Modern FP&A

My clueless CFO life

I never bothered too much to understand how FP&A teams were structured outside of my company.

To be honest, I thought all FP&A teams were structured the same way.

But when I started interviewing candidates for an FP&A Manager role within my team, I was shocked.

95% of people I interviewed were reporting machines. Trapped in the past.

Worse even, when I asked them about the value of having an FP&A team…none of them could answer.

Do you want to know about that one question I ask in interviews that most candidates cannot answer?

You’ll get that answer in a few lines. 😉

Let me know if it’s surprising for you too.

For me it was just shocking.  

🛠 THE CFO EFFECT PLAYBOOK (Part I)

Step 1: Old-Fashioned FP&A Is Killing Your Influence

Most FP&A teams are expensive historians.

They're stuck in Excel, carefully documenting events after they’ve already happened; events your execs already know about.

Here's why this is killing your strategic positioning:

• You're just a reporting machine.
  You’re buried in manual, backward-looking data.

  Nobody acts on it because it doesn't tell them what to do next.

• You're not connecting the dots.
  Data without context is noise.

  If you don’t clearly connect reports to business strategy, your insights die quietly on the dashboard.

• You're seen as overhead, not value.
  When finance is labeled as a cost center, you're kept away from the big decisions.

  This turns your team into a commodity.

  Commodities are easily replaceable and very often cheap to replace.

Quick fix this week:
Go audit your FP&A outputs.

Mark the reports that have never influenced a single decision.

Then kill them or fix them.

Step 2: How to Become the CEO’s Right-Hand

Last week, we discussed how you can become your CEOs right hand (or your direct manager’s right hand – no discrimination here).

Read that post here, if you want to get all the crispy details.

Here's the deal: Your CEO has one job…yes, only one.

CEOs are there to create shareholder value.

It’s their only job, but it’s a hell of a job.

And your job as a CFO or FP&A is to help them do it.

If you’re not directly helping your CEO create value, you’re a distraction.

• Your CEO’s #1 goal:
  Create shareholder value. Full stop.

  Every number, dashboard, and recommendation you produce should tie back to this one thing.

• Stop waiting, start leading:
  FP&A isn't a support role, it's a leadership role.

  Don't wait for instructions.

  Bring proactive, value-driven recommendations that directly impact the company's strategy.

  If you don’t know how yet, no worries.

  The objective of this newsletter is to help you sharpen that skill.

• Value Creation beats everything else:
  Start evaluating every investment, cost, or project in terms of how it creates value for shareholders.

  If you're defaulting to cost-cutting instead of strategic investing, you’re thinking small.

Action step:
List your CEO’s top 3 strategic goals today.

Make sure every FP&A project clearly aligns with these goals.

If they don’t, revisit them.

Step 3:  Value Creation & Value Capture (Simplified)

Value creation isn't complicated: Sell something for more than it costs. 

That’s literally it.

In our post about becoming the CEO right hand, we looked at the value framework (picture below).

This is your North star when it comes to turning your role into a strategic player.

But most FP&A teams miss the point and obsess over penny-pinching.

Here's how to fix that:

• Forget blind cost-cutting:
  Cost-cutting is easy but short-sighted. Instead, frame your job as placing strategic bets.

  Allocate capital to opportunities with clear, measurable ROI.

  We covered this one in our Capital allocation newsletter here.

• Kill value destruction early:
  Identify quickly when costs start outrunning the value.

  Raise your hand, sound the alarm, pivot fast.

• Change the FP&A narrative:
  Stop being the team of "No."

  Be the team that asks:
  “What’s the upside here?”
  “What happens if we don’t invest?”
  Then make clear, bold recommendations.

Action step:
Build a simple, repeatable ROI framework this week.

No more gut feelings.

Every major financial decision goes through your ROI filter from now on.

Step 4:  Modern FP&A

Let’s be clear: Most metrics don't matter.

You probably can stop reporting 90% of what you currently do, and no one would miss it.

I’ve been there, done that.

I started automating reports to be sent to the exec team every day.

All I did is inundate their inboxes.

