformed is not going to be in a state to help with much of that anyway. So.

Speaker A: Okay, so it makes me think of some of those, like, hypothetical, um, things that I've seen on, let's just say Instagram, right, Where the question is posed. You're hanging off the side of the cliff. Both your husband and your child are dangling from the side. Who do you say first? Of course, a mother's instinct is the child. The child. Right. But a lot of women have come on to prove me wrong and say, save your husband first, because then he can get the child or the mom or whoever else is hanging over. So this feels much like the same. If finance is being asked to do so much for the company, then save them first so that you open up time, strength, mind share, creativity, innovation. For them to go now, attack the problems that support the company.

Speaker B: Yeah, but again, you know, finance has to save itself. So, uh, you know, the demands are there.

Speaker A: True.

Speaker B: But you're not going to get the funding. You have to save yourself. Once you save yourself, then maybe you come to a nicer promised land. Right. But, uh, that is the harsh realities.

Speaker A: True. So everything that we kind of talked about was both inside and outside. But if you are sitting inside, if a, uh, listener's sitting inside of a company right now and they're like, yeah, we've talked about finance transformation, but we really haven't started. What are the signals, the early warning signals that you have both inside and outside, that, hey, it's time to start looking at where you're strapped versus we're just going to keep the lights on this year.

Speaker B: So if the company has gone through rapid growth, for instance, or if the company is going through a, uh, transformation. So those are kind of the big, obvious signs, I think, uh, other signs might be that finance is not involved in decision making. You are just, like you say, keeping the lights on, then, okay, fine. But no one really wants to stay around for that. So people are stuck and leaving. So if you see high turnover, for instance, in your teams, that could be another sign as well. But for me, it's really that if finance is not involved in decision making and driving forward the company, you must start to transform, because otherwise you will be automated in no time.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So as we're talking about these different transformations, and we've thrown out some crazy numbers on CEOs supporting, uh, this transformation, and then we debunked that and said, hey, no, no, no, We've got to fund for ourselves. So I think one of the major problems that I've talked with other guests about, but also in roundtables that continuously come up, is CFOs having to prove their ROI. And you can't really do that because I feel that half of this work, half of this transformation is not in a number, it's in value. So how are you justifying your work? How does the CFO justify their work? How do we metric all of that?

Speaker B: Yeah, so we typically look at three, uh, let's say we can call them metrics. Uh, so you're a cfo, right? So you're not the main person being responsible for company performance, that is the CEO. You're not the main person responsible for, you know, the revenue, that's the cco. You're not the main person responsible for, you know, probably big share of the cost base. That's the CEO. Right. So there's other CxOs that are primarily accountable for, uh, you know, for the whole income statement, if you will. Right. The CFO is kind of like the second accountable person for all these things. So you're not making the decisions that impact these things. And thank God, no. Because if you were, that means the company's in deep trouble and you just need to find cash to survive another month. So it's a good thing you're not making this decision, but you are the business partner to these people. And so how do you measure the value of business partnering? It can be just a fluffy concept and whatnot, but we really try to look at it with three metrics. So the first is, are we succeeding as a company meeting or beating targets? Because if we are not, whatever you do as a CFO and other CXOs is probably not good enough. You cannot claim success if the company is not successful. So that's number one. Number two is, are, ah, your, let's say, counterparts, whether it could be the CEO, the board or other CXOs, are they satisfied with the support that they're getting from the cfo. Because if they're not satisfied, no matter how well the company is doing, it's probably not because of the cfo. Right. So the satisfaction, customer satisfaction, if you will, needs to be high as well. Ah, but of course, it could be that they are doing really, really well in their own right, and they're happy just to get the monthly report on Workday 15. And they don't need anything else from finance. So here comes the tricky part. The CFO and other finance teams, uh, leaders they also need to prove the value that they bring to the table. And so that can be being part of transformation, being part of specific projects, and being able to storytell. What exactly did I do? You know, what was my role in this? Was it sitting in the back, taking notes? Was it standing up in front of the screen or the board, you know, facilitating the whole thing? Because if you're just taking notes, you might have been there and been part of it, but you're not driving the value. But if up there facilitating the workshop or the big project or, you know, leading a project, then, then you are there, then you are part of driving this value. And so you need to stack up these, we call it, impact cases over the year, over your tenure. And if you have a lot of them, and if the company is succeeding, and if you have happy stakeholders, then you are succeeding as a CFO and driving value.

