Interim FP&A, What it is, and Why it is A Growing Career Path With Tim Stalkamp

The ones that are the most challenging to fill are the ones where the scope is very defined and the buyer is effectively looking for a needle in the haystack in terms of professional background. And that's not in our management. And once in a blue moon, we might have the exact professional that's worked in the exact industry and has faced the exact situations, whether for instance, you know, budgeting challenges or, or forecasting errors that they come and be brought in to fix or driving initiatives for a company.

Welcome to another episode of FP&A unlocked where finance meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst and I'm thrilled to be joined by my co host, Glenn. Glenn, how you doing? Doing great, Paul, how you doing?

Doing well. Always a, uh, pleasure to have you with me. Always good to have Glenn, uh, with me. And today we also have Tim with us from Riveron and I'm going to let Glenn introduce Tim, uh, to our audience.

So I'm going to turn it over to you for a minute, Glenn. All right, thank you, Paul. Yeah. So, uh, I'm really pleased to introduce Tim Stallkamp.

He is the senior managing director of the interim management group at Riveron. But Tim, you could do a better job of explaining your background. So I will turn it over to you. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself.

Thanks, Glenn and Paul, good uh, to see you again. I've been in Chicago with Riveron for just about 20 years right now. I think I'm just a month shy and started my career in the middle market space doing corporate restructurings and as a natural derivative of that, about halfway through my career started filling interim management roles. And I think by this point in my career I've served in probably almost 30 different C suite or other interim management roles and, and for the last couple years have been running Riveron's interim management practice where we are just as we talk about putting in interim management roles primarily in middle market sized companies throughout the US and it's been a great experience.

I'm happy to be here to talk about interim management and FP&A today and how they interlink. Fantastic. Thank you, Tim. So Paul, I know you like to uh, kick off with a particular question, so I'll turn it back to you.

I do just uh, you know, since I think he. You mentioned he's your boss, Glenn, you need to be on your best behavior today. Uh, I will do my best not to insult him during the podcast. Everybody's on the hot seat today.

All righty. So uh, Tim, as you know, and Glenn knows There's a question I always like to ask, and I love to get different people's perspective on this because it's always interesting to see, depending on where they come from m, where they work, how they think about this, there's always a little different nuance to it. So if I asked you to Describe what great FP&A looks like, what is great FP&A, how would you do that? You know, I've been in hundreds of companies over the years, and I think what really distinguishes a great FPA leader and a great FP and A organization is being visible throughout the process and being ahead of the curve.

So it's not just running financials, not just running forecast models, but really leading the process and being looked to for leader throughout the organization for all the elements that drive forecasting, budgeting, the metrics, reporting the metrics, and being somebody who's visible in a team that's visible as opposed to behind the scenes. There's great FP and A leaders that operate a bit more behind the scenes, but the ones that really stand out are the ones that are sitting next to the CFO and really driving the process and being looked at as leaders across the organization.

Then beyond that, you know, there's other elements of FP and A, but those, to me, are the most critical attributes of really what graduates great FPA looks like. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And I like how, uh, you mentioned, you know, visible and being there.

People are aware they have a seat at the table. Yes. Can you do good FPA in the background? So, yeah, but I think you're limited.

And I'm going to guess Glenn would agree. There needs to be some level of visibility and awareness, really, to what you're doing and being at the table, so to speak, to have the greatest impact. Glenn, your thoughts? Yeah, no, I agree.

In fact, actually, Tim, I also like the fact that you really emphasize the leadership. You know, a lot of times people think about finance and about the work that you do, the data you're producing, the analysis you're doing. But FP&A is really in that leadership role. You got to be looking forward and you got to be thinking about how do you influence that next decision at the company.

And, you know, so, uh, you know, certainly for all the FPA people out there, that's, to me, is where, you know, you start off your career. And Paul and I have talked about this many times. You got the technical side of things, you're building your models, you're doing your analysis, but the advancement and the impact really comes from the leadership to go over it, to bring people together and to show people the value that you're really driving with FP&A. The best FP&A leads are ones that really act as integrators across an organization.

So they take the output, they take the financial modeling that they're doing. They're really driving it into different business units. They're using the data, presenting the data, becoming really a source of truth to help drive decision making. Not just generating reports and KPIs, but really using that output to drive decision making.

See, the best leaders in FBA are ones that really integrate the entire process out of finance into the rest of the organization. Yeah, I agree. In fact, what you just described isn't FP and A specific. I think it applies across not just finance, but any organization.

It's funny how many of the principles we teach, you know, we talk about, the people share about great FP and A would apply to a lot of businesses. Yes, there are things that are unique, but in many ways, what makes a great leader, what makes a great org comes down to some just timeless leadership principles. It's amazing how often it comes back to that. So let's get into our main topic though.

Today we're talking about interim management. And so many people aren't necessarily familiar with the term. The simplest definition is interim management helps companies bridge a gap when they either are creating a new position or they've lost a key leader in their organization where someone could come in an interim basis, manage that team and, uh, you know, help them, you know, get to the point where then they bring in their, their permanent leader or maybe even upscale them to a certain point where a new leader could come in and take over.

