CFO Leadership

Today, Excelerate =SUM(it) was all about agility, adaptability and staying ahead of the curve. From contemporary skills for strategic finance professionals to best practices on effectively implementing change within your organization, our thought leaders provided plenty of food for thought on powering your personal and professional growth while driving optimal business outcomes—even in the face of today’s challenging market conditions. Our all-star speaker lineup included Microsoft MVP Megan Strant, “The FP&A Guy” Paul Barnhurst, Vena VP of Finance Muneerah Kanji, Vena Senior Consultant Vern Redwood and a panel discussion led by Vena VP of Sales Shaun Jansen, featuring Venanites Tom Seegmiller, Burzin Contractor and Laura Victoria. Read on for our highlights from day four of Vena's third annual virtual conference. Missed a session? Register now for Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 to watch all content live or on demand. 1 Agile Business Forecasting Best Practices 2 Contemporary Skills for Strategic Finance Professionals 3 Evolving Relationships With Change Management Methods 4 Vena's Change Management Playbook Agile Business Forecasting Best Practices     Speakers: Laura Victoria, VP, Global Talent Acquisition, Vena; Burzin Contractor, CPA, VP, Revenue Operations and Strategy, Vena; Tom Seegmiller, CPA, CA, VP, FP&A, Vena; Shaun Jansen, VP, Sales, Vena Today, finance teams are at the forefront of change—leading their businesses as they plan for today and tomorrow. With this responsibility comes the need for a new way of working: an agile methodology for business forecasting.  Agile business forecasting is about more than just informing quick decision making. It’s about planning differently, growing smarter and harnessing change. In today’s session, led by Vena VP of Sales Shaun Jansen and featuring fellow Venanites VP of FP&A Tom Seegmiller, VP of Revenue Operations and Strategy Burzin Contractor and VP of Global Talent Acquisition Laura Victoria, the panelists shared best practices for connected planning across finance, human resources and revenue operations to drive agility and resilience in the face of ever-changing business conditions.  Throughout the lively session, the trio (or the “three legs of a stool that support the business''—we’ll get to that shortly) shared their own personal experiences of achieving cross-functional alignment at Vena and how adopting an agile approach to business forecasting helped them get to where they are today. Shaun kicked off the conversation by asking the panelists how they define agile business forecasting through the lens of their respective functions—finance, human resources and revenue operations. “To me, agile forecasting means keeping up with the times,” said Tom. “It means not tethering yourself to a plan that you perhaps set at the beginning of a fiscal year and instead adopting and adapting as a business to ongoing changes in the macro economic environment. This includes changes in competition within your industry, regularly looking for new opportunities within the business, mitigating against any potential risks that could pop up and ultimately updating your plan on a regular basis so that it reflects the realities of your business.” So does the way in which agile business forecasting is defined depend on which function you work in? Laura weighed in with her definition from a human resources perspective. “You know, it actually doesn't differ at all. I think what Tom said is entirely spot on. When I think back over the last two years from a talent perspective, I don't think we could have necessarily anticipated the labor market conditions that we find ourselves in right now—and I think this is universal across industries,” Laura explained. “I've been part of organizations that have had a single forecast or plan for talent for the year and have ultimately had to throw it by the wayside because the market conditions simply no longer allowed for it. So it has this downstream impact with regards to our ability as a talent function to support the business because there was no agility with regards to the forecast. We were entirely unprepared for the market conditions we found ourselves in.” Lastly, Burzin weighed in through the lens of revenue operations. “The way I see agile forecasting is as a ‘play’ to ultimately achieve our desired business outcomes. It allows us to make business decisions on a more timely basis, deploy resources and react accordingly to business information in real time as we receive it.” By exercising a finance muscle that many other companies simply aren’t yet using, agile forecasting gives finance teams an advantage—ensuring the best processes and practices are in place to anticipate and adapt to whatever uncertainty arises throughout the course of the fiscal year, as Tom explained. “Working within a business with all the dynamics and assumptions at play over the course of a year—and then expecting to be correct at the outset—is probably not an accurate assumption on our part,” he said. “You’re obviously going to try to achieve the best plan based on the information that you have today, but I think it’s good to acknowledge that what you have is imperfect information and the world is going to change and you're going to get better information over time—and you're going to want that opportunity to be able to course correct and tweak your plan accordingly.” When asked how businesses can get started with agile business forecasting, Tom recommended beginning by sharing your vision and getting buy-in from your cross-functional partners in crime.  “I think the starting point is to make that decision yourself to say, ‘I want to operate differently as a finance organization,’ and then start with your partners in crime. In this instance, I'm calling my partners in crime the people team and the revenue operations team. I think about us as sort of ‘three legs of a stool’ that are supporting the business,” Tom explained. “So go to your partners in crime and share your vision with them. Tell them how you see operating differently and get their buy-in. Then, if all of you approach the business with a united front and say, ‘We truly believe that this is the optimal way to operate our business,’ the likelihood of the business accepting that in light of all of the changes that will have to occur to make it happen increases in leaps and bounds.” And what about the benefits of agile business forecasting? Tom focused on two elements in particular: risk mitigation and having the ability to be opportunistic. “There are really two things that agile planning or rolling forecasts bring to the table. One, it gives you the opportunity to be opportunistic. How