Transforming FP&A at Fannie Mae into an “enterprise intelligence engine”

Speaker A: If you would like to earn CPE credit for listening to the show, visit earmarkcpe.com FPA Download the app, uh, take a short quiz and get your uh, CPE certificate. Finally, if you enjoy listening to FP&A today, please go to your podcast platform of choice, click the subscribe button and leave a rating and review of the show. And now onto the show from datarails.

Speaker B: This is FPNA Today. Foreign.

Speaker A: Welcome to FP&A today. I'm your host, Glenn Hopper. Today on the show I'm joined by, uh, Caroline McAuliffe, senior vice president and head of Corporate finance at Fannie Mae, where she leads FPA and procurement across the enterprise. Caroline has spent 25 years in finance, starting an audit at Ernst and Young and Deloitte in Paris, then moving through controllership, finance transformation and operations at bnp, Paribas and State uh, Street. She even did a stint in front office sales strategy, which gives her a perspective most finance leaders just don't have. At Fannie Mae, she's been on a multi year mission to transform FP and A into what she calls the enterprise intelligence engine. She's unified FP and A in procurement into a single value creation function, automated accruals, uh, and reporting end to end, and built a digital talent program that's pushing her analysts toward real time decision support. She also completed the program for Leadership Development at Harvard Business School, holds CPA credentials in both the US and France, and a master from the EDHEC Business School in France. Caroline, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thank you, Glenn. Thank you so much for having me today.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I'm really excited to talk to you. Uh, we talked about several weeks ago, uh, about the procurement FPA combo. I don't know in my universe. Since we've talked, I've talked to, I swear, I think in one of the other podcast, uh, interviews I did, we talked about this as, as well about how that, that sort of natural marriage. So I'm excited to dig into that. But before, before we get into all that, um, I just, I love your career path. Starting an audit, moving through controllership, finance transformation and even doing that, that front office sales strategy role. I uh, I'd love to hear, just in your words, how that kind of winding road, how did it shape the way you think about FP and A now?

Speaker B: Yeah. So interesting, right? I often say that my career really gave me that like full value chain lens right before I ever led. FP and A Starting in audit really taught me rigor controls, how numbers tell a story. But audit also shows you the limit of what backward looking finance is. Right. You're always explaining what has already happened. Then my time in controllership and transformation, and it was both operations and finance transformation really exposed me to what's underneath all of it, right? The systems, the processes, how finance and operations architecture really work. Um, and then in the front office strategy role. So that one was really eye opening, way outside my comfort zone. Uh, working with relationship manager with sales, right. All those commercial leaders and actually seeing like how uh, you know what, what it is to be frontline and have the pressure from the clients is often something you don't have appreciation for when you're more in a back office function like finance and how they use or not or ignore like financial insight, you know, and what could help them, uh, in their role. So then by the time I moved M into um, FP and A, it was already in a leadership role. Right. So I wasn't really interested in being the reporting function. I really wanted FPE to be the function that helps drive the enterprise performance, help drive um, ah, this front office activity connecting strategy, operations and financial outcomes in real time. And I think that's what really shaped my philosophy today.

Speaker A: What I love about that too is if I think back of how finance and accounting used to be perceived, it was we were sort of in this ivory tower where we were a mile deep on our domain knowledge about finance and accounting, but really didn't understand the rest of the business. And by coming through the path that you did, it's like you inherently are going to have that business partnering mindset. And I think when I started my career I didn't know what business partnering was, but that's really, that's a big part of FP&A now. And I think by seeing it and seeing it from the other side, it sort of naturally wires you for that in taking all that. And I think this will really resonate with our listeners. You described your vision for FPA is becoming the enterprise intelligence engine. And I love that because that's so much more uh, and you just alluded to this. But I guess for listeners who maybe are still in the world of monthly close packages, variance reports and all that, what does an enterprise intelligence engine actually look like to the rest of the company?