Speaker A: Okay, so what about, though, this specific transformation project, can you, can we break it down or can we track a CFO's the actual, um, return on the specific spend for, let's say, Finance Transformation 2026?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think finance transformation is probably too broad, right? Because there are going to be some projects in there which are really direct, let's say cost savings or efficiencies, which of course you should be able to measure. But let's take another thing that I'm deeply involved in on a daily basis, training, training, uh, of the finance organization. How can I measure the impact of that? And so we've done a lot of training programs with companies, right? And of course they have to invest in doing that. But what we then do during the training programs, besides training them how to be better business partners, is that we ask them to pick specific business problems, live business problems in their company that they want to solve as part of this learning journey. And what we typically see is that just from solving those projects, their return on the training spend is at least 10x, sometimes 50x. And that's just one time that they solve a business problem, Right? Imagine they actually start to use these new ways of working and they solve 10 business problems. What is the return on investment now on that initial training spend? Uh, it's enormous.

Speaker A: Uh, then you're funding yourself throughout the entire, entire team. So what happens though, when. Because I've seen this happen, I think at one point you talked about it as well, with honing in on whether or not we need to learn SQL. So in this case, where an individual has kind of taken their work, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Right. You should treat your job, your function, as though you're the owner or the CEO of that business function. And then you should connect the dots and the pieces with everyone around you. But what happens when we solve that problem? We're not thinking broad enough. And so we've backed ourselves still into using another system or another um, process that can't work without us. It's kind of just recreating the problem, but maybe in a quicker fashion.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, so whenever you have created something in a company, and of course here there's a big difference between the small company we talked about before and a company with 10,000 people. So the small company, you know, here things are usually people dependent. And if you are three people in the team and one person leave, of course some things are going to break.

Speaker A: So just get it documented. The answer there is do what you can as fast as you can, be efficient, clean up your space, make it better for the next person, but try to document it.

Speaker B: Well, yeah, exactly, right. But if you're in a big company with hundreds of people in finance, you know, and a lot of companies like that, you cannot have something depend on a specific person. I remember, you know, back in the days we were having a cost allocation engine and no, uh, one really knew exactly how it worked except this guy called jp. He knew.

Speaker A: All right, jp, you're on trial, right?

Speaker B: And so, you know, this was not good. So as a big company this cannot happen, right? You have to build it into systems and processes so that anyone can run it. Just come in from the outside maybe. Probably still needs to be documented. Read uh, the sop, the process guideline and you can operate this process or you can change the cost allocation or change this setting in the system, whatever it might be. You cannot be dependent on one person. If you are, there's issues. But on the other hand, like you mentioned the SQL thing, I don't think every finance professional should learn SQL just because there are, ah, I don't know SQL experts out there that if you're on a big team that can probably learn and can help you. And so you need someone that knows SQL all the time. But then if you know SQL, then you can also help with someone else. SQL build database, for instance, right?

Speaker A: So I know SQL enough to um, help build, get it started, do maybe your like preliminary intermediate stuff. But I'm not, I wouldn't, I say I don't know SQL because I'm not an advanced like database architect.

Speaker B: You know, it, it, it takes me back to the time where, where I Said I knew Vlookup and suddenly I was an expert in, in uh, Excel. Right. And I'm not an expert in Excel. Right.

Speaker A: But you know, that is actually how I got into finance.

Speaker B: Yeah. It didn't take much. Right. I, I, I remember as well that you know my uh, a job interview for uh, for my last, my second to last student position and we have student positions in Denmark. Before I got a full time role it was like a simple junior controller kind of role stuff and I didn't know much about what I had to do. So I failed a lot of the things. But I could build a triple nested IF formula and that got me the job which is also pretty inefficient way of doing it. Right.