You know, so, Tim, certainly over the last, God, I don't know, five, 10 years, interim management has, you know, really expanded. I mean, what have you seen? I mean, Vincent, you've been in this role, you lead this, uh, organization for Riveron. What have you seen with interim management over the last several years?

Well, we've seen exactly that, Glenn. And I think a big component of that has been the growth of private equity. So we've been involved in hundreds of different businesses where we've come in in interim management roles that where maybe five, 10 years ago that may not have been looked at as an option. And particularly with private equity taking a much bigger presence in the overall economy and running an ever larger number of businesses, they often turn to interim management because they want results faster and they want the process to run smoothly.

They're looking for expertise. And so the growth of private equity has been a huge driver for why interim management has increased over the last five years. And we're glad to be part of, you know, helping lots of companies across various industries and various roles with the uh, with the professionals that we have in our ranks. So it sounds like, you know, one of the key things you mentioned, and before I even ask this question, I'm going to share something I have found really interesting is I think I mentioned when you and I talked to him and Glenn, all three of us chatted before this is this year I've heard more people reach out to me about kind of interim management.

Not they're using those words but that they're looking at these consulting firms that do interim. They've mentioned Reviron and others in the last year that I think I have. The few years before, uh, prior to that it was almost always fractional, very little mention of interim and obviously fractional still big. And it continues to be a huge part, especially for smaller companies that don't want that fully burdened cost of a, of a whole head.

They want to, you know, reduce that cost but have the support. So uh, uh, it's been interesting to watch it grow. But why do you think it has grown so much? Obviously you mentioned the pe, but what are some of the other things maybe that you think have made it popular over the last few years?

Well, I think companies, senior management teams, ownership groups, whether it's private equity, otherwise START started to realize that expertise in a certain functional area can a lot of times create immediate value and be accretive to a business. So they look beyond the cost of bringing an outside professional in. And obviously the costs from an outside professional are almost always higher than an in place full time professional inside a business. And so I think that's one of the drivers.

Results are largely there, the value creation is there. And I think that's why all sorts of everything from entrepreneurs of course, up through private equity ownership and even into the public space. Why those different stakeholders have looked to interim management for solutions because they know they're going to get the value and they'll see the value creation out of the product process. You bring it back to the value creation.

Right? That's at the end of the day, if you can justify the cost, you're going to bring someone in. It used to be okay, we can bridge the graph internally. You kind of viewed it as a controller, accounting, reporting back office.

We can deal with it a few months but I Think as FPA has been viewed more of a value creator. I saw someone say the other day that, you know, FPA should create revenue. And I always cringe when I hear that like, no, no, we support a business that creates revenue, but we can help create value. And if they see that they're going to want someone to bridge that gap.

If they feel like if we don't have them for a few months it could cost us in value, then they're much more likely to bring in somebody on a part time or interim basis. That's right, that's right. In your example under, under revenue. Right.

Driving sales pipeline reporting, creating metrics around sales funnel and lead attributes are all critical for businesses. And really astute FP and A leaders have experience in that and know how to integrate that entire process across our organization. It's not just clicking in this system or clicking in that system. You really need the leadership behind the process and the intuition.

And I think there's get lots of companies that have turned to interim management support to really kick off that integration. And then a big element of interim management is passing the baton from the professionals that are serving in the temporary roles to full time hires that come into a situation that's a key element of the entire process. So when everything goes right, the interim management professionals are working themselves out of a role and that's just the nature and then lining themselves up for the next one.

Hence intern. That's right. Hence interim. That's right.

You know, I think that interim management though also brings a different level of expertise. Right. So you could go, I mean, 20 years ago you have a, uh, VP who leaves company. Oftentimes the company will just say, well we'll just take a director and put them in that role temporarily, internally.

And they, the team doesn't learn anything new. There's no one from the outside comes in with a fresh perspective. I think that's something else that interim management does and that value creation, tying it back to what you guys were just talking about is that you get that outside perspective, say, you know, I've seen this at other places and let me share with you what works well, what doesn't to make sure that you're not going to make the mistakes that some other companies are making and that you actually take the best practices and along those lines, I mean Tim, when you think you manage this team, what do you look for, for the right background when you're trying to place somebody in an interim management role or bring somebody onto your interim management team, what is that background?

That you're really looking for. Well, expertise in a role is critical, whether it's cfo, controller, head of fpa, even CEO, obviously. But one of the biggest attributes and selling points of being in interim management is having an expertise across multiple different situations and actually even across different industries that really, it sells better. And it sells better because the professionals with a variety of backgrounds can bring everything they've learned in their priorities, uh, role exposure into a new situation.

And they draw in a much larger toolbox, so to speak, than somebody, for instance, maybe even in the same industry or even the same company for over 20 years, that's all critical. And institutional knowledge is really helpful. But having that broad skill set across a variety of different situations, whether they're challenging situations, growth related situations, whatever the case may be, the more your toolbox is full with the various specific tools you need, the more successful you'll be in interim management.

And that doesn't necessarily mean you need to come from a specific industry. But having the broad background really does play better. And it allows an interim management professional to be more successful almost all the time, as opposed to somebody that's had a more linear career in the same company or even the same industry over a longer period of time. Uh, you know, it's kind of funny because you draw that contrast to someone who, if you're applying for a VP of FP and a role or a CFO role, oftentimes those companies are looking for.

