Greg Hood, CPA, CMA

Are misaligned financial strategies holding you back? Are your FP&A processes delivering the deep insights and rigorous analysis required for peak business performance? At StratFin Advisors LLC, we're dedicated to refining your financial operations to help you achieve your business objectives with strategic clarity and insight. Whether it's enhancing your financial models, optimizing processes, or empowering you to make confident investment decisions, our bespoke CFO advisory solutions are crafted to drive your business forward. ⬇ Download our one-pager now to discover how we can elevate your business! 📲 Reach out to us at StratFin Advisors LLC to learn more about our services and how we can assist you in achieving your strategic goals. Seung Feacher Shammy Sankaranarayanan #StratFinAdvisors #CFOadvisory #FinancialLeadership #Budgeting #Forecasting #FinancialPlanning #BusinessGrowth #StrategicDecisions #FinanceOptimization #BusinessSuccess #FinancialModeling #InvestmentDecisions

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As CFO you can’t be a master of all things. You have to strike a balance between being on top of the nitty-gritty of the day-to-day finance function while also keeping a 30,000-foot view of organizational health and progress. To find the right balance, Vena Solutions CFO Melissa Howatson shares some advice: ➡️ Accept that you can’t be on top of everything You hire experts who intricately understand their roles and responsibilities. While you should maintain an understanding of systems and processes, you have to trust your team to operate their functions well. ➡️ Continue to hone your tactical skills… selectively You simply don’t have the time to continuously hone your Excel skills. Ensure your tactical skills stay sharp by understanding which systems, updates and skills can be up-leveled and which don’t play as much of a significant role. ➡️ Use self-service as a signal If you continuously have to go to your team for information that you could be retrieving yourself, take it as a signal to invest in learning the systems you need assistance with. You may not work in the systems day-to-day, but understanding their functionality is vital for pushing your organization forward. ➡️ Ask your team for help When you notice your team doing things differently, ask them questions. They will be able to help you stay sharp in the most vital, organization-applicable areas. As CFO, you have to stay sharp. Yet, you can’t be a master of all things. Want more tactical tips for staying at the top of your game in finance leadership? We break it down in this week’s newsletter. Join below 📨 https://lnkd.in/epbfV334

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Brian Kalish talked to the Plan Buddies community about the Top 5 Priorities for FP&A Professionals. One of those priorities was the adoption of AI to automate manual processes to free up time for higher value activities in FP&A. He claims that a Proof of Concept is of little value to determine whether an investment should be made in AI, but rather we should be focused on Proof of Value and the ROI of investment in better automation. In this video, he talks about investments in automation that have an ROI of up to 200%! What kinds of returns are you seeing in your automation investments?

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PSP balances, amirite? 🥴 Most finance teams manually build out their PSP balances with a breakdown of all activity, settlements, and fees in Excel. It’s laborious, error-prone work for your team, and during audits, can make supporting the balance as of the cut-off dates a total headache. That’s why you need automated data investigation reports to determine the balance as of the cut-off date across all PSPs. With the data across all accounts consolidated into one centralized location, you can easily drill down into individual mismatches and unreconciled activity. This enables you to not only understand what the balance should be but also allows you to easily build out the supporting information to share with the auditors. Learn how else you can dramatically simplify audits with automation → https://lnkd.in/dpE-XWxH 

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Hey Budgeters, Accountants and Financial Reporting Administrators: 📢 Join Our Prospero Webinar on June 12, 2024! 📅 Are you looking for a better way to handle financial reporting and budgeting? Look no further! Our FREE Prospero® Financial Reporting and Budgeting webinars are designed to help you explore the capabilities of Prospero and discover how it can streamline your financial processes. 🔍 What is Prospero? Prospero is a powerful software application that empowers CFOs, business analysts, and other key stakeholders in organizations to produce reports, budgets, and forecasts efficiently. With Prospero, you can create boardroom-quality reports, charts, graphs, and sophisticated budget and forecast plans—all without IT assistance. 🌟 Webinar Details: Date: June 12, 2024 Time: 3:00-4:00pm Eastern Time Session Objective: In this webinar, you’ll get a detailed overview of Prospero’s reporting and budgeting capabilities. Our team will follow up with you afterward to understand your specific needs and demonstrate how Prospero can help you overcome your budgeting and reporting challenges. 👉 Register Now: Sign up here to secure your spot and gain valuable insights into Prospero’s features and benefits. https://lnkd.in/eZz2Puc Don’t miss this opportunity to enhance your financial processes with Prospero! Feel free to reach out to Derek Krebs (Derek.Krebs@MSXGroup.com) if you have any questions or need additional information. 🚀