do you not miss out on extraordinary business opportunities through being too tied to a past plan?” Tom explained. “The second is risk mitigation. Over the past couple of years, some organizations have had to course correct just to survive. So [agile planning and rolling forecasts] are equally as valuable and equally important to an organization. I think the risk in not running an agile planning forecast is that your organization remains stagnant and you're either exposing yourself to risk or missing out on awesome opportunities because you failed to adapt.” Beyond the obvious benefits of agile planning, Burzin also discussed the more intangible benefits that improved agility can bring to an organization. “There's certainly a lot of ‘intangibles' to having a strong agile process,” Burzin explained. “For example, from the employee side, I think you see it in their overall sense of happiness. At Vena, we conduct people surveys on a regular basis. And when we've got a strong process in place, strong data for people to work with and when people know how we're doing as a company, the results speak for themselves. They’re more positive. So there's definitely that intangible element to getting this process right.” The conversation then turned to getting buy-in from key stakeholders across the organization and helping them see the advantages of adopting a more agile planning process.   “As things evolve and grow and improve, you find budget owners coming to you saying, ‘I want to talk to you about my next forecast. How do we shave this? How do I help?’ There's an element of excitement that starts to enter the mix,” Tom explained. “To me, that's the point at which you know you've achieved a strong level of business partnering within your organization. When you're no longer begging the business for their time and they’re coming to you instead and saying, ‘I really want to engage you because of the value you bring to this conversation’.” In short, by adopting agile business forecasting best practices, as Tom, Burzin and Laura have demonstrated through Vena’s own experience in achieving cross-functional alignment, you too can turn change into an opportunity to realign your business plans and chart the best course for the future—no matter what that future might look like. Excelerate Your Growth Right now, 5,000 professionals are excelerating their personal, professional and business growth at Vena’s third annual virtual conference, available live and on demand. Don’t miss out. Contemporary Skills for Strategic Finance Professionals     Speakers: Paul Barnhurst, The FP&A Guy; Muneerah Kanji, MBA, CPA, CA, VP, Finance, Vena; Olivia MacDonald, CA, Senior Manager, Financial Systems and Operations, Vena; Truman Tang, VP, Customer Lifecycle and Community Marketing, Vena To be a strategic finance professional, which contemporary skills do you need? Vena VP, Customer Lifecycle and Community Marketing Truman Tang who moderated this panel began by asking this question before polling the panelists for what they believed is the most important skill for strategic finance professionals to have in order to thrive right now. The “FP&A Guy” Paul Barnhurst said business partnering, Muneerah Kanji picked leadership and Olivia MacDonald chose agility. Each panelist shared anecdotes about their journey to finance. Olivia discussed her path from auditor to consultant because she wanted to learn about Vena’s Excel-native automation before moving into financial systems and operations. Paul talked about starting in government procurement and Muneerah shared that she first graduated in forensic science. It was a diverse panel—while they share little academic and early career overlap, the one thing they all have in common is they’ve become strategic finance professionals. In a recent FP&A Trends report, it was described that there were five emerging FP&A roles that teams must play to be successful in planning and forecasting to fulfill the demands of the business: architect, analyst, data scientist, storyteller and influencer. Which of these five do our panelists play? For Paul, none of them. He believed that there’s a sixth—interpreter—and a seventh—connector. Paul said he’s a connector and that he’s been doing this for a long time. Olivia saw herself as a connector-architect hybrid (she said they’re in high demand lately because there’s a growth in the volume of finance data and organizations are becoming more siloed). While Muneerah never “claimed” a role, she said teams need every role fulfilled to succeed. This steered the conversation toward additional contemporary skills. The panel seemed to agree on the theme of partnerships and relationship building. They talked about overcommunicating, automation and change management, mentors and mentees, telling a story with data visualization, the many layers of asking “why”—beyond that first, surface-level “why”—and partnering with internal teams. Evolving Relationships With Change Management Methods Speaker: Megan Strant, Microsoft MVP Microsoft MVP Megan Strant led us through the relationships and the different ways in which we can create effective change. She talked about change theories and models, the “Learning Pit,” change agents and concluded by providing change management templates. She defined a change agent as “anyone in an organization who is a catalyst or advocate for change” and change management as the “structured strategic management approach aiming to implement changes effectively.” Megan said anyone can be a change agent. She explained the differences between a change theory and a change model, walking us through three theories—the Bridges Transition Theory, the Kubler-Ross Change Curve and the Nudge Theory—and three models—Lewin’s Change Model, McKinsey’s 7-S Model and ADKAR. As Megan guided us through these, she outlined situations where each would be effective. For example, Lewin’s doesn’t fit today’s world of ongoing change, but it’s effective for creating drastic change. ADKAR isn’t effective for a major transformation, but it’s great for the “people journey.” To Megan, the people journey is crucial to consider in change management. She asked, “What is your role in supporting the journey of others?” As a change agent, you need to acquire trust and to give support. “In your role, you could be explaining data, charts, forecasting or details about ledgers. You’re the expert on that detail and people need to understand and trust you. And supporting them will drive stronger change and results,” she said. “If you’re doing a change management review and an impact assessment, talk to people and support them on their journey.” These were Megan’s five qualities of a successful change agent: Demonstrate flexibility