Speaker B: So for me, being an enterprise intelligence engine mean you're not the historian of the company. You're actually a sort of like navigator. You really help um, the leadership like navigate the tumultuous environment. Enterprise intelligence engine means you connect financial but also operational data, HR Data, procurement data and so on. Right. You translate it then into insight and then you help leadership decide what to do next. It's not just here's the variance, it's actually here's what's driving the variance, here are the different scenarios and here's what we recommend. So it really means that you're doing one real time scenario modeling, continuous forecasting, and then the finance talent really can challenge and influence not just reports.

Speaker A: I think about, I spent 15 years in the CFO seat and that was 2000. Full time CFO was what, 2007 till about 22. And the evolution of the CFO role. I remember when I came into a company and I sort of had a mandate and an edict from, um, the board and the investors. When I came in, it was a lot of turnaround type roles. But when I came in as the new CFO and started wanting to get access to data from other departments, they were very defensive and they were like, stay in your lane. You stay in the gl. This is our data. And it was, there was always a fight. But I think more CFOs that I talk to now, it feels like we have, people understand modern finance and the correlation and the ability you can get by having all this data from lead and prospect and everything that's in the, in the CRM all the way through all the different systems. And I know as you're looking at the data, you talked about that foundation having to come first and this is so significant to CFOs right now. But before you can, uh, become a decision support partner, you identified that, uh, you've got to have that single source of truth and we're 100% right there. It's just, it's interesting that CFOs are now talking about this and how important that is, but I guess to put some specifics to that, give us an example of when you arrived at Fannie Mae, where were things and what kind of, what did that foundational work look like? As you as the finance person were trying to get the full picture and get access to the data and identify that source of truth and all that.

Speaker B: Yeah. So one thing also of the truth, you know, uh, it's really a continuous journey. Right. And it's really a maturity journey. So when I arrived at Fannie, uh, like many large organization, we had strong people. We had also some great data foundation. We still had some work to do because often what you find is you have like fragmented data. You have the data that has different, uh, level of maturities, but you Know like the fragmentation is really core to what needs to be solved, right? Fragmented data, data and then manual processes. So the first phase was really one to standardize and uh, really bring together like the loose fragmented data sets into like one single platform, right. And then enhancing the data governance around it. Because data governance is how you're going to manage the data going forward and maintain it. So then with the solid foundation, the organization that well positioned to move to more meaningful higher value decision support. Right? Because uh, once you have your low value added tasks that are automated like um, accrual automation or like reporting production, you know that can only be done if you have like a strong data foundation. So it's really the first step and once all of that is done, then you can move into true decision support.

Speaker A: So I want to go to the first thing I brought up when we were talking. I just, I think it's interesting. It's like if you see a certain type of car and you notice it, then suddenly you're noticing that car everywhere. I feel like ever since you and I talked about procurement and FPA that I've really, I've had multiple other conversations with CFOs about that alignment. But I think one of the most interesting things that you've done is bring procurement under the same umbrella as FPA there. And I think you would agree most organizations keep those in completely separate silos. So walk us through from your standpoint the logic of combining them into that single value engine.

Speaker B: So for me it was a no brainer because when you think about it, procurement and FP and A, they are the two sides of the, of the same coin. Procurement, they touch the same dollars. Procurement sources and negotiates those dollars and then FPA forecast with dollars and analyzes the spend. So by bringing them together you really have like that full value chain. And bringing them together allows your analyst to see contract level data and procurement on the other side sees the forecast implications. Right? And so whenever procurement say oh we're saving actually x many dollars on that, um, on that negotiation, you can actually have that tracked in the forecast and make sure you realize the full value in the P and L, which is often completely disconnected. You also need to bring procurement at the table and embed the procurement data and the analyst in the FP&A ecosystem. So I always tell my team, my FP and A team, you need to have two people on your speed dial. One, your HR business partner for the division you support and then second, the procurement leader because they're going to really um, be your Best bunny and help you analyze the um, uh, the financials and help really provide that insight that going to help you provide that true decision support to the business.