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❓ Which FP&A team role is the most vital for a business?   The importance of FP&A Team roles may vary across organisations, but Garrett Dennie, CFO at Knix and Toronto FP&A Board member, believes that FP&A Connectors are crucial for any company's success.   🎯 In his insightful presentation at one of our recent webinars, Garrett outlined how this role can bridge the gap between operational planning and execution, streamlining the budgeting process. Drawing examples from his extensive career experience, Garrett showcased the benefits of having an FP&A Connector in your team.   ▶️ Watch this video to discover the hidden potential of this role: https://lnkd.in/djmtekF8   #fpatrends #teambuilding #fpateam

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Complexity and Corporate Budgeting inevitably go hand in hand.👐 Like many FP&A teams, you might be in search of a tool that simplifies the process. This is where PowerExcel steps in.🤔 With its capabilities as spreadsheet-empowering software, PowerExcel becomes a valuable asset that turns your budgeting process into a breeze. It's about finding patterns quickly and adjusting to market trends seamlessly.🤓 Worried about a possible decline in sales for the upcoming quarter? PowerExcel is at your service to revise your forecast and tweak your budget efficiently.📈 This leads to spot-on forecasts, optimal resource allocation, informed decision making and a sturdy bottom line.✔️ Are you prepared to experience a seamless forecasting journey with PowerExcel? Let's make budgeting straightforward, together.👇 https://hubs.li/Q02wZj-D0 #Budgeting #FinancialPlanning #BudgetAnalysis #BudgetManagement #BudgetForecast #Forecasting #FinancialForecast #PredictiveAnalytics #ForecastAccuracy #BudgetVsActual #Fpanda #Fintech

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Finance and Accounting was no exception to "The Great Resignation" we've seen in recent years. In fact, many articles like this one from CFO Dive are reporting the demand for interim CFOs is up by 46%, and VP level finance professionals rose a whopping 114% according to BTG. Have you seen this to be true in your organization? #interimtalent #interimCFOs #interimcontrollers #executivesearch #thetolangroup #financeandaccounting https://lnkd.in/gzFYxtgd

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Imagine this: Your finance team is meeting with management, bankers, and board members to share the forecast for the current fiscal year. Things take a turn when the team presents inaccurate and unprepared financial data. The conversations become unproductive, leading to poor financial decisions, missed blind spots, and a loss of credibility with stakeholders. This scenario is far too common and entirely avoidable. Discover how your GovCon can easily update forecast assumptions and mitigate risks: https://bit.ly/3ymOVDr Don't guesstimate – visualize with Nue. #GovCon #DCAA

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🚀 Exciting News! 🚀 We're thrilled to announce that Vena has been named a Top Leader in the 2024 BARC Planning Survey! Recognized in 34 categories and achieving 17 top ranks, this honor highlights our leadership and excellence in the planning, budgeting and forecasting software industry. Key highlights from the report include: ▶️ Project Length: 52% of Vena projects were implemented in under three months.  ▶️ Product Satisfaction: 100% of surveyed users are satisfied with our platform.  ▶️ Customer Satisfaction: Seamless integration with familiar tools like Excel boosts usability and efficiency.  ▶️ Price to Value: 90% of users rate Vena’s price to value as excellent or good. We’re honored to be recognized for our innovation, efficiency and customer success. A big thank you to our amazing customers and team for making this possible! 🙌 🌟 ➡️ Read the full announcement and download a copy of the report here: [bit.ly/3Wkju65] #VenaSolutions #BARCPlanningSurvey #fp&a #Innovation #CustomerSuccess