and resilience Recognize growth opportunity Stride for results Lead courageously Gain buy-in Her provided templates—which included detailed program plans, micro/macro impact assessments, the Stakeholder analysis RACI Matrix and more—followed a “plan, assess and teach” approach. Megan’s session taught us a lot about evolving relationships and change management methods, but most importantly, she taught us that anyone can be a change agent. Training: Vena’s Change Management Playbook       Speakers: Vern Redwood, CPA, Senior Consultant, Vena; Naman Gupta, Senior Lifecycle Marketing Manager, Vena Change and adaptability are necessities in any business or industry in order to thrive. As technology disrupts and simultaneously ameliorates our workplace practices, it’s essential for businesses to be prepared to navigate change at both macro and micro levels. Today, Vena Senior Consultant Vern Redwood and Vena Senior Lifecycle Marketing Manager Naman Gupta walked us through exactly how to implement change management processes to ensure that your organization's adoption of Vena is seamless and rewarding. Building upon the principles of change management to further strengthen partnerships, Vern stressed the importance of storytelling to operationalize the process of adopting Vena. The story goes like this: The Prologue: Set the stage for change, including: Define reasons and goals for change Build out clear, visible project sponsorship Introduce Vena to employees Outline how the system works, how it integrates and the key foreseen benefits Share an estimated roll out date Act 1: Generate desire for change, including: Have a call to action by main finance leader in your organization which reiterates support for change Appoint Vena Champions (employees designated to facilitate the transition) Identify who will require training Act 2: Enable and ensure everyone is involved in the change, including: Schedule training Build a knowledge base of Vena Ensure everyone is able to demonstrate a working knowledge of the software Have training follow ups Create user acceptance testing Act 3: Ensuring the change sticks, including: A clear “Go-Live” announcement Get feedback from users Take stock of what is working and what needs improvement Monitor usage over time Schedule Vena quarterly business reviews According to Vern, the implementation of well-structured storytelling surrounding the implementation and adoption of Vena at your organization ensures that the value of Vena’s functionalities is fully understood and that your team is fully prepared for the change. In doing so, you can preemptively address hesitancy and give your company a proactive stance toward preventing resistance to change.   Don’t Miss Day Five of Excelerate =SUM(it) Learn from former FBI Lead Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss why “yes” is the last thing you want to hear, get best practices for hiring for the new world of work and hear how Vena can help your Plan To Grow

Also known as “The FP&A Guy,” Paul Barnhurst has been a leader, influencer and educator in the FP&A community for years. Ahead of his two sessions at Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022—the first on financial modeling, the second on contemporary skills—we sat down with Paul to chat. We talked about the essential skills that finance professionals need for the future, how you know you’re adding value to your organization and the business plans he designed in high school. Here’s the final installment of our two-part interview series with Paul Barnhurst, “The FP&A Guy.” If you missed part one where we discussed Microsoft Excel, how Paul cultivated a community of FP&A professionals on LinkedIn and where he believes the future of FP&A is heading, click here to check it out. Why do you think it’s important for finance teams to elevate their role within their organization and become strategic partners to the business? Paul Barnhurst: I would say there's a couple of reasons. One would be from a career perspective—it's a much more exciting job in my opinion It also makes you invaluable. If all you're doing is the reporting side of FP&A, a lot of that can be automated. And when [businesses] look to either automate or outsource, you’re going to be a key candidate. But, if you're viewed as a trusted advisor and somebody that’s indispensable, then you provide real value.   I still remember I had a general manager at one job that said to me, ‘Paul, many people in FP&A just report the financials. You help shape them.’ And what he meant by that was [as an FP&A professional] you actually influence the business—you're helping make a positive difference in the business’s results. And I knew at that point that I had a job with that person for as long as I wanted. I ended up moving on to something else, but I had become invaluable by essentially acting as a “right-hand man” to the general manager of that business. And for that reason, the general manager viewed me more as a “value-adding asset” to the business instead of just someone he had to deal with for planning season.   How can FP&A professionals be sure that their insights are helping the business? PB: Great question! In my case, there were times where I felt like I wasn't adding value. I worked with one general manager and he chose somebody else to promote into a role and didn't give me a chance because he felt like I was too detail-oriented and wasn't providing the strategic value he was looking for. And so that's something that I consciously worked on for quite a while—focusing on the bottom line and the big picture instead of the minutiae. Now there are signs I know to look for that confirm that my efforts are making a difference—like when the business turns to me as a trusted advisor and asks questions that extend beyond finance. I've always prided myself on knowing every organization I’ve worked at really well, and I’ve always made a concerted effort to build relationships with individuals across the business in order to truly understand how it functions outside of the finance department. I can think of two different jobs where I was trusted enough that people [within the company] would ask me questions that had nothing to do with finance. They would come to me for advice on different things they were doing instead of just telling me, ‘Oh, hey, you need to put this in the plan.’ They would come to me with questions like, ’How do you think we should manage this?’ Or, ‘Hey, we're thinking of rolling out this new campaign. What do you think about that?’ And that's when I knew I was adding value because I wasn't just being viewed as the numbers guy, so to speak. They weren't just coming to me when they had to—they were coming to me because they felt like I could add value.   