Speaker A: Yeah and I, that resonated with me so much because of my own, my first finance role, I didn't roll up to the cfo. I was in operations but I kind of came in through a side door of procurement. I was managing the budget for all of operations for a telecom company and I was expected to uh, this is a late 90s, early 2000s and there was a lot of pressure. We had a lot of investors in our telecom firm and a lot of IPOs happening around then. So we had to manage that budget so tightly and I was doing it initially without having access to the financial systems. So I wasn't seeing all the invoices and all that. And I was trying to do forecasts and all that. And I know when we talked before the show you were talking about you know, FP and a forecast analyzes the spend while procurement negotiates the contract. Um and I, that was one of my first big wins in finance was being able to connect the data set data sets. So on your side, how are you connecting those data sets and what is your with that the way that you have it structured, what does your FPA team see now that they couldn't see before?

Speaker B: So currently when uh, when we create a PO purchase order, right. We automatically pull the actual procurement data into our budgets, our budgeting application. So this allows our analysts, our FP&A analyst to update their forecast based on the real data. And additionally we make the contracts available to our FP and a team so as they perform the analysis they can quickly navigate the terms of the contracts, the deliverables and really being able to refine their forecast based on the actual like data. So we can really cleanly tie the forecasted spend to the underlying contract timing. Right. So our FP team sees committed spend versus forecast, vendor level insights, contract timing and obligations and then they're able to really tie the negotiation outcomes from procurement. You know do savings really ties them and embed them into the forecast into the so that they materialize in the P and L. Right. So before they, they saw only summarized numbers and now they really see the drivers behind those numbers and that changes the conversations entirely.

Speaker A: It really does. And it goes to that just data access and being able to see the full picture and getting it early on and it makes perfect sense. Um, yeah. So anyway, I don't know why I keep hearing about this so much lately because I'm not talking about procurement maybe as much as I used to when I was an active cfo. But um, I'm going to leave Listen to the Stars and I don't know, maybe there's an opportunity there for me to do some combining of my own. All right. Another thing we talked about that I think in so many ways this is a necessary evil. And it always reminds me of that the Mike Tyson quote that uh, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And uh, we talked before the show about the annual budget cycle and you've been pretty vocal about moving away from that and pushing towards a rolling two year budget forecast instead. And I think that's a big muscle to build. I mean everybody sort of has their, whatever the fiscal year they're on, but you know, the September, October sort of, the prepping, going through, doing everything and it just, it, it defines uh, a whole quarter of, of the business. But in your model, what does that transition look like and how do you get leadership and the business comfortable with it? Because I know you have to have an annual plan and a budget that ties to that. So what do you, what's different in, in your sort of two year rolling look that you're talking about?

Speaker B: Yeah. So when you think about it, right, the annual budget is merely a uh, snapshot in the moving world. You spend often like three months plus vortex that every stakeholder in your organization finds painful, time consuming and by the time it's locked and loaded in the system, January 1st, it's already wrong. Right. Whereas the rolling forecast, when you think about it, it just keeps the discussion going. Right. The conversation is continuous. Um, and it just encourages ah, agility. Right. So for me it's not about you never will be able to flip the switch overnight. It's a maturity journey. It's first like talking about it, then starting to move the organization and the leaders in that direction. And it requires a strong forecasting discipline. So the way we've done it is actually started to introduce the next year numbers in our discussions. And at first people were like, well that's interesting. We're just not talking about this year. No. We're also going to start talking about next year. We want to move towards more like a two year like rolling cycle. And then you, you of course at the beginning it's um, it's painful. People are not, we just don't have the muscle to think about like that two year cycle. But over time, you know, it's just a musc that you're developing and so now, you know, like today as we're, as we speak, we're already starting to think about our 2027, 2027 year. Right. When we've just started like 2026. Right. So it's a maturity journey. It doesn't take much in terms of system to actually go there. It's more culture change.