Speaker A: That is so how I got started in finance. I am not joking. I'll share that story one day. But it is almost that to a T. Exactly. Interesting. Okay, so you said I want to challenge something just a little bit. You said that in a large organization, one person, a function or a uh, workflow cannot be person dependent or role dependent. Right. Jp, where's jp? Jp, stand up. Let us know where you're at. Can't happen. But in a small company the stakes are actually higher when that happens. Right. When we talk about, we all talk about customer concentration from our customer base. You Never want to 90% of your revenue coming from one customer, 80%, 60% from one customer. But now we're kind of giving it like a beige flag and we're saying okay. It's okay though in a small company, if one person handles the majority of your finance workflow and function, I mean I don't think that concentration is risk adverse.

Speaker B: No. But on the other hand, you know, unless you can automate it, which you probably can these days anyway.

Speaker A: Here we are with I. Right.

Speaker B: What are you going to do? I mean you only have the budget for three finance people. One is the finance manager, the CFO and one is the accountant and one is the analyst. They perform different tasks and roles and maybe, you know, maybe the uh, CFO can do both the analysis and the accounting. So in case one leaves, you know, there's always someone to back up if the CFO leaves. You know, the transactional stuff can probably get done meanwhile, so you kind of, you somehow need to have that two layer process back up. Right. Even though it's not going to be perfect, but at least it's something. Um, but yeah, uh, you don't want.

Speaker A: So you can hobble along if something were to happen. You can.

Speaker B: And you Must. Because what is the alternative? Maybe I'm just narrow minded here, but I don't really see other ways of doing it.

Speaker A: No, no, I mean, I agree. I mean it's just a function of being a smaller organization that's going to happen. Right. So having in place, making sure that you have consistency and a uh, better than average tenure. Right. By whatever means. Right. You talk to your HR person, what do you need to do? Is it salary? Is it benefits? Is it work from home? Is it, is it investing in AI to augment some of the work? What is it? So increase the tenure both from the top and the bottom within your finance organization. Its document, it's cross train and then at the end of the day you just keep going. No matter what happens, I think is the answer. Okay, so switching just a little bit and some of these we've kind of already said just naturally in our conversation, I want to continue on this topic but pick apart some of the things that finance has kind of settled on within transformation. And of course one of the main things is tooling. So what I hear from a lot of individuals still, and I'm in that camp, I've, I think I've mentioned before, I actually have the Excel logo as a tattoo because that is what provided for my family and that is what got me into finance, which opened up the door for everything else. So the common theory is XL is Stein. It's where that actual work lives. If we get a software, we're still doing a lot of the work in Excel and that software is just presentation BVAS xyz. What is your take on that?

Speaker B: You know, so I speak with a lot of professionals that you know, they say, you know, they want to get out of Excel, but you know, they're not sort of what we talked about before getting the funding for it. So they, they keep working in Excel. So for me, you know, I'm not a die hard kill Excel fan. You know, I use Excel for stuff as well and I did also when I was working in finance. So the last budgets I did as a finance professional doing an interim role, uh, some years back I used Excel for budgeting. Right. So I'm very pragmatic in that sense and I understand why finance professionals still keep using Excel or different spreadsheet software. Right. So there's nothing wrong in that if that is what you have available. The problem sometimes becomes is when you then get a tool, if a tool, then it shouldn't be this showstopper for you to start using it because well, I have A function both functioning. Excel spreadsheet already? No, I'm used to it.

Speaker A: That's kind of the kickback because I'm used to it.

Speaker B: Then you need to start saying, okay, what can we use the tool for? And then typically Excel comes back as an intermediate at some point or you know, you have to build a model in there, but you build it first in Excel just to see how it works out. So there's still many ways that you would use Excel, but uh, if you let it hold you back from using new capabilities, you might get for a tool because you use the same tool across the whole company. Whereas in a big company, for instance, one financial model typically cannot hold the whole company together. Right. You know, then there's multiple models going around. That's why you need a tool to cut across different parts of the company. So don't let it hold you back, but don't stop using it if the alternative is worse.