In another role, there were times when the product and marketing teams would ask me for advice on pricing. And I’d say, ‘My job isn't to set the price. I can tell you what we need from a financial standpoint to make this product viable, but it's your job to understand the market.’ At that point I realized that if people across the business trusted me enough to ask me those types of questions, I must be adding value.   The first of your two sessions at Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 is a workshop on financial modeling, and we’re excited to share that it’s one of our highest registered sessions. Why is financial modeling so important in 2022 and beyond? PB: Being able to build a good financial model is essential to FP&A—you have to be able to do it. It's the “bread and butter” [of FP&A]. When someone can build a good financial model that understands key drivers and is flexible, it can add a lot of value to the business. Conversely, a poorly designed model can cause a business to make the wrong decisions based on the information you’ve provided. And that can be—I don't want to say fatal—but it can certainly make a big impact that could lead to negative repercussions. So following best-in-class design principles and having the ability to create good financial models is absolutely fundamental to the role. You just have to be able to do it. Learn Key Skills From The FP&A Guy Don’t miss Paul’s sessions on financial modeling and contemporary skills for strategic finance professionals at Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022, available live and on demand. Your other session is a panel discussion on “Contemporary Skills for Strategic Finance Professionals.” What’s one contemporary skill you think finance professionals currently lack that you see a need for in the near future? PB:The biggest skills finance professionals need to work on to prepare for the future are what we often refer to as “soft skills”—those non-technical, essential skills we all need to have. As I've heard it said before, ‘Your technical skills get you your first job. Your soft skills get you promoted.’   Another essential skill I think the FP&A community needs to focus on is business partnering—and storytelling and influencing go hand in hand with that. It's critical to be able to effectively communicate and help influence and drive business decisions based on the analysis you've done. That's the last mile, and it's just so critical. Let’s finish with your journey to becoming “The FP&A Guy.” For those who don’t know your story, can you walk us through it? PB: As a little kid, I always talked about starting my own business. When I was in high school, I finally got the opportunity to write my own business plan in an entrepreneurship class. I ended up taking the class twice, competed in a national competition and went on to major in entrepreneurship. But I was always afraid to start my own business—I just never really felt like I had a great idea. So I shelved my dreams of being an entrepreneur for a few years, got married, had a kid and came to accept that owning my own business might just have to remain a ‘dream’ for me. But more recently, a few things came up and I found myself saying, ‘Hey, I think I can actually turn this into a viable business!’ When I first mentioned that to my wife she thought I was crazy, but after a month or two she came around to the idea. In the meantime, I kept looking at [the business plan] and going, ‘Okay, there's enough here. I can actually do this.’ So that's really how the “shelved dream” became a reality and the business itself came about. That’s exciting, we’re rooting for you! There’s one detail we feel like we’re missing, though—what was in that business plan you created in high school? PB: I actually wrote two different plans, the first of which was in my junior year. That business plan was for a new and used computer store and with that plan I was entered to compete in DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America), which is a state competition that encourages the development of business and leadership skills. The following year, I wrote another business plan, this time for an indoor running track with a shoe store—I believe “Running Soul” was the name of the company. I got to participate in DECA for a second year in a row and competed in nationals. I went on to write another business plan in college because I majored in Entrepreneurship, so I've written around three or four business plans altogether. Do you have any hobbies or passions that your followers might be surprised to learn about? PB: There's actually a couple of passions I have that I don't necessarily talk about online. I'm a big fan of running, hiking and working with youth. I’ve done Junior Achievement, I taught Toastmasters in a high school classroom and I also participated in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. In fact, I still keep in touch with a kid I worked with about 12 years ago when I acted as his first mentor. I also did Boy Scouts for years—I was a leader for young men, so that's another passion of mine. I've always enjoyed working with young people and I love the outdoors. Any plans on teaching financial literacy? PB: At this point in life, my focus has really been on business and my family. But obviously I plan to teach my daughter all about financial literacy. Actually, I have a funny story somewhat related to that and teaching children about our jobs. My daughter was listening to one of my FP&A podcasts the other day and heard me talk about PowerPoint. So last week—and every time I see her now—she wants my computer so she can ‘play with PowerPoint.’ I have to tell her, ‘Daddy needs to work right now.’ And she’ll reply, ‘When will you be done?’ She must have asked me three or four times yesterday alone when I’d be done so she could use my computer. She kind of just plays in it—she doesn't really ‘do’ PowerPoint. She'll open up a bunch of different templates, make up stories, write a few words and move on to the next one. It's kind of cute. So Paul, can you tell us what’s next for “The FP&A Guy?” PB: For 2023 (and beyond), I have a few things on the horizon. At the moment, I'm doing a little bit of consulting, launched an FP&A podcast and over the next three to nine months, you can expect to see some brand new FP&A courses on my website. Power Your Growth With “The FP&A Guy” Paul Barnhurst Join 5,000+ professionals at Vena’s third annual virtual conference, Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022, to hear the latest best practices from Paul on financial modeling and how you can level up your essential strategic finance skills.

