Carl Seidman is a trusted business advisor specializing in financial planning and analysis (FP&A), business strategy, and finance transformation. He coaches and advises FP&A professionals at Fortune 500 corporations and middle-market companies, helping establish best practices, processes and sustainable business models. At the same time, Carl brings finance professionals greater control over their careers by helping them build their skills while eliminating time-wasting activities and mistakes.
Finance people should understand sales just as salespeople should understand finance. They don’t need to be experts in the other’s domain. It doesn’t need to be difficult or overly complicated. Here are the basics of how to get started: Review leadership’s strategic plan with functional leaders, including sales. Translate the strategic plan into top-level operating/financial…
If you’re early in your finance career, you may think that your objective is to do your job. That’s part of your duty. But you’re better than that. If all you focus on is being a doer, and going from one project to the next, you miss out on understanding the greater connections. As you…
In this inventory forecast, I share a quick and easy way to model stock balances and purchases. But take note — there’s lots of nuance to be aware of. A roll-forward inventory forecast can be approached in two ways, depending on the availability and reliability of data. 1) Using Purchase Schedules from Procurement: This method…
Business modelers get jittery when they see volatile functions. These are functions that recalculate each time a cell is calculated, even if the function’s arguments don’t change. What are some of the volatile functions? RAND(), NOW(), TODAY(), CELL(), OFFSET(), INDIRECT() The values can’t be assumed to be the same from one moment to the next.…
There are 9 traits and characteristics FP&A professionals should have. That doesn’t even include the technical ones. This is what they are:
Financial presentations can be dense. To captivate your audience and build greater engagement, it’s crucial to maintain focus. Here are three great strategies to minimize distractions and connect more effectively.
In this course, explore advanced Excel functions and techniques designed specifically for financial planning and analysis (FP&A). The course covers topics from mastering INDEX XMATCH and dynamic array functions such as FILTER, UNIQUE, DROP, and TAKE.
This is a favorite dynamic rolling forecast technique. We use it in FP&A for capturing trailing months and future months of financial data. You’ve probably never seen this done.
I see a lot of seasoned finance and accounting people promoting the learning of skills that most FP&A professionals don’t really need. What two of these skills are overrated for FP&A professionals?
Take all the work and oversight of a highly qualified, high-functioning CFO. Put it into a list. Then take all the responsibilities, experience, institutional knowledge, fiduciary duties, and relationships and sprinkle these traits among a group of teams and people.