Do you have the experience specifically with the systems we're working on or in the industry that we've been in, or doing the exact same thing that we, we've been doing? So we know that we could place you in interim management, though. When you have a career, it's a little, it's a little different. You're kind of looking, wait a second.

It's great to have a lot of deep experience. But the width, if you will, of going across industries, across companies, across systems, in different environments really, I think adds a different dimension to interim management that you don't normally see when someone's applying for a permanent role. That's right. And I do think part of our job too is the professionals that provide the services to sometimes help the buyer, whether it's private equity or an entrepreneur or even senior leadership of a publicly traded business, help to really refine and think about what specifically is the role that they need and how is that role going to be successful.

Because a lot of times we'll get approached with very narrow job description that'll be very, very difficult. For, you know, a handful of people to beyond a handful of people to fill. And our job a lot of times is to work on the front end to widen that aperture a bit and say, well, what about this expertise? Wouldn't this be helpful in that situation?

And we may not have exactly somebody that's worked in this specific ERP before, but we have a professional that's worked across, you know, troubled situations in a dozen different ERPs and they'd be a great quarterback for some of the issues we fill in. That's just an example on our end in providing the service, we a lot of times have to work on the front end to figure out exactly what the scope needs to be. And sometimes that'll be jostling a little bit to come up with. Put taking the right professional and the right background and making them successful for the role at the outset, that's a huge part.

If the role's not defined correctly at the outset and there's not alignment, that's when you most likely have situations that are not going to be successful and interimagined, we're fortunate that we are able to get that right most of the time. But if it's not defined correctly at the beginning and you don't have the right skill set from the outset, you're going to have a real much more challenging, uh, situation as opposed to one that is really value creative, which is what everybody wants.

Couple things that I thought of. There is one, it's kind of like consulting in some ways, right. When someone's a consultant, you usually want to have a breadth of experience because you never know where you're sending them next week or next month. And so just the more they're able to adapt, it's not even so much all the experiences, it's that ability to adapt and have seen different situations that is so valuable.

And uh, you know, so that was the first thing. And the second as you talk about, you know, having a wide is example someone gave me is they call it the finance athlete versus kind of the finance specialist. Right. Uh, you have people that spent their whole career in treasury and they know it really, really well or they're the excel jockey or they're great at modeling or whatever it may be.

And they may have, they have other skills, but they've gone very, very deep in a particular area. That athlete has that broad range. Okay. I've touched on some of go to market.

I've spent some time over here and I've done some strategy or I've worked at six or seven different companies, you know, and so they, they have that ability to adjust much quicker. Like you know, kind of that utility infiller, uh, for a uh, term Glenn would use. Right. They're able to easily switch between multiple different roles versus the person that.

I'm a catcher, I've always been a catcher, I will be a catcher the rest of my life. That's kind of, you know, the examples I use to think about it. I would imagine sometimes it can get really difficult to fill some of these roles because you never know exactly what they want. Right.

They could come in on Thursday, Friday, whenever you get them. And I'm sure they always want somebody by Monday. It's rarely ever next month, right? That's right.

Tomorrow and oh, they come across the country. Yep. And so, you know, I imagine sometimes you have some difficult example, difficult times filling some of these roles. Any projects or examples that really stick out to you and the kind of challenge of filling these type of roles.

Well, the ones that are the most challenging to fill are the ones where get where the scope is very defined and the buyer is effectively looking for a needle and haystack in terms of professional background. And that's not interim management. And you know, once in a blue moon we might have the exact professional that's worked in the exact industry and has faced the exact situations, whether for instance, you know, budgeting challenges or forecasting errors that they come and be brought in to fix or driving initiatives for a company.

But more often than not the scope needs to be broad enough and there's enough issues inside of a company for a well rounded professional, an athlete default to your point of view that can come in and tackle any part of the FPA organization and even be wider than that to drop in and really start adding value on an immediate basis. So other than, you know, of course not every deal goes according to plan, but I will tell you with specifics that each one that has not gone according to plan has been where there has not been full alignment from the very beginning on what exactly the interim management professional needs to be doing, what the scope of the role should be and what the communication protocols need to be from that individual or individuals into the various stakeholders.

That is almost universally the handful of areas that if they do not go right, they're not set well from the beginning in terms of expectations, you're going to have many more challenges on having a successful outcome. And of course, yeah, not every deal goes according to plan, but they can all be traced back to those specific symptoms from the very beginning when they, they don't. So we do spend a lot of time at the beginning and I know the other firms in the provide interim management do as well.

Really defining the scope and spending a lot of time making sure that the backgrounds are professionals are right for the particular situation. Just like in any other organization. Right. You've got a variety of different personalities, a variety of different skill sets.

You need to make sure all those align for the role or roles that you're playing to be successful in the outcome. And so I'm curious, when you get those needle in the haystack type that you generally can't fill, do you tell them they're being unrealistic and do they often adjust the scope or do they go elsewhere? What kind of happens? Cause I'm sure sometimes you get something where you're just like this would be nice.

But what you're asking for is too specific in a gentle way. Yes. And a lot of times what will happen is the buyer of the service. We'll hear that and then we'll pivot elsewhere into maybe other firms that are offering the same solution.