Speaker A: I m would agree. I like that particularly because I find that a lot of the modern um, software platforms have designed their piping, their plumbing to the software with that in mind. Right. So I think there's a lot more flexibility that is there than was there a couple years ago. One thing though that I think AI also presents is a lot for the smaller companies, Right. That aren't yet ready for the AI or uh, for the software tooling is that AI through vibe coding you can kind of create your own um, but that's a very unique skill set. So I would caution against that. If, if your main goal is to move the business forward. Right. You really have to have time to do that correctly.

Speaker B: I think, I think it's becoming less scarce by the day. And I would usually say, you know, you can build your own solutions, fine, but they don't necessarily scale. But then if you're a small company, you don't need them to scale necessarily. So small companies are of course different with big companies. Big companies, yeah, sure, you can build something fast, include or whatever tool you use, but it's not going to scale. Right. You're quickly running into issues there. So again, we have to separate between the company sizes, I think.

Speaker A: Yeah, my CFO at uh, one of the smaller companies, one of the high growth actually companies, he used to say we were just going to kick that can down the road. Right. Like you just, you gotta do what you need to do right now. And um, you know, hopefully you're not making a big mess for someone down the road. All right, so another one, there's a

Speaker B: big junkyard Somewhere with those cans, I think.

Speaker A: Well, in this particular instance, I was the one who was then cleaning out the junkyard when he left. So that was fun because I was part of the problem. But. All right, so another one, and we kind of talked about this, is that when implementation fails, we always kind of point the finger back at the leadership and say, well, I didn't have, I really didn't have backing from the leadership. And I believe our answer to that was yes and no. Right. Um, you had the backing in the beginning, and that's great. But ultimately, the reason why it failed perhaps was because you had some roadblocks, let's say, um, departmental silos that kind of forced the failure. Well, then that's when that executive sponsor needed to step in and help you push it through.

Speaker B: Yeah. And of course, I don't think we can just blame all of it on leadership. Right. There's that aspect of changing the way you work, changing habits. It's hard, it's annoying. I don't want to do it. Why should I do it? It works fine. So there's a lot of blockers inside ourselves also. And that is why the implementation plan needs to be longer. Because we need to be pushed continuously towards these new ways of working. Because if we are only pushed a little bit, we don't go far. Right. So we really need to be pushed for a longer period and then the chance of success is higher.

Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. Agreed. And then the other thing, um, is that the system will strengthen the team. So this new software, this new transformation, it's going to strengthen the team. Um, the back office, which a lot of times finances is considered, the back office just needs support via better tools. And you wrote, though, that CFOs often fixate on FTE and technology. And just. I think what you, you just answered it is that at the end of the day, what we need to be obsessed about is something entirely different.

Speaker B: I think, you know, CFO should be obsessed with value, and value can be created in different ways. But, uh, you know, you can't shrink your company to greatness. Right. So you can't save yourself out of everything. I'm not saying, you know, productivity and efficiency isn't a strategic value creation lever, because it is, but it cannot stand alone. Right. So at some point you need to grow the company and how you're going to do that. So I think CFOs need to focus on the value that's delivered. Sometimes it comes through savings and efficiencies, other times it comes through driving growth and different Value creation dealers. Uh, so, you know, that's really what CFOs need to do.

Speaker A: Agreed. And then one of the last questions for this before we step into our rapid fire, because we are approaching our hour here, is that in, uh, a few years ago, you'd said that FP&A, and you said this when we talked as well, prior to the call that FP and A might not, and really the CFO suite might not realize its potential in five years or 10. And you said, maybe we'll never be there. Do you feel that way? And can you kind of go into that a little bit?