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Aspirational. That’s the state of AI implementation for most accounting & finance teams that we initially speak with. Often they’re excited about the prospect of using AI and certainly have an appetite, but haven’t yet found practical ways to get started. Last week’s webinar with Riveron confirmed that’s more or less true across the board — on a webinar on AI practical tips for today’s accounting pros, roughly 42% of poll respondents claimed that they aren’t currently using AI but want to put it on their roadmap. The good news: if you’re feeling behind the curve in implementing AI into your finance org, you’re not. That being said, with 8% of teams currently using AI on a broad basis and another 31% investigating and testing for use cases, there are certainly teams that are ahead of the curve. Our recommendation for those in the aspirational camp? 1. Ask around. The finance and accounting space is full of peer communities on Slack and in-person. Navigating what’s simply hype versus what is concretely useful can be challenging and there’s no faster way to a clear answer than learning what’s working for your peers. 2. Do some window shopping. A lot has changed in the last year. Block out some time to explore new tools on the market and take some demos. At the very least, you’ll walk away understanding options available for the future and begin to pattern match where AI can be a helpful addition to the toolkit. 3. Start small. Find one area where your team is spending too much time and doesn’t enjoy the work, then search for any overlap with AI tools on the market for that specific problem. For most teams we work with, they initially get started with our free technical accounting policy bot to get quick responses to questions or generate policy memos. A bit of exposure to the power of AI then helps gain team buy-in and familiarity with the next generation of tools. 4. Seek inspiration from other departments. Odds are, somewhere in your company a team has leaned into adopting AI. And while the exact use case may be different for the sales or marketing team, for instance, learning about how they implemented the tool, what’s working and what’s not, and how they navigated procurement/data security can inform your approach as a leader.

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Chief Risk Officers, beware! A 2024 Gartner survey shows 18% of accountants report daily errors, and 59% see multiple errors monthly. These mistakes can jeopardize your financial data accuracy. Discover how AI can combat these challenges in our "2024 Risk Decision-Makers Survey." Download our white paper now: https://hubs.la/Q02B5Wdm0

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Good financial planning & analysis can tell you what you're *looking at*. Great FP&A can tell you what you're *seeing*. Just a reminder of the value of investing in FP&A at the most critical points in a SaaS company's evolution, and working with a partner who does that and only that: https://lnkd.in/gmxcNqSj #SaaS #FP&A #strategicfinance

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AI will make us more not less technical says Michael Dion, ​ We recently had the pleasure of hosting Michael Dion on FP&A Tomorrow, and the insights were too good not to share! ​ Here are some key takeaways from our conversation: ​ ➡️ Great FP&A is about bringing people together and helping business partners make the best decisions. ​ ➡️ FP&A professionals need to become more technical, learning tools like Python and generative AI. ​ ➡️ Storytelling and data visualization are crucial for effective business reviews. ​ ➡️ Building strong relationships with business partners is essential for FP&A success. ​ ➡️ Driver-based financial modeling is a key skill for FP&A professionals. ​ Michael also shared some fantastic career advice:  ​ "Make your boss's and business partners' lives easier. It's vital for career growth." ​ And for those worried about AI replacing Excel, Michael reassures us: "Never in a million years will you take Excel from us." Instead, he sees AI enhancing Excel's capabilities through features like Copilot. ​ This episode is packed with valuable insights for FP&A professionals at all levels. Whether you're just starting your career or you're a seasoned pro, you'll find something to take away from this conversation. ​ Don't miss out on this enlightening discussion! Head over to your favorite podcast platform and give it a listen. https://lnkd.in/gg8N3gW3 ​ #FPandA #FinanceProfessionals #CareerDevelopment #ExcelTips #AIinFinance

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We are introducing generative AI to Dynamics GP in partnership with Vena Solutions as we elevate FP&A strategies to unprecedented heights. With the integration of Microsoft Copilot into Vena Cloud's Excel front-end, we're revolutionizing financial management. 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝘁: https://lnkd.in/gASZj23 What sets Vena apart is it's rigorous security measures, ensuring Microsoft Copilot functions exclusively within each client's Financial Cloud Tenant. Plus, Vena's commitment to continuous training ensures user adoption of your new AI assistant, creating a Finance team powerhouse. By leveraging Vena to house your Microsoft Dynamics GP data in the Cloud, unlock unparalleled access to AI productivity tools for FP&A. Don't just keep up—surpass the competition! #Finance #AI #FPandA #MicrosoftDynamicsGP #Vena #Copilot #Innovation #gpstrong #welovegp #newyork

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What are the top three ways you can improve your company's month-end financial procedures? This article by Daniel Gaudet, CPA and Courtney Fraser, CPA aims to help you streamline your month-end close process by increasing the efficiency and accuracy of your financial reporting. Read more to get these critical best practices: https://bit.ly/3yKZDDq #PKFOD #KnowGreaterValue #accounting

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