Or they might be running a parallel search process to fill a role. But we've seen a number of opportunities that have bounced back around to us where buyer pivots away for a period of time and then comes back and says, well, actually we're not having success in either our full time search or finding the person we would like on an interim management perspective. So I'd say at least a third of our opportunities that we come across are rebound opportunities that we saw initially in the comeback around.

One of the things we're working hard on is really finding that balance from the front end and saying, well, we may not have your needle, so to speak, but here's exactly how we can help you create value along the way. And that includes obviously professionally handing off the role to a full time person that would come into a company. That's exactly. Again, that's a key part of the process is you need to be able to not just orderly exit out of the role at the right time, but be able to transfer knowledge and make sure that the individual or individuals that are stepping into the full time role are set up for success.

If you don't go through that step, you know, it's really difficult to be in the business. Uh, yeah, it's hard to have success if you don't make sure it's a smooth transition. That's right. If you come in, you do really great work, but then when you leave, it's A total mess.

You failed. That's right. That's exactly right. And nobody always leave uh, the customer in a better spot.

That's right, yeah. And so when we talk about interim management, right, a lot of times again people are thinking about hey, you got a, ah, someone coming as an interim CFO or interim head of fpna, interim controller. But interim management's a little bit more than that too because there's a lot of times you're interacting with boards, you have sometimes projects that there's an expertise or knowledge based at interim management provides that's, you know, from that you get from your team that works in other ways too.

Can you maybe give a few examples of different types of projects that maybe you've seen that aren't just about, hey, come in and manage this team, but do something a little different. Yeah. So I think a great example there has been the increasing prevalence of the, the role, an interim role called the Chief Transformation Officer, which has been around for a while, but I'd say in the last, you know, five plus years has really taken on more prevalence inside the situations. And I view that role is, it's an interim role, but it's also a role that's designed for a specific project or series of projects that ultimately would not have necessarily a full time person drop in to replace that individual.

The scope that the Chief Transformation Officer is working through should be designed so that the knowledge base and the activities ultimately are spread across throughout the organization by the time that individual or individuals exit. And so, you know, Chief Transformation Officer gets involved in everything from systems related improvements to further integrating business units using FP&A to really drive decision making. All the internal facets that are key and tantamount to creating value.

Right. Really drive up through the Chief Transformation Officer. I think elements of that role are a little bit different than other C suite roles. Whereas maybe the Chief Transformation Officer in a lot of cases may be reporting directly to a Board of directors.

And this allows value creation activities to be run from a uh, individual or individuals that have a lot of expertise in that area. But it also allows CEO to remain focused on strategy in growth initiatives and allows a CFO to be focused on all the key financial leadership roles. And now you've got a Chief Transformation Officer who's really very pinpoint defined on value creating activities inside an organization. So we've seen a lot of those roles, we filled a lot more of those roles in the last few years and I would imagine we're going to continue to do so particularly for private Equity based companies or backed companies that are really looking for speed and execution expertise to drive that value creation.

Tim, let me follow up on one thing because you know, you did talk about, uh, you know, sometimes controls could report into a board directly. And when you think about, you know, most people think, oh, you know what the interim role, we need an interim cfo. The CFO just left. You would go in, the company would identify that as, as a need or interim control or VP of FP and a, or something.

But how many projects are you seeing? Are you seeing a growth where it's more about, you know, a private equity board in particular? Because I know you mentioned how prevalent private equity is using interim management. Is it the board coming over and saying, hey, wait a second, we see something the company is not seeing that we want to be doing here, or is it generally the company saying, no, you know what, we need somebody in this role or a good mix?

I think it's a mix. But a lot of times boards who are under pressure from shareholders, whether it's a private backed company or public company, will recognize that it's not about changing out C suite leadership or other key leadership inside the business, about supplementing for a period of time, supplementing with specific expertise that can push along projects or very various work streams to ultimately drive value creation. And sometimes, you know, getting more transparency into a business or process is part of that.

And that's why outside interim management support can be really value add. But even without necessarily the drive for just for transparency, having that expertise to come in and do manage specific projects, developing new cadence, maybe adjusting an operating model, all those activities can be vested in a person or a small group of people that will be there to drive the process without disrupting day to day management, without having to change out senior leadership. Because that's not the goal.

A lot of times it's not the goal at all. The goal is really to get value creation faster. It's not about replacing key individuals, it's about supplementing. And I think that's where we've seen interim management to make great strides in the last few years.

It's designed to be temporary, but it's also designed to create value. And they go hand in hand. And you know, then you take the expertise out of a, uh, series of different situations and from our end we move on to the next one and working the way it's designed. So I'm curious, what's interim management?

I know you're filling a lot of different type of roles. Obviously, uh, the show we mostly Discuss FP and A. But you have the CFO you mentioned transformation controller. So kind of what's the mix?

Like what's the typical role? What do you mostly see? Kind of little more of how that's split and then how long are these engagements? What's the kind of typical length?

I know they vary but ah, Paul, if you would ask me that question, you know each month for the last couple years I would have had a different answer each month in terms of the allocation. It does. You know there is always a steady constant flow of let's say need for, for CFOs. We are an office of the CFO firm at Riverine.