Speaker B: No, but I think it goes back to what I said around the beginning that, you know, the finance strategy today looks same as five years ago, 10 years ago, maybe even 20 years ago. Uh, maybe I'm pushing the envelope there, right? But the notion of being a business partner, for instance, you know, that wasn't born five years ago, that was born 20 years ago. Some claim even longer back, but let's say 20 years ago. But still, when you talk to CFOs today, you know, one of their big desires, getting out of the finance transformation is that we are, uh, better business partners because we have better technology, we have better processes, all these things. But that means today that they are not. And so we haven't realized that ambition of becoming better, uh, business partners in those 20 years. So you can be pessimistic and say, what's going to help us do it in five or 10 more years, or you can be optimistic and say, well, now with AI and other things, it's certainly going to happen. I can't tell you which version is going to be true. But if history proves us right, which sometimes it does, then, you know, you can allow yourself to be a little bit pessimistic there.

Speaker A: Okay, so if we dumb that down a little bit, right? Uh, when I talk to my friends or network about what I do and I say that I'm in finance, they have no idea what that means. They don't know if they should be thinking about crypto or, hey, you're going to help me with my family budget. You do taxes, accounting. I mean, it's a whole slew of things. So when we say get more value does, are you saying, because this is how my friends would say, you do math. Are you saying less math, more, more conversation, or kind of more taking on a CEO type role backed by math? Is that what you're saying?

Speaker B: I think that, uh, this is a good question, Sarah, and I think it's Hard to answer. What do I actually do if I'm, uh, a cfo? I think it's a different. It is what it is. But if you're a business partner or you work in FP&A and want to try to drive more value, I think it's hard to explain. And it's hard to explain not just because it is maybe a little bit fluffy some of the things that we do, but it's hard to explain because we're not so good at it yet. Right. So if you have to explain something you're not that good at to a friend who, you know, works in marketing or tech or whatever, you know, you're going to struggle to do that. Right. So I talk to finance people mostly. And you know, I have honed my story of everything from my personal story to transformation story we have in finance, everything. I've honed that for 15 years. So I'm a good storyteller at that. But if I was working as a finance professional in a company and had explained that to a friend outside finance, I would probably struggle. Not because I'm bad at finance necessarily, but I hadn't spent time honing that story. And so why would we be good at it? You know, we're not holding that story.

Speaker A: Agreed, Agreed. Um, and it's even not as simple as telling your friend or someone on the outside, well, what does your CFO do? Because to your point, as a function, we haven't honed that skill set. So everyone is slightly and sometimes very different. It's a spectrum right now for sure. Okay. All right, so rapid fire, six questions. Don't overthink them. I'm sure you won't.

Speaker B: Is, um, it yes or no only or can I contextualize it?

Speaker A: Oh, no, you can give us like a, you know. Yeah, explain it. Just, you can't, you can't backtrack. But no, definitely. These are open ended questions. This one is an oldie but goodie and maybe in five years completely works itself out. Favorite Excel function in Y and you can't use Vlookup.

Speaker B: Well, then I'm going to use xlookup simply because, uh, it was, you know, speaking about changing habits. So I tried, uh, to work in, uh, the index match, uh, many years ago and it just didn't stick for me. But you know what, the day I typed XL and the lookup version came in, I never looked back. So that is my favorite Excel function because it was so easy to start working with and you never needed to use a Vlookup. Or xlookup for that matter, ever again.

Speaker A: It really is. But if we're going to. You know, I think when I was asked that question, I said something that wasn't helpful at all. I think I would say xlookup is my most used. However, I would have to say my favorite if I go for nostalgia is if, if, then statements. Because that's what started this whole thing was. Yeah, I can hear me using that for. As creating a sales order form. And then all of a sudden I was in finance. So there we go. Um, okay. Something that is not, um, something about you that we can't easily find and not on LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Uh, so I would usually say that I'm a bowler.

Speaker A: And not the dating show?

Speaker B: No, not the dating show. I'm a bowler and have been bowling not professionally, but, uh, competitively, uh, for, uh, more than 30 years now. So I started bowling in 1995. And, uh, just last season we moved up into the second division here in Denmark. So we're going to lay second division this year. We have elite first division, second division. So it's third tier, let's say.