Speaker A: Yeah. And as you're talking, and I guess I'm really going to date myself here, but I'm remembering all the run up to the Y2K bug where 1231, 2000, at the end of, at the end of 1999, nobody knew what was going to happen with all these computers. And it really, it felt like, was that the end of the world? What, what happens behind it? And as you're talking, I'm, um, I'm um, equating what you're saying. When we have an annual budget and then just December 31st at the end of the year, it's like it's, it's making us shorten our, the way we think and the way we talk about stuff if we're just managing to this hard calendar. Whereas if you have it rolling and you're looking beyond that, I think that changes strategies. I think there's a, there's a brilliance there. So yeah, that's a, that's a great, great shift. And I can, I can picture that in practice, so I can see. But it's gotta be hard to get people to adopt to that. I mean, I guess it's just working through it and keeping that mentality. So there's the annual budget, which is great, but then with everything going on in the world, and I, uh, I think you could probably say this at any time with business. It's just that right now it seems like it's happening at a rocket pace where there's scenarios that you hadn't originally planned for. Something has changed. And I know real time scenario analysis is something that you're really focused on as well. And you described being in a meeting with the CFO and CEO and when they asked what if we do xyz, that your team can model the answer right on the spot instead of, well, let me go back and crank an Excel model overnight. Um, I'd love to know because this is one of the use cases where we talk about with using AI as a thought partner and being able to do stuff like this. But it can be very hard in those meetings, especially with the C suite, to um, be able to answer those what if scenarios. So walk me through that in practice. How does that work? How does that look?

Speaker B: Yeah, so this is a capability that we're still developing, but yes, right. This is a vision and we're currently working on it. So what it requires, it requires a modeling framework. You need to have a tool hosting this model, being able to do online real time updates of the assumption, right. And then real time update of the output. And then it requires also skilled analysts, right. Who understands the business, the drivers and know how to query and update the model, uh, in a dynamic way. So we build scenario toolkits rather than one off Excel models, you know, because often you one of what I noticed in the past, right. You one of Excel model, they answer like one question at a given time and then often you don't get to reuse them. So whenever you integrate and you have more like a scenario toolkit hosted on a, on the, in a model, right. So that's when you can really answer the questions. When leadership asks what if scenario, you can respond in the room, right? And I feel that's when finance becomes really truly strategic. And some of the questions you can ask are like what if I increase by X basis points, um, you know, this drive or what if uh, I increase my workforce by 5%, um, by the end of the year? What's going to happen to my, to my ebitda, right? So all of those questions and being able to insert, insert them like real time for me it's really going to be an important capability for the FP&A of the future.

Speaker A: FP&A today is brought to you by DataRails, the world's number one FP&A solution. DataRails is the artificial intelligence powered financial planning and analysis platform built for Excel users. That's right, you can stay in Excel, but instead of facing hell for every budget month, end close or forecast, you can enjoy a paradise of uh, data consolidation, advanced visualization, reporting and AI capabilities. Plus game changing insights giving you instant answers and your story created in seconds. Find out why more than 1500 companies use datarails to uncover their company's real story. Don't replace Excel. Embrace Excel. Learn more@datarails.com I think about coming up in FP&A and uh, before you're in a management role. I get it. When you're a technician and you're lower, really your value to the organization is in your ability to kind of build the models and to reliably build models that do what they're, they're supposed to and that are, that are accurate and precise and all that. But as you move up, no one becomes a CFO because they're really good at Excel. You have to have the, the bigger picture. And I think about existential crisis everyone's having about AI right now. Is AI going to take my job? But it feels like you're really leaning into. Our job is not building the models and doing that base level work. It's being that value partner who's giving the strategic insights to the business. And I know you've done a lot of work on automation like your accrual reporting and your uh. I want to hear about your AI powered flash report bot that does the automated commentary and all that. But I think sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees. And I'm thinking for finance leaders who are maybe still early in their automation journey and they're really just thinking about these are the tools I have, I'm going to do the best I can. But uh, and maybe using your report bot for the automated commentary, like where's a good place for someone who's dipping their toe into the idea of automation and analytics and getting to this next level? Where should they start and what's the kind of the order of operations around that?