We’ve officially reached the halfway point of Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 and what a week it’s been so far.  Today’s all-star lineup of speakers included Strategic Advisor and Bestselling Author Priya Parker, Vena Chief Marketing and Ecosystem Officer Allison Munro, Vena VP of Sales Shaun Jansen, Vena Solutions Consultant Nolan Southfield, Vena VP of Product Andrew Stanbridge, and a panel discussion featuring Venanites, including Senior Manager of FP&A Thomas Krolak, Director of Sales Operations Ruslan Valeev and Director of Marketing Operations Andre Proulx. Read on for our highlights from day three of Vena's third annual virtual conference. Missed a session? Register now for Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 to watch all content live or on demand. 1 The Art of Gathering 2 Vena for SaaS 3 On the Road to Growth 4 Agile Revenue Planning Best Practices   Keynote: The Art of Gathering     Speakers: Priya Parker, Author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters; Allison Munro, Chief Marketing and Ecosystem Officer, Vena On Monday, as we all gathered once again to learn, connect and grow for our annual digital conference experience, Vena CEO Hunter Madeley kicked off Excelerate =SUM(it) with an important message about community: “Our purpose is to excelerate your growth through the power of community.” There’s a purpose for gathering, but as Facilitator and Author Priya Parker explained in her keynote today as she was joined by Vena Chief Marketing & Ecosystem Officer Allison Munro for a lively discussion, there’s also an "art" to gathering—and it has everything to do with how we meet and why it matters. So what’s a gathering and how is it different from a community? Priya defined a gathering as “anytime three or more people come together for a purpose with a beginning, middle and end.” As she explained, people come together for a shared purpose—whether that’s to identify with a community or vision. In this respect, gatherings can be seen as a tool and are shaped (think of weddings, funerals, conferences, etc.). It’s significant to understand when, why and how communities come together, but it’s also just as important to understand how they fall apart or dissolve.  This is something Priya learned early on in life after her parents divorced and she came to understand how conflict resolution worked through the contrasting experience of living with both her parents. And as a facilitator, she helps groups understand not only the “how” of coming together, but the “why” as well.  In helping people come together, Priya explains that we should consider: What it means to “host” well What it means to “guest” well Then there’s also the structure, journey and start of a gathering to consider: The structure of a gathering involves: Getting off autopilot and being intentional about how we gather Establishing the purpose of why we gather The journey of a gathering involves: Assuring a purpose is obvious and shared Creating moments in the making (What is the need at this moment for the community?) Identifying the need/purpose of your gathering (Your community wants to come together to help you do something.) Having your community come around and asking them for help, advice, etc. Asking questions such as: Should only women be allowed at baby showers? The start of a gathering involves: Not starting with logistics Building a temporary world  Inviting people to come to your gathering (what Priya calls the “cold open”) Addressing why you have all gathered Then doing logistics The Art of Gathering in a Virtual World Priya wrote her book in 2018 and as she helped audiences understand the art of gathering, two years later, the pandemic changed everything. “It helped us see gatherings when we weren’t allowed to gather anymore,” said Priya. The pandemic changed the way we gathered and the form of gathering. “When we couldn’t have the hardware, we went to the software for connecting.” There’s still an art to gathering in a virtual world, but as the pandemic taught us, it’s made us think differently about how we meet and why it matters. For instance, who we include or exclude matters for different reasons in a virtual environment. Some of these reasons include: More isn’t necessarily better Group size matters When we don’t know why we are gathering, we tend to over include Great conversations happen with six people Most of us are overbooked, in back-to-back meetings or Zoomed out Be mindful and give people back some of their time  The art of gathering in a virtual world involves: Helping people settle and land in the environment Turning off mute Connecting your guests Using the chatbox and starting conversations Being mindful of purpose and time Remembering that a gathering is a temporary social contract where everyone has rights, responsibilities, etc. Being clear about roles and terms (tell people their roles at meetings and provide terms) Remembering that every gathering is about power Establishing how decisions are made Determining collectively the need and purpose of the meeting/gathering Deciding when and how you meet Establishing team agreements (people join groups of gathering because they want to grow, be relevant, build something they couldn’t do on their own) Protecting, connecting and equalizing your guests Gathering becomes even more complex in a hybrid environment because, as Priya explains, a hybrid meeting is not one meeting—it’s three meetings: Virtual In-person (deal with each other’s dynamics) Choice (mix of virtual and physical) And what about the disputable voices? Conflict and confrontation is hard on Zoom, but not impossible. How can we make conflict resolution work in a hybrid environment? Here are some of Priya’s tips: Have regular confrontations that address conflict Create a culture of normalcy around disagreements (Example: ask everyone about their “rose and thorn”) Normalize thorns (it’s normal to not have things go well) Remember that politeness is a killer of creativity Facilitate ideation and rejection As a leader then, what can you do to make gatherings more purposeful for your teams? Priya suggests, “Ask them. Create a safe place for them to tell the truth (in polls, surveys, etc.) then determine the shared sacred text that will work for everyone. And remember, training is a shared experience that allows a group to gel.” Which ties nicely into one of Allison’s favorite quotes of Priya’s, “Training changes the metabolism of a team.” But the conversation doesn’t end there. What else did Allison find out about Priya’s research, experiences and upcoming work? And what else can leaders and facilitators do to drive more meaningful interactions in today’s world? Watch Priya’s keynote on demand to catch the entire conversation.  