Speaker A: Wow, that's amazing. So how many hours a week do you go out and bowl?

Speaker B: Well, now I don't do much, actually, because, you know, you got kids and, uh, whatnot. And so I don't practice. I only play matches. So it's not that many hours. And, you know, even when I balled more, it wasn't that many hours. Probably why I didn't make it to the professional level. Uh, but, you know, it's, uh, it's just an activity that's so different from what I do every day and I meet different people from what I do every day. And, uh. Yeah, but it's, it's. It's kind of like a dying sport, I feel, because since I entered the team I'm playing now, no one younger has entered the team. And I entered this team at age 17.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: I know. It's crazy.

Speaker A: Wow. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of.

Speaker B: It's a little disgusting.

Speaker A: Sad. I mean, bowling seems like it's. It's a good cathartic release, right? Like, it's very even paced, but it's very exciting when you get a strike. Right, and. And you get to, I don't know, knock a bunch of stuff over. I think I could get behind that. I'm really bad at bowling, though, so kudos to you. Okay. What Was your last AI prompt like? Your very last AI prompt?

Speaker B: My very last AI prompt. You know, I'd have to. I use three different AI, uh, GPTs, I guess, every. Every single, uh, day. Uh, so what was my last. It's, uh, it says here, could you revisit the design summary from the previous session? I think the egg color is a no go, and we need to limit the numbers of colors in general to max three.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Did that become, like, a part of a skill where then you're. Let's say it's Claude reads what your template should look like.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I already have a project with tons of different examples what it should look like. There's a PowerPoint template upload as well, so it gets the colors from that. It even has that as part of the Enterprise version that we have. Uh, but, uh, every time I have to start a project over with a new session because there's too many images in the previous one, it takes a little bit time before it really gets it. But I'm looking at the. The product I got out of the prompt here now, and at least I could work with this, whereas the one I had before, I could not work with.

Speaker A: Uh, so are you still finding that you're having to do a lot of back and forth? Because I'm finding that I'm doing that a lot as well.

Speaker B: It varies, but the problem is that the PowerPoint skill include is not that good yet. So there are things I'll have to go in and manually correct. Uh, and of course I would do a content check no matter what, but, uh, you know, there are things that needs to be corrected for sure. So I think, uh, Copilot is better at making slides than Claude right now, for instance. And maybe people will challenge me on that, but that's at least what I see.

Speaker A: I don't know about Copilot. I haven't used it, but Claude's PowerPoint is very, um, basic and a little outdated in my mind. And somewhere there's Gemini or Siri listening to this entire conversation and feeding it back into the algorithm. So cowork might be better in a few months on PowerPoint. Fingers crossed. Um, okay. Annual budget. Keep it or kill it.

Speaker B: I would say keep it. And, uh, I have done it beyond budgeting implementation, so I have some solid ground to stand on, I feel. And I feel budgets are hated on for the wrong reason. Typically it's too long of a process and the number gets outdated before the ink is dry. Right. But that's not. That's not the budget as a core process fault. You know, you can make a budget very, very fast, and if you don't use it as a forecast, then it's not going to be outdated. It's going to be your anchor to what you want to achieve for that year. So for me, you have a, uh, long range plan and that's tied to your strategy. And the first year of that long range plan has to equal your budget or the other way around, probably because the long range gets made first. And if you break that link, you're screwed because that means you're not tracking to your strategy, you're tracking to something else. And if your annual plan always have to equal this number, you don't have to talk about what the number should be. Maybe you have to disseminate it into the organization, but you have to talk about how do we close the gap between that number and your latest forecast. There's always a gap. Sometimes it can be a positive gap, different story, but that's what it is all about. So that, to me, is what the budget process is about. Making sure, of course, that number gets disseminated through the organization. There's a little bit of leeway to negotiate, but if someone gets index 98, someone else has to get index 102, because otherwise it doesn't match. Right. Uh, so it's a completely different conversation when you do it like that. But unfortunately no one does it like that. So, uh, yeah, that's why the budget

Speaker A: gets so much hate, I think. Um, it's also different for the faze company that you're in.