So that's the key role that we see. And I'd say then it's followed by controller roles and then lastly by the head of FP&A, or FP&A type roles inside an organization. But seasonality can play a bit more to that, particularly around um, budget timeframes and an audit process where we see a bit more of a need for controllers than for other roles. But each month we steam.

Just when we think we've figured out a particular cadence, we'll see a bit of a twist in turns in terms of what buyers are actually looking for. Skill set wise. I'd say one constant is that there is an immediate need almost always in all these situations that is the nature of the role, to be prepared to drop in with the right professional professionals on a near immediate basis and to be able to start generating value literally from day one. Right.

A real successful interim management professional or a small team of inter management professionals know how to start driving value and communicate that they're driving that value from day one. And that really sets up an engagement for success. That makes a lot of sense. Not surprised you mentioned seasonality, all those things that play into it.

I'm curious, I mean how hard is it to keep your team staff Because I know you have full time people who work for you and maybe you have some part time or uh, you know, contract you go through from time to time. But how often is it to balance supply and demand? Because it's not like you have a crystal ball here. No, don't have a crystal ball.

And inter management is one of the, you know, the service lines probably. You know I. The good news is that uh, in interim management is probably the easiest service line to sell. There's a very specific need.

It's very simple to be able to describe the services that are offered. But at the same time if you don't have the professional or professionals available at the time when a buyer comes looking, they're going to move on elsewhere to other. So there is a balance on keeping, you know, an adequate related bench. And within that bench you need to have, at least from my viewpoint, enough professionals that have more expertise in industrial type businesses versus service businesses.

You need to have enough professionals that break down between those that have served in the seat of the CFO versus the seat of the controller versus having worked in leading FPA processes or running FB and A. You need to have a well rounded bench. And yes, you can have athletes that play multiple roles there and come across different organizations, but there's very few interim management professionals, even those that have been doing this work for, for decades, that can check all the boxes on each and every single opportunity that come in the door.

So it is about keeping the right balance of professionals. We try to be very cognizant of that as we've built up our team. And then of course, it's always a good testament that interim management professionals are regularly looked at for the full time roles. Right.

And some professionals are interested in making interim management their entire career. Others may find that they develop a great relationship working with a client and they choose to move in house. That is part of being in this space. Yeah, I've definitely seen that you hire someone on a part time basis and before you know it, they're there full time.

I think everybody's seen it. It's a good, uh, look, it's a, it's a sign that things are going well. If you have professionals that are trusted that are being hired away and into the companies. That's not the business model that we want to run on a regular basis, but it is the nature of, of being in this space.

So we're constantly in the market talking to individuals that have an interest in interim management, whether they've done it before or whether they've worked at a handful of companies in different industries and want to give interim management a shot. We're always recruiting and we have to. That's just part of the business model. So Tim, uh, along those lines, when you know, right now, obviously it's an FP and a podcast and you got an audience of FP and A people.

If you know there's a director or VP out there who's thinking, uh, you know what, this sounds pretty cool, it's interim management stuff, but I've spent my whole career working in FP and A or I really just work for one or two companies. What would you recommend to Them to say, here's how you could potentially build up your resume to move into an interim management role. I think it comes back to the more experiences an individual has across industries, across roles, and this, you can be successful in interim management having worked for the same company for a number of years, but you are more marketable with a variety of different experiences in your background.

So I would tell anybody that has an interest to the extent you've been in the same industry for a while, give another industry a shot, right? Take the skill set that you've learned in FP&A, and if you've been in a service related business for the last 10 years, you might want to look at other businesses, whether they're in service or in industrial companies, as a way to further build up your industry expertise. Now, obviously getting expertise in how AI can help in FP&A and be a supplement within FPA is going to be critical for the next number of years down the road.

It'll never be a replacement, so to speak, but knowing how technology broadly can further support FP&A output and FP and a decision making will be critical to somebody who's in the space right now. And I think what we'll continue to see over the next several years is kind of a blending of the office of the CFO with the office of the CIO inside a company. And so individuals that can get expertise on both the financial side and the technology side and have that interlock between the two will be the ones that are most successful in roles going forward, not just in interim management, but in permanent roles as well.

Yeah, I think you hit on something there and it's something, a theme that Paul and I have probably talked about for, God, I don't know how many years now, Paul, but um, the idea of you could work in FP&A, but go take another position in the company in a business role, you know, go out into a sales ops team or you know, some other kind of organization within your company and just get an experience from the other side. What does it look like to be that business partner that's now having to rely on FP and A?

It makes you a better FP and a person as well. But it's also the same thing with the system side. I mean, it's kind of funny because Paul and I, I mean, it feels like every other podcast that we do is about some kind of system related thing or technology, and then every other one is about FP and A practices in some way. And that blend of the technology Side is also something that if you're not involved in technology today, it's not hard in your current FP and a role you could be looking at how can we leverage your systems better?

How do we go over and get more efficiency out of the systems that we have? Or how do we apply some of these new technologies in a way to go over and drive greater value for the firm or for the business that you have to support. So Tim, it's just kind of funny that you hit on m many of the themes that uh, Paul and I have been talking about for several years. Yeah.