Speaker B: Yeah, and the uh, way to think about it Glenn is really automation is not the end goal. It's going to the enabler, right. To really bring your function to that next level and being that true decision support. So you need to start with the repetitive low value added work, ah, accruals, routine, you know, uh, routine internal reporting manual data pools and automating. All of that will free capacity first for your analysts and then you'll be able to reinvest that capacity into providing more business insight and more partnering. And so you start with the repetitive low value added work, right. Everything that I just mentioned. And then once that done you're like hm, what's the next steps in our journey? Right. And we took a look at what our FP and analysts um, were doing and what they were spending a lot of time on and it's actually doing what we call our flash report. Right. Right after the close M. And I know one of the, I was discussing with one of my officer, one of my team member and he supports like he and his team supports a big division and they have, they're supporting 50 officers. So they have 50 flash report to produce, analyze the numbers, do the commentary. Right. Can you imagine like how much time is spent on this? Right. So, and it's time then that you're not spending answering question to your business or providing decision support to them. Right. And so for us it was clear, okay, next steps in our journey. Because that is so time consuming, let's find a way to actually automate that. So we're currently like building AI powered Flash reports. So the Flash, we have a flashbot, we call it a Flashbot and it's actually produced that Flash report and putting already together the automated commentary. Right. Of course, you know, it's 80 or 90% there. We still need the FPN analyst to go there, take a look, review the commentary, edit. But it's such a huge help, right? Uh, it's really helping us elevate the FP and a function by just removing that, you know, just the lowest value work so that we can really spend time on what matters and being there

Speaker A: for our business partners and that's getting the output and quicker, um, and really enhancing the value of your team. And I think you and I are kindred spirits on this. And coming up in my career, especially before I was in the C suite, had a lot of run ins with it because uh, they didn't always like what I was doing. But it seemed like in finance we would ask for a report, they would say, sure, we can do that. They would throw us in the backlog. We would never come to the top of the backlog. Every sales and marketing, everybody, operations, everybody else, all their requirements came ahead of ours. So my team, we really leaned into being citizen developers. And you know, I think that's the problem when you're trying to create this value and you can't get the resources you need. But I think the technology and we m have to get into vibe coding and all that yet. But your team, I mean, and I think power apps and power BI really make this possible. But your team's building its own solutions because enterprise it, you know, it doesn't operate at the micro level and a lot of times it's just hard to get to the top of the priority. So I'd love to hear a couple of examples of situations where your team has taken that citizen developer stance, solved problems themselves and then to kind of round that out. Do you run into tension with it around that and how that's sort of managed?

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So we really empower our team to build lightweight solutions in power apps and power BI from micro points problems. Some examples, space utilization tracking. We have like three buildings, right. And we have certain allocated space and we just need to make sure with our return to office like three days, uh, in the office per week that we don't we're not like oversubscribed on one day under, under subscribe on another day. So we, they build that space utilization tracking. Right. Solving a micro problem works great. Uh, we also build what we call an annual planning tool and a business case management tool. So those were like just additive helping us just to centralize like business case and initiative and investment type of info. Uh, we also have like a vendor management app. Right. So all of those applications are locally owned and operated by my team which allow us access to the information we need and you know, when we need it. And um, we also use the ownership of these apps and tools as a way to introduce our team to product management as well. Because you need to think about like the lifecycle of those products and how you maintain them and you know, so it's been a great way to just to expand the skills and the thinking of the team. Right to your second question on um, how does it like feel about that? So I feel very lucky. We work in a um, very forward thinking organization and really enterprise it sees the value and encourages us to use power bi to better scale the solutions. Um, uh, to just provide solutions to micro problems that they manage. The enterprise tools provide training and governance parameters to ensure we use them in ideal ways. But then you take it and you run with it and I feel it's been really a win. Win.