Speaker B: So this is what I've approached to all clients, uh, if they want to go down this route. And, uh, I just don't see.

Speaker A: Sounds like a whole other podcast.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, yeah, it probably would be Rabbit hole.

Speaker A: But what were you going to say really quick?

Speaker B: Uh, I mean, like I said, this is what we advise all companies to do. Even I say don't go beyond budgeting because it's too complex. It's a cultural journey and your CFO is not going to be around anymore anyway before it kind of gets take hold. Right. So don't do it. Not because it's not a good idea in concept. It's just too complex.

Speaker A: I'm sorry, did you say bottoms up?

Speaker B: No, uh, beyond budgeting.

Speaker A: Oh, beyond budgeting. Got it, got it, got it, got it. Yes. Okay, we'll take that as a rapid fire. Okay. One thing in finance that dies tomorrow. So something, something in finance, be it a KPI, a report, a foundation, a skill set, it's just, it needs to go.

Speaker B: It's, it's time, I would say the manual reconciliation of whatever you're reconciling.

Speaker A: It's a good one. It's a good one. How do you know, though, that AI didn't hallucinate the numbers?

Speaker B: Because you know your numbers and you know your business. If you don't, you shouldn't be using AI. That's that simple.

Speaker A: I like that.

Speaker B: This is a very critical point. Right. And I'm, I'm raising my finger here. You know, you can't necessarily see that in the podcast. This is a very important point because. And that goes beyond finance as well. If you use AI for something you don't understand, you are setting yourself up for a huge risk because you cannot qualify the output. And if you cannot qualify the output, you don't know what you're doing. So don't use AI for something you don't understand.

Speaker A: Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that. In fact, I've been caught in that whirlwind before where I've had. I've had to stop, close out Claude, and I've gone and done my own research because I can't even decipher right from wrong until I have my own knowledge, expertise, opinion on the fact. All right, uh, final thing. One question or action a listener should bring to their team tomorrow morning that will significantly improve their finance function.

Speaker B: So, for me, and I'm a little biased here because I wrote a book about it as well with, uh, Christian Hansen, who was also on this show. At some point, by the way, uh, I would go and look at my monthly management report and probably scrap it completely, Start all over and say, what are the business priorities we're looking at? What slides do we need to deep dive into that and then go have a conversation with the business. And if you don't know the priorities, have the conversation with the business first and then do the slides afterwards.

Speaker A: And we probably need to do that every couple years.

Speaker B: You need to do it every three months. Probably 95% of the slides in management reporting today are just not useful. Put them in the appendix if you need to create them, but they're not useful for driving decisions.

Speaker A: So I asked Honors why finance transformations quietly or ultimately fail? And while I'm sure he has some dedicated playbooks just for this, and I'll ensure that some of those links are provided in the show notes here. What we got back on air was a little unsettling and a little uncomfortable. A question that I now have to take back to myself and my team. And what Onur suggested was that if, as the finance leader or the CFO or the corporate sponsor, you're not willing to dedicate 50% of your time towards the finance transformation, it is doomed to fail. Thinking back through all the projects that have either landed or didn't, I agree. However, that's a lot of time and mindshare and energy. And I have to ask if we're not willing to do that as finance leaders, what is it that we're looking for and expecting from our team? Many thanks to honors Lou Lindberg for joining today and for coming back and sharing that honest take on what will make these transformations stick and land. If you'd like CPE credits for this show through Earmark, we have also put that link below in the show notes. And if you're in the middle of one of these transformations or a similar type of change project, or you know, a co worker that's struggling with a lot of these issues, please do like subscribe and share. And if this really landed with you, go back to our episode. I believe the title, Let me see was more than 12 ERP implementations later with Cindy Vindesis. She'd tell you the mistake happens before anyone signs a software ERP implementation at all. Thanks for staying with me. That was FP and A today. I'm your host Zara Schlott, and I'll catch you next.