Here's how to fix your dashboards now:

• Less is more (strategically):
  Dashboards shouldn't show data; they should guide decisions.

  Only metrics tied directly to your company’s strategy deserve a spot on your dashboard.

  Step one: understand how the company creates value.

  Step two: what are the top strategic goals of your CEO?

  Step three: how can you tie those top goals to your reporting?

• Know your drivers:
  What actually moves your business forward?
  Customer Acquisition Cost?
  Cash Conversion?
  Product margins?
  Identify these critical drivers. Highlight them. Obsess over them.

• KPIs aren't islands:
  Metrics don't exist in isolation.

  Analyze them in pairs or groups:
  If revenue goes up, what happens to margins?
  If growth accelerates, does customer lifetime value decline?

A few months ago, I was hiring for an FP&A position.

One interview question eliminated so many candidates.

Once you understand the value of this question, it will fix many of your reporting decisions.

The question I ask is: What’s the value proposition of your company? Why do people buy from your company?

Most people rumble things such as “because we’re the best”, or “we have affordable solutions”.

But rarely can people articulate exactly what drives the purchase.

If you don’t know what motivates customers to buy from you, how can you forecast demand?

How would you know what drives prices up or down?

How would you know what test pressure to run on your margins?

What seems to be a trivial question, unlocks the understanding of the whole value chain.

It surprised me a lot to realize that many FP&A professionals never asked themselves that question.

How about you? Does it surprise you? Have you asked yourself this question?

What are the other questions you ask yourself to help you understand what moves the needle in your business?  

Action step:
Do a dashboard cleanse.

This week, eliminate every metric not directly driving strategy.

Only add back those that clearly align with your CEO’s vision.

Bonus: FP&A storytelling

Good metrics are great, but making sure they hit home is were the value sits.

Raw numbers won't cut it.

Execs tune out.

But when you tell them the right story (simple, clear, impactful), they'll listen, remember, and act.

Here's your new FP&A storytelling framework:

• Situation: What happened?

• Insight: What does it mean for the business?

• Implication: Why does this matter?

• Action: What should we do next?

Let me illustrate this with a concrete example.

Last year, we launched the round table.

The product is stunning. It has a beautiful design that made it go viral.

It is so nice, in fact, that it surpassed the sales of our star product (the square table) in the first month of launch.

The e-commerce team was ecstatic because that table was more expensive than the square table.

That made them even more surprised when I reported the monthly performance.

This is how I reported the story to the execs.

Our sales are up which is a great news.

We’re selling way more round tables than expected. This product is even beating our star product.

The round tables have a higher price than the square ones. But our margins are down.

Everyone was in shock. This does not make sense, they said.

You see, guys, most of our sales are made in bundles, and bundles is what allows us to be more profitable because we ship everything together at one cost.

Bundles increase our average cart and our returns on ads.

But our challenge right now is that the round table has fewer bundling items in the offer.

While the square table is a bit less expensive, the average order value is higher. Therefore, this increases our LTV/CAC ratio.

The other issue is that the round is cannibalizing the sales of the square table.

If we don’t fix the issue, we will miss our EBITDA target by 5%.

Our options are the following:

• Push for more sales of the square table, for now.

• Create additional products to bundle with the round table to increase the average order value.

This story answers all the questions I mentioned earlier. Does it drive action? Yes.

Action step:
Train your team to use this framework.

No more dashboards without stories.

Stories make your data unforgettable and actionable.

And my friend, this is how you turn FP&A into your company's competitive advantage.

Start right now.

Next Week’s Episode:

🔜 Cash is king – Working cap. optimization and cash conversion cycle

Cash isn’t just important, it's your oxygen. Without it, your business can't breathe, let alone grow.

Next Sunday, I'll break down:

✅ How to optimize your working capital to unlock hidden cash
✅ How to shorten your cash conversion cycle and boost liquidity
✅ How to turn cash management into a strategic advantage (instead of a daily headache)

Because modern finance leaders don't just monitor cash flow, they actively improve it, protect it, and use it to accelerate growth.

If you want your finance team to master cash optimization and become the strategic force driving sustainable growth, you don't want to miss it.

Talk soon,