Excelerate Your Growth Right now, 5,000 professionals are excelerating their personal, professional and business growth at Vena’s third annual virtual conference, available live and on demand. Don’t miss out. Demo: Vena for SaaS       Speakers: Shaun Jansen, VP, Sales, Vena; Nolan Southfield, Solutions Consultant, Vena Vena VP of Sales Shaun Jansen asked Solutions Consultant Nolan Southfield, “What makes SaaS finance unique?” Nolan, a veteran of the SaaS industry, said it’s the wealth of data. In SaaS, there are so many disparate data sources with finance data coming from your ERP and opportunity data from your CRM. The trove of disjointed data creates challenges for detailed revenue planning. Finance professionals need to bring together multiple Excel files, tie them together and slice and dice thousands of lines of data from slow, mammoth spreadsheet files. Organizations try to leverage Excel as a data warehouse, but it’s not designed to do so for that volume. Nolan said that revenue recognition in SaaS is different from other industries and that revenue recognition varies widely between SaaS organizations. One of the major reasons SaaS organizations’ KPI—annual recurring revenue, churn and customer acquisition cost, to name a few—vary is that much of the revenue is subscription based. When SaaS businesses offer software service bundles and non-fixed implementation prices, that’s when revenue planning becomes very difficult to forecast. That’s why businesses need a flexible, agile process to develop a scalable solution to plan subscription revenue. He demonstrated that, with Vena, you can drill down revenue by account, account group, customer group or entity and more parameters to gain a granular view and perform scenario analysis. And like every one of Vena’s pre-configured solutions by industry, the SaaS pre-configured solution has AI features, including predictive forecasting and analysis. With a trove of data, Vena is the Excel-native central database that can store your wealth of data—which Excel wasn’t designed for—and help you bring it together to slice and dice for generating instant insights. Nolan said, “What you’re doing right now can be replicated in Vena.” On the Road to Growth Speaker: Andrew Stanbridge, VP, Product, Vena Vena VP of Product Andrew Stanbridge—along with Vena experts Cindy Alberta, Luana Faria-Fichelli, Manksh Gupta, Carter Russell and Jenny Crawford—led us through Vena’s latest—Spring ’22—quarterly release and a pair of customer stories. Launching May 16–17, Vena customers will see enhancements to their Vena instance that will help excelerate their growth with a more seamless user experience and greater access to business insights. These were some highlights of the updates customers can expect in the spring season: Integrations Upload data and files in both CSV and JSON formats Retrieve information on ETL (extract, transfer, load) jobs, templates and statuses Manage ETL processes across different data models Upload multiple CSV files and JSON datasets into an ETL job Updated UI in Vena to support new ETL statuses from Public API API documentation for developers Modeler  Cleaner, intuitive design Bulk move members Bulk attach/detach attributes Filter by attributes Save versioning configurations Enhanced keyboard accessibility Automatic Calc Triggers Faster, partial deploys Increased data integrity Bulk update support Reduce data validation time Improved logging in ETL History Key Themes Vena Product Managers took us through the three key themes of the quarterly release: Faster Workflow and Budgeting Cycles Statics Task Binding Configuration, the new, easy-to-use UI, is now available in Vena.io to simplify the template workflow and reduce the time to implementation. Data Validation Rules enable managers to establish guardrails around what data contributors can enter, gives the flexibility of Excel to enter any logic the manager wants and reduces the back and forth that causes errors in data. More Granular and Detailed Planning Staging Queries enables users to pull transaction-level tables in Vena templates to do more granular, detailed and accurate planning. Customizable Templates To Meet Multiple Use Cases  Expand & Collapse (formerly Zoom-In / Zoom-Out) expands nested member hierarchies within Dynamic Rows to prepare detailed reports tailored to your audience or investigate variances with a single click.   Agile Revenue Planning Best Practices     Speakers: Thomas Krolak, CPA, Senior Manager, FP&A, Vena; Ruslan Valeev, Director, Sales Operations, Vena; Andre Proulx, Director, Marketing Operations, Vena; Howard Dresner, Chief Research Officer, Dresner Advisory Services LLC In this panel discussion hosted by Howard Dresner of Dresner Advisory Services and featuring Venanites Thomas Krolak, Ruslan Valeev and Andre Proulx, the panelists discussed the benefits of agile revenue planning, sharing best practices on how to align finance, marketing and sales departments to power organizational growth.  Howard kicked off the conversation with a simple question: Why is it important to have an agile revenue process?  