Speaker A: I was going to say that's rare. I think maybe it used to be rare but I think as we talk about the evolution of the cfo, hopefully that is more the norm these days than having that sort of inherent conflict in there because of the nature of the job has changed. And on that I think you like the timing of this seems really perfect around um, the whole generative AI move and everything and thinking about where our teams are going. But I think you have this seems like a good playbook. So for our listeners this is an area to pay attention because I think that this is something that could be adopted more broadly. So you've got your digital talent curriculum, four levels from you know, Excel usage all the way to full AI leverage. Tell us about that curriculum and how do you assess where people are on that curve and then what are you doing for training at each stage to kind of move people up through it and how's the team responding to that?

Speaker B: Um, so I'll start with your last questions like how's the team responding to that? So I ask in each one of my quarterly all hands who is interested in moving up the curve of the digital talent skill sets and each time about 80% of my team raised their hand. You know, they're really showing an appetite to grow in this domain and that was what was really encouraging. So of course you know, we had to push on this and create a structured way to see progress across the team because otherwise guess what? The day to day just gets in the way. Right? You always have that. Next questions from your business partner that you need to go to. That next reporting analysis is this. And you know if we don't, you don't as, as the leader of a team. If you don't create the space and the structure, you know that will fell off the conveyor belt like very quickly. Right. So we started by asking everyone to self assess the capability, their capabilities into five levels. If they were basic technology user, digitally literate, literate users. Right. So that means like comfortable, leveraging a wide range of tools and technology advanced the uh, more like advanced use of our tools and then citizen digital talent. Right. So it's like advanced tech user who can modify or produce digital capabilities and then dedicated digital talent which we didn't have dedicated technologies to modify or produce digital capabilities. And once we had a good idea of where we were in the team at. Spoiler alert. Right. Everyone were at probably like level one and two and maybe a few ones with more dedicated um, tech, not technology but more dedicated roles like around like using some of the tools where in the, in that uh, level three. Right. But like 80, 85% of the organization was in um one and two. So and our goal has been really to move the team towards level four. Right. Citizen digital talent to ensure you know, that we can optimize the enterprise tools we have available and have a greater impact because there's no point in having all of those great enterprise tool. And now you know we're putting in place Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT if you, if they stay on a shelf and no one is using them right. In your team. So we created training curriculum to focus on first Excel and Data foundation visualization tools and how to use them. Right. So those are like the BI tools um, that we have available, right. And then low code, no code solutions and of course then like AI, right. And how you to best use the tools that we have available in that um, in that domain. So we set up training forums. They've taken different shapes, you know and what you really need to answer is like the stickiness. It's like not just attending the training, it's actually you are going to attend the training and you need to start Using, using the tool. Right. So what we're doing is that. So we have that structured learning path with structure like training and then we also do like peer knowledge sharing and real project application. For example. What we did last year was um, uh, I think we call it like a hackathon. Um, right. It's like how do we create like specific teams and they identify a problem like around a process that's manual or data that's missing a question that you can't answer. And they will leverage all of those solutions to actually answer the question. And we've had like some great success, some great, you know, just amazing things that the team came up with. You know just by creating that space and structure for them to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions to you know, problems that we had.