And I think you just take that and drill down a little bit more as it relates to FBA towards talk about forecasting, for instance. Right. A great FPA professional won't just have a handle on a forecasting process, but they'll build in scenario planning and variability and uh, all sorts of attributes that can really be better at driving decision making as opposed to a static process. And that will interlock with the technology continues to get better professional be able to use that technology to make more scenarios, be more refined throughout the process.

You know, the days of budget templates for the budget process, you know, we've all been in businesses where it's all been Excel based and you need weeks to send out budget templates into different business units and you know, take that input and collect it back and organize it. Uh, broadly the process may not change a whole lot, but technology will be a great way to facilitate a smoother and more efficient process. It'll still require the aptitude of a leader or a team of, you know, FP and A expertise or uh, professionals throughout the process.

But the technology be a great way to make everything more efficient, open up the aperture for professionals in FP and A and otherwise. But it's not going to replace a number of the different processes that are needed inside of FP&A. Otherwise inside a business. Yeah, you still have to have solid foundational skills, but you know, technology can enable you to do more.

There's no question the better the skills are, it can allow you to streamline forecasting, budgeting, so many things. And I'm seeing that more and more as I see more people, you know, that I've been interviewing that are doing a lot with AI talk about data thinking and systems thinking. And you know, I was fortunate enough to kind of have a business analyst type role, work in procurement, those type of things before I went into FP&A and that business side was incredibly valuable in the data side, really understanding data because right.

FP&A, we're going to deal with data all day, every day. It feels like it's, that's not going away. It may, it will change with AI and how we interact with it and what we do versus what it does, but it doesn't, it doesn't go away. So I totally appreciate what you're sharing.

Use an example, Paul. Like we are uh, regularly asked when a buyer is looking for interim roles, particularly around CFO or controller roles for individual or individuals that have background in this type of erp. Netsuite, Microsoft, Dynamics. I think over time, over the next several years that'll be less of a specific requirement.

It'll be more, well, do you have expertise in driving this process? Not necessarily with this specific system because you know the technology will continue to increase. AI will be able to facilitate ease of use across any ERP. ERPs aren't going to go away.

So it'd be less about. All right, well we need somebody who's worked in this specific ERP environment before. I think that'll become less critical over the next several years and it'll be more about, well, how have you used an ERP and how have you used the output to drive decision making and to drive value creation inside of business? I think that'll be one of the more near term changes that we see is that the asks for that specific expertise behind a specific system will start to wean away over time but the need for the professionals will not, you know, wean at all.

Sure. I've always felt like sometimes, particularly in FP and A roles get too systems focused. I remember interviewing somebody, it was Jack Alexander and he shared one time he saw a role where the person had listed 15 different software. You need to know.

He's like, no, like focus on what skills you want them to bring. Be happy if they know three or four of those systems. Because at the end of the day, whether I know Google or Excel, I know Sprite sheets, whether I know Tableau or Power Bi or Looker, if I understand data and schema, uh, and how to do visualizations, I'm going to be able to figure that out. Okay, I understand your piece.

You know, unless you're bringing someone in to do a specific implementation which typically is an inter management that's on project management. That's a different situation if you're bringing in someone to help you put Dynamics in place or SAP. But for that more broad. I've always felt like roles often focus too much on systems.

I know we're going on A little bit of a tangent here, but your thoughts, Glenn? I've worked at many companies, uh, and every company has a different system, a different structure. And it's not about the system itself. It's about being open to just how the system works and being able to pick it up and what you end up finding.

And this gets back to when Paul, we used to talk about how no one really teaches FP and a same thing with system. It's once you kind of understand how a system is supposed to work or how FP ah, and a processes work, all of a sudden you can start seeing how it applies across companies situations, you know, whatever it is. And so I've always looked at it and I've always told people, yeah, you know, uh, maybe I haven't worked on that specific system, but I've worked on four others and typically within a week and a half I'm up and running and I'm all good on the system because it 90% of the systems overlap in the same way.

It's just where am I clicking on to go and get to where I need to go. That would, that extends to homegrown type systems, ERPs and otherwise. And a lot of times we will be told, well we've had this system, it, you know, it morphed over time. Nobody can figure it out out of the people that have worked here for 20 years.

And you know that's not the case. Right? It's not the case. If you have expert in working in a variety of different systems environments and if had the leadership experience across different, you know, businesses and different industries, you can jump in and troubleshoot.

There's no such thing as a, ah, you know, I've never seen this before, I can't figure it out. And um, I think that's one of the things you just have to set the expectation about from the beginning on interims in particular is, you know, we can assist in this area because we've done this before, that in this environment, that in that environment and we can culminate all those prior experiences to drop in and you know, be a troubleshooter, be a value creator. That's what people want to hear and ultimately that's what you have to deliver.

Yeah, I'd add one, one thing to that. I think when you have that experience that works well for interim management, which is been in different industries, been in different environments and so on. There's a confidence you have when you go into a situation when you're not, hey, I've never worked on that system Before, I never worked in that industry before. But it doesn't worry you because you're like, yeah, you know what?

I know what questions to ask. I know how to go into a situation, know when to listen, and kind of why I like to say play sponge and absorb what's going on around you and when to go over and say, hey, I got an idea. Have you thought about it this way and challenge things? And that is something that FPA people I think also do all the time.