There was a general consensus among the panelists. Thomas, Ruslan and Andre each stated that the finance team plays a pivotal role in building out an organization’s growth journey, leading it through change and determining its future success. But when market conditions change unexpectedly, finance teams need to adapt quickly, consistently and intelligently in order to provide the right information to key stakeholders across the organization, allowing them to make more informed decisions in the face of heightened volatility. And during such times, agile revenue planning processes are key to empowering teams to adapt with speed to unexpected events and shifts in market conditions. “The way I view agile revenue planning is that it’s all about continuous improvement—how do we keep getting better at what we’re doing and drive more results and more efficiency,” said Thomas. “The agile planning process really encourages speed. It helps with making decisions and allows us to course-correct along the way.”  The conversation then turned to one of the central components of adopting a successful agile revenue planning process: technology. In order to plan for today and be ready for tomorrow, finance teams require agile planning solutions that enable them to keep moving forward and building towards a successful future. However, while having the right technology in place is important, it’s not the only consideration to make. “Technology should be viewed as an ‘enabler’,” suggested Howard. “The change agents are ultimately going to be the people within the organization—the ones who leverage the technology to improve and transform that organization.” This led the conversation to the subject of change management. While the panelists acknowledged that during the early days of any organizational change, people might initially feel uncomfortable, they agreed that over time the benefits would soon become apparent. “What helps [with change management] in my opinion is transparency,” Ruslan said. “As long as you’re transparent with your team as to why you’re making the changes, that helps people feel more comfortable with it.”     However, it’s important to remember that agile revenue planning isn’t a process that’s adopted overnight. “Even when I think about my time here at Vena—it’s been almost four years now—it’s insane to think about the amount of change that’s occurred within the finance department,” Thomas explained.  “When I think about where we were when I started to where we are now, the two companies that I’m describing are like night and day. Just completely different. But what I’ve realized is that change happens over time—it’s not like you can just snap your fingers and suddenly you’re doing agile revenue planning. It truly is an evolution and it involves constant iterations and the desire to constantly make things better. It’s also about the time, effort and willingness to team up and partner up that really drives that journey to agile revenue planning—and of course all of that takes time.” So what were the key takeaways from the discussion? To sum up, with the right technology, data and processes in place, you can start to identify and address any unknowns in an agile fashion—long before they run the risk of negatively impacting your business. And that’s exactly why agile business planning is so important to master: it puts finance teams in the driver’s seat as you plan for today and tomorrow.   Don’t Miss Day Four of Excelerate =SUM(it) Build your key contemporary skills with “The FP&A Guy” Paul Barnhurst, get agile business forecasting best practices from Vena experts and learn about change management from Microsoft MVP Megan Strant.

Today marked day two of Excelerate =SUM(it). It was an action-packed day filled with insights, inspiration, networking and of course, plenty of opportunities to learn and earn CPE/CPD credits to power your personal, professional and business growth. Today’s lineup of luminaries included Vena CTO Hugh Cumming, Microsoft’s Chief Financial Planning & Orchestration Officer Wendy Braithwaite, the Kansas City Chiefs’ finance team, Chief Excel Officer Purna Duggirala (a.k.a. Chandoo), Microsoft MVP Parvinder Chana and more. Read on for our highlights from day two of Vena's third annual virtual conference. Missed a session? Register now for Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 to watch all content live or on demand. 1 The Future of Planning Technology 2 The Power of Vena and Microsoft 3 The Future of Vena Complete Planning 4 Kansas City Chiefs Excelerator Showcase 5 Power BI Embedded Pre-Built Dashboard Showcase 6 Data Visualization in Excel 7 Advanced Data Visualization in Power BI Keynote: The Future of Planning Technology Speaker: Hugh Cumming, Chief Technology Officer, Vena Vena CTO Hugh Cumming began his keynote by sharing a quote from Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, “In the new world, it is not the big fish which eats the small fish, it’s the fast fish which eats the slow fish.” So how does this relate to finance and the future of planning technology? Hugh believes that during this fourth industrial revolution—enabled by the democratization of large-scale computing—technology and humanity are coming together to advance humanity. As technology transforms finance organizations globally, he’s seen the profound impact finance has had on the rest of the business, too, affecting how organizations think about the role of finance and how finance teams influence business strategy. The finance team no longer only reports—they bring data, enable strategy and move companies from being intuition- and instinct-driven to insight-driven. And accordingly now, the company no longer budgets and plans once a year—it’s a part of the everyday. Hugh talked about how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated businesses’ digital transformations toward working digitally, collaborating in real-time and unlocking human creativity to make powerful, faster and insight-driven decisions—which aligns with the number one priority on the CFO agenda, found in the most recent Gartner study: creating