Speaker A: That's so important and I love the environment that you've set there because I think about one, a client that I worked with a couple years ago, they uh, had outsourced all their basic um, from basic book bookkeeping all the way through the month end close had been out, uh, outsourced and there was someone whose job it was, there was many, many multi multiple countries uh, all sending in basically Excel. And they, and this person's only job was to. And it would take them all months, it would take them 30 days to close them a small, you know it's small business under, under 50 million in revenue. But um. And that was the only job they had and they did the same thing month over month for years. And I thought that person, their job security was. Well I'm the one that does all this. It takes 30 days. So I know every month I've got a job to do. And it's just kind of shocking to me to hear this and thinking about though that's, that's an extreme case but there are so many things we do every month and if we are so busy doing those things that we don't have time to think about how could technology help us? How could I. This is what is the value add I'm doing here? How can we do it then you're going to get left behind. So it sounds like you've got, you've developed a really forward looking way for everybody to up their technical skills and to add that value. And um, the other part that you're doing though more on the soft skills side I think and you can dig a little more into this. I think just the name itself is so important. But you talk about your team's vision to be the challenging Trusted advisor or cta. And challenging is such a key word there because there's the shoot the messenger side and then there's the side where if you default, especially to being uh, a people pleaser kind of person, you know the message that management wants to see. So there's this tendency to kind of go along, to get along and to sort of create the reports that want. But that challenging part is so significant because that is where everybody just kind of marching blindly in the same direction. Is it where real value comes from? So as you're working on the technical side and more of that work gets automated, I think the skills gap shifts like entirely to the soft skill. Maybe not entirely, but significantly to the soft skill side. And I'm wondering, with just that mindset of being the cta, are there specific soft skills that separate, you know, good FP and a analyst from that, that true, great business partner?

Speaker B: Yes. So, you know, so I'll start answering your question by just elaborating a bit what it means for me to be a uh, challenging trusted advisor. And we love acronyms in my company. So that's why say we, we shorten it in cta. It means that human, you must earn trust, right. By the quality of the insights you're giving. But you still be willing to challenge. You're that person. That leader will be like, hey, he or she doesn't always tell me what I want to hear, but I actually need that person at the table because they enable me to be a better leader. Right. So that's the challenging trusted advisor. And here like the really the differentiative skill, the differentiating skills are one, um, of course communication to storytelling with the data. Right. Um, it's not. Here's your 80 pages report and I'm going to comment the number. It's like actually let me make this a lie for you. Let me tell you the story around this, right? It's the ability to influence without having any authority. Right. The person doesn't report to you and yet you have to influence their decision making. Right. And all of this really requires the intellectual curiosity because you will only earn trust if you know the business you're supporting and you know the business partner, what are the challenges they're facing, right. If you know their activity and day to day really well. So intellectual curiosity is very important. And then just the, the courage to challenge constructively. Right. The ability to go in that, this um, uncomfortable space where you know, I think FPNA always say as one, uh, one foot in the business, one foot in finance. Right. And you're really dancing that very delicate dance, uh, between like supporting your business partner but also like challenging them.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I, what I love about that and everything you've said from the, the technology training through the soft skills and the, the approach to automation and um, and how you're handling FP&A, that goes both ways. You have to have strong leadership that's willing to listen to that. And I think that it sounds like a really good setup for the development of the teams and for management to get that input and everything. So I commend you on all that. And I'm going to throw a bonus question out here that wasn't on the list and you could even address this from m. The personal uh, usage side. But because you are so tech forward and you're doing so much around AI and automation and building out, getting this deeper analytics. Is there anything. I mean we're in wild times with Generative AI right now. And this is certainly, you know, as someone who came up through the introduction of the Internet and uh, even desktop computer, if you go, go back a little earlier and um, you know, SAS and all the smartphone and everything that's gone through. I can't remember in my lifetime any technology that's moved this quickly or that I have so frequently just been amazed by something that I did with AI. Uh, so I'm throwing this out there just to see because I know you are tet forward. Is there anything you've done recently with Generative AI, uh, that you just thought oh wow, this is huge or you know, I've been involved, I didn't see this coming. Is in any specific use case that you can think of that kind of blew you away in the past few months?

Speaker B: Um, yes, we're working on um, developing but, but for now it's, it's really uh, we're, we're just testing it and see where that can lead us. A uh, Challenger forecast model. So just a model that um, will do like the forecasting. Right. The expense forecasting for UIFP and analysts will propose scenarios and then you have to choose like in between. So um, the results I've seen were not um, precise enough. Right. You have, when you, when you forecast at the cost center level, you have a certain need to have a certain level of precisions. But it's definitely like something where we're working on and I think that could be like a major like game changer for the, for the FP and industry.