Because whether you're supporting a new business line or you go into a new company, it's the same skill set. You got to go in and figure out, wait a second. Because every company structured a little differently, they do things in a little different way. New people you got to meet, new products you got to learn.

But it's the same skill set of how you go about learning. It is, it is. It's the same skill set. And again, you go back to rapidly changing and advancing technologies.

It's not about a, uh, replacement for the need for FP and A and other roles. If anything, there's going to be more data used and gathered to support the role, you know, the FP and a process. There'll be more decision making that comes out of FP&A with advances in technology. And so.

And I think that's something that professionals that work in FP and A all the way up through the office of the CFO should be excited about is is harnessing all that technology to be able to make decisions faster, drive value creation faster. But businesses, particularly those in the middle market that have been a bit more hamstrung over time with the amount of data that they can use easily, even though it exists in the ether, but they may not have the systems in place to gather it or otherwise that will.

There'll be a lot of shortcuts created over the next few years to be able to use information that previously may not have been used by an FP&A team. And if you're in FP&A, that should be a real area of excitement that you'll be able to watch real time over the next couple years. Yeah, makes m a lot of sense. Definitely an exciting time.

As we get some of that unlocked. I'm curious. One thing I know you mentioned historically, and it's kind of opened up some. A lot of roles have come from PE owned firms.

You're starting to see a little bit of a shift there. I'm curious, when you're looking to hire someone, how often is a PE Background important versus having a public company versus you know, maybe VC or private or. We've talked about, you know, having different experiences and part of that is just being at different companies, different industries. But I'm curious, kind of how does the role of, you know, how they're owned or having those different experiences between pe, vc, private, public, family owned, whatever it might be, how important is that to interim management?

I think it's, it's important. Um, private equity is notorious for driving decision making based on information and they want information to be able to go and analyze and whether it's information about acquisitions or growth strategy, basically the more information that can be gathered by a business and be used for decision making is tantamount to uh, how private equity approaches its portfolio. And so we've seen interim management play an integral role there for drop in roles where individuals have the expertise on how to report up to private equity boards and whether it's a principal on a deal or a full board, you have to have great communication skills.

You have to know and anticipate the questions they're going to ask. And a great interim management professional that has PE experience in their background can do that. Uh, it's also a great way if you are in FP and A right now and you're owned by a private equity firm, listen to the questions that are being asked, figure out the data that is being asked for, figure out the challenges for why that data may not exist. That will all help an FP and a professional gain expertise.

And now you know, just as private equity has been an increasing prevalence in the space and driving interim management over the last know, five to 10 years, we're going to start to see other asset classes be involved, private credit that will be involved in more of the direct ownership of businesses through changes of control. Yes, public companies will always be there that but in knowing how to navigate all the stakeholders across all those different environments, knowing how to communicate up, communicate sideways and communicate downwards is all critical to an interim management role role and the professionals that fill those roles.

That's helpful, I appreciate that. And it's funny as you mentioned private credit and everything, it just can't help think of uh, the pub markets. What we'll be learning is we're seeing a whole new class of companies go public over the next few years. You see SpaceX and OpenAI and anthropic, just how it will continue to change things.

These are huge data companies in many ways. That's right. We're in a bit of a lull right now on the transaction side, whether it's IPOs or just, you know, more traditional M and A work, as that starts to rebound, you're going to see everything move faster, which will mean faster trade out of certain key members of management teams, creating more demand for interim management. We haven't even seen an acceleration in transaction activity relative to the last handful of years.

And as that starts, there's going to be more pressure on the system to move even faster and to have the right individuals in the right roles to create that value that will lead to the next transaction. And so we're in the, uh, you know, far from the ninth inning right now in terms of the broader economy. But I think all of us that are in the space have been really happy with the progression of interim management for the last five to 10 years. But there is a great Runway ahead of us in this space.

And just as a transaction activity will pick up, will interim management will benefit from the need for that service as deals are getting done and companies are getting larger and going through acquisition processes. So that's what gives me, um, a lot of confidence that interim management, it's going to continue to grow and be a bigger part of the professional service offering over the next decade. Okay, um, so, Tim, I think as we are coming up kind of towards the close here, final thoughts.

Uh, what would you like to leave, you know, our listeners with about, you know, about interim management? River, on what you're seeing in the market? Yeah, well, I, I, I've been excited about what we've seen in the market and like I said, I, I am excited for what will be an ever increasing amount of transaction activity over the next several years that will drive in large part further demand for interim management. And I think for, for individuals that are not interim management today, but our inside of companies have been playing roles, particularly in FP and A.

The advances in technology that are coming are not replacement. They are supplemental. They will drive key decision making to make things move faster and open up a wider degree of decision making that hadn't been available before. And that should be exciting for anybody that, you know, is working in FP&A, and has aspirations to, you know, maybe sit in the seat of cfo, maybe to own their own business someday.

Right. Uh, those are all key attributes. And so I'm excited about the entire space. I think we're going to see really interesting changes across industries where technology be a key play.

But at the end of the day, it's the professional leadership from the individuals that is really tantamount for value. Creation. And that's what gives me a lot of hope for why this inter management space is going to continue to grow over the next several years. Uh, yeah, I mean, I, you know, to me it's one of the things that really attracted me to inter management.