Speaker A: That's huge. Yeah. Yeah. It's a wild times to Be alive. And I, as someone who's been on the data and analytics side for a long time in finance, it's really amazing how accessible all this has become with the generative AI component, where whether it's vibe coding or being able to talk to your data and all that and seeing these and. But, uh, I love the tool that you mentioned because that's not just, oh, I found a cool way that ChatGPT can summarize meetings. It's actually a fundamental deterministic approach to it and everything so very exciting that that's going on as well. So while we are winding down here, we do have, we have our standard boilerplate questions that we ask everybody. Um, so I guess we'll move on to those now. And, uh, the first one is, what is something that not many people know about you? Maybe something that we couldn't learn from your social media profiles or LinkedIn or whatever? Effy.

Speaker B: Yes, good question. Uh, so what many people don't know about me in the professional world is that I'm actually a profound autism mom. Uh, my son has been diagnosed five years ago with non speaking autism. And uh, so there's this communication method emerging called spelling to communicate S2C where non speakers point at letters on the letterboard. It's completely grassroots. So my son, who was formerly diagnosed as intellectually disabled, we, uh, have actually discovered that he's the smartest of the six of us. He understands everything. Just was not able to show it because those non speakers have apraxia. They have a mind body disconnect. So the brain is fully functioning, but they can't control their body to really respond. So, you know, they're not able to show it through the standardized testing. So we discovered through spending to communicate that he actually understand a complex level of French. I'm French and English. He's able to spell it as well as able to perform age appropriate math. When you know, Glenn, he has never attended elementary school. He probably learned it on his own through books and listening and probably just, um, a brilliant little guy. And now I see him watching shows in German and Spanish on his tablet. So now I'm like, does he also speak German and Spanish? So I want to test his level in these two language. But it's been definitely life changing for the families with nonspeaking children and adults with autism. We've tried this method. So I just wanted to use, uh, my voice in this podcast to really raise awareness there.

Speaker A: Wow. And how amazing for him to be able to have an avenue to communicate because having all that in your head and not a way to communicate it. What a. What a major breakthrough. So that's a, uh, fascinating story. I'm glad to hear that you're. You have that interaction now. That's. That's incredible. Okay, well, moving on to our everybody's favorite question. Uh, what is your favorite Excel function and why?

Speaker B: So it's, uh, probably xlookup, right? Because I remember as an auditor back in the days, right, in the early odds, uh, using, uh, a Vlookup left and right to marry data sets. And so PRAVDX lookup, right, because it really represents, like, how the evolution. How the finance tools have evolved. Right. More intuitive, more powerful. Right.

Speaker A: So, and I love, I always love asking CFOs that question because it almost feels like putting you on the spot a little bit because it's like, how long has it been since we've actually been Excel warriors on this? But it's, uh, you know, we're recipients of the data so much. But, um, it is. And I think with all the technology stuff that you guys have going on, too, I mean, I imagine the amount of time you spend in Excel these days is probably a bit lower than it was, uh, even a few years ago, so. But xlookup is a great one. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So, um, Caroline, finally, is there a way that, uh, I don't know how often you post on LinkedIn or anything like that, but is there a way our listeners can connect with you and learn more about your work?

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. So LinkedIn is definitely best. I'm active on LinkedIn and I really enjoy connecting with, uh, other finance leaders and learning from different perspectives. Um, the finance function is evolving quickly, and so the more we share, the stronger we all become as professionals. Please reach out on LinkedIn.

Speaker A: Well, Carolene, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed it. I loved hearing not just all the technical work that you're doing, but on the soft skills side. And it sounds like you have a, a great department there. And, uh, just really, really enjoyed, uh, hearing your insights.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me. Glad, Sam.