It's, it's not just about, I mean, great Runway and I've been seeing the trends of it, but it's also a way for people in FP and A to get that exposure. I mean, I've came into, you know, working, uh, before river on, I worked at seven different, seven different industries. I worked at public companies or the private. I've worked at a private equity firm, private equity owned firm, family owned.

And it was one of those things that kind of said, you know what, this brings it all together. And ultimately, I think for many of us who've spent our careers working in FP and A roles, what we really love doing is having an impact on organizations. And that's exactly what interim management is really doing. It's going out there and solving problems.

I mean, Kim, you mentioned many times about influencing how companies make decisions, which is ultimately what we do in FP and A. And so, you know, um, I think this topic is just certainly very pertinent to people in FP and A, but also kind of what people are seeing out in the market with the growth in private equity and how some of these companies are approaching filling these finance roles. They're not just traditionally saying we have to have a permanent person in each of these spots.

There are times that you go over and you supplement, as you mentioned, to just go and get you to that next level. That's right. That's right. And just as you know, technology will continue to facilitate and make certain roles easier to this core skill set behind fpa, behind controllership roles, behind the seat of the CFO will always be there and the need will always be there.

It just becomes more information, drives more, more processes that leads to better execution, that leads to value creation. It's all. It should be real exciting time for anybody that's just starting out their career now in FPA or otherwise, or that's midway through their career, there's a lot of great opportunities coming ahead. And I think that's what keeps all of us excited and those of us that are on the interim side.

It's what keeps us energized about what is going to continue to be a growing market. Exciting times. Thank you for sharing that. I think, you know, Glenn, you summed it up well and I think Tim, you Emphasize this of, you know, the enjoyment is when you see that impact and you help a company move forward.

Whether it's interim management, whether it's fractional, whether it's full time. We all want to have an impact and one of those great ways you can do it is interim management. I think it's something not many people have thought about in the past and it continues to be a growing area. So thank you for joining us, Tim.

Before we uh, wrap up here, first I'll ask Glenn, then we'll give Tim last words. Any last thoughts from you, Glenn? You know, I would just say that when I moved from, you know, an industry role into consulting, it was one of those things I was a little nervous about because I, I knew how to go into a company and how to run an FP and a team and make an impact on a company. And I was like, uh, okay, how's this going to translate over to consulting where move a little faster and you're put into a lot of different situations.

But it's been a lot of fun. Um, you know, I've, I've gone over, I work in four different industries in my 16 months that I've been at Riveron, gotten uh, to see different types of companies in different levels and it's just broadened that experience. And so to me, as you know, someone who's worked primarily in FP and A and corporate strategy, the idea of interim management was uh, been a great career move. I've really enjoyed it.

So I'm glad that Tim, you've been able to join us here and share that experience and what's going on with interim management. To all the people out there in FP and A, maybe not heard of it before. So I appreciate that. When I first started working 20 something years ago, if you had a number of different jobs on your resume, it was sometimes seen as a sign of, well, maybe this is a job hopper or maybe they're not performing successfully in the roles they've had.

Nowadays, having a variety of backgrounds across a variety of different companies, being in a variety of different seats really, uh, is value add, you know, because everything is moving faster and be able to draw in again the analogy of a toolbox. But having more tools in your toolbox, so to speak, can only add more value to a particular situation. So ideally folks that have great backgrounds across a variety of different industries and a variety different roles would look to enter a management.

And I welcome anybody that has an interest in the space face. But that really is key today to driving forward that and then harnessing all the technology advances in the influx of data that is just about to hit. Companies where data streams and data sets that were never really tracked or tracked in the background are now going to be at the forefront of decision making. That should be really exciting for folks that are in their roles.

It'll be a fun time for the next number of years. One last thing in there and because we talked a lot about the skill set of the individual, why they'd want to go into interim management. But the funny thing is, Tim, you just brought something up that it's also companies that are now looking and say, wait a second, maybe we should be looking at things a little differently and reaching out to consulting firms and so on that do interim management for that additional expertise to bridge that gap to, you know, bringing that new perspective.

So I guess it's one of those things that, yes, it's that broad experience that helps people move into interim management be successful, but it's also a way of helping companies get that different perspective and take their finance organizations to new levels. That's right. That's exactly right. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Tim.

Uh, thank you, Glenn, for setting this up. Really enjoyed the conversation. We hope you enjoyed this as well. We'd love to hear from you.

Love to know what you liked about this episode. And until next time, thank you everybody. We really appreciate you spending the time. And if you haven't shared a review of the podcast, we'd love for you to go do that on all the platforms out there.

Spotify, YouTube, Apple. We'll put in that little pitch. Feel free to reach out to Tim or Glenn. Let them know how you like the show.

And thank you so much everybody for joining us. Thanks, Paul. Appreciate the time and thank you, Glenn. That's it for today's episode of fp, uh and A Unlocked.

If you enjoy FP and A Unlocked, please take a moment to leave a five star rating and review. It's the best way to support the FP&A guy and help more FP&A professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app and completing the quiz.

If you need continuing education credit credits for the FPAC certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FPA guy, and I'll see you next time.