insights. So how is this changing what Vena customers are saying about what they need? Hugh discussed three important factors coming together to shape the future of planning technology: Usability and flexibility Scalability and extensibility Advanced data and analytics These three factors will create insights faster—so that Vena customers can swim faster. Keynote: The Power of Vena and Microsoft       Speakers: Hugh Cumming, Chief Technology Officer, Vena; Wendy Braithwaite, Chief Financial Planning & Orchestration Officer, Microsoft In this joint keynote by Vena CTO Hugh Cumming and Microsoft Chief Financial Planning & Orchestration Officer Wendy Braithwaite, the pair discussed how businesses are benefiting from the latest product advancements in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft 365, Power Automate and Power BI, and how these capabilities are empowering finance teams to solve complex real-world problems.  On the Vena side, Hugh and Wendy explained how the Vena platform helps orchestrate complex financial workflows, creates relationships between data across the organization and turns static financial planning processes into dynamic, agile business management processes.   To kick off the keynote, Hugh began by asking Wendy how she thinks the role of finance is evolving at Microsoft.  “Microsoft started our journey of digitally transforming our own finance function some years ago. Why did we head down this path? Because to be successful in the fast-paced modern business environment, finance teams must reclaim time and deploy their focus on things that matter most to their organizations,” she explained. “We must minimize manual effort and speed up time to critical decisions and action.”  Wendy added that by incorporating Microsoft Azure Machine Learning into the organization’s own revenue forecasting process, it allowed the team to cut forecast variance by 50% and augment the work of their analysts to lock financial outlooks faster and with more confidence. “What has changed in the finance function is that we’ve evolved from being a ‘transactions’ finance office to a 'strategic' finance office, from being backward-looking to being forward-looking, and from being internally-focused to being customer-obsessed,” she explained.   When asked how she thinks Microsoft’s finance team has evolved, Wendy discussed the development of her team’s skill set. “I imagine a classic before and after picture—pick your image. Before, our people were operational thinkers with transactional expertise. Now, several years after our digital transformation, people within the Microsoft finance function are deep, analytical, strategic thinkers—skilled at influencing and negotiating with an advanced knowledge of the business.” In order to navigate today’s climate of increased volatility and uncertainty, Wendy explained how her team is currently racing to harness ever-growing amounts of data and derive forward-looking insights. “Machine learning is a critical tool for predicting outcomes and managing risk, and we’re now using machine learning and Microsoft Azure AI across the organization to stay ahead of our business,” she said.  As a result, the Microsoft finance department has advanced the business conversation from describing what has happened (descriptive analytics), to what will happen (predictive analytics). “That’s where the power of AI and machine learning comes in,” she added.   The conversation then turned to how businesses can transform their finance departments in a similar way to Microsoft’s own finance team’s evolution. When Hugh asked Wendy for tips and best practices to share with the audience, she was happy to provide guidance based on her own experience.  “A key best practice that is always top of mind for me is data hygiene. Poor data hygiene will destroy trust and undermine your strategic finance office really quickly,” said Wendy. “Poor data hygiene is what makes people like me who grew up with Excel want to stay with Excel instead of leveraging the great possibilities of Power BI and data visualization. We need to know that the underlying data quality is robust before we can trust the visualization, machine learning and AI.” Wendy’s last tip was around “actionable insights”. “At your last webinar one of the speakers said something that really resonated with me: ‘The data you present must be useful.’ Real-time data visualization is more than transferring the basic data into charts or graphs. It’s about seeing the interconnectedness of data, the comparisons and anomalies, and that’s how you really leverage the power of the data visualization to create actionable insights that advance the business.” Keynote: The Future of Vena Complete Planning Speakers: Andrew Stanbridge, VP, Product, Vena; Rachel Taguicana, Senior Product Manager, Vena; Cindy Alberta, Product Manager, Vena There’s a transformation taking place in the Office of Finance and many organizations are already reaping the benefits. Finance teams are moving from static back-office processes into more strategic, business partner-oriented roles. Gartner describes this transformation as “the evolution of planning, combining financial and operational planning on a single composable platform.”  It extends beyond traditional FP&A solutions focused on finance and into other enterprise planning fields—such as workforce, sales and operations planning. In other words, this approach to financial planning enables organizations to to drive agile, business-wide planning, resilience and growth.  Here at Vena, we refer to this holistic approach as “Complete Planning.”  In Vena VP of Product Andrew Stanbridge's keynote, “The Future of Vena Complete Planning,”  he shared the vision behind Vena’s Complete Planning platform and how it’s been designed to power the transformation of the strategic Office of Finance.  So what is Complete Planning? In a nutshell, Complete Planning is a framework for financial planning and decision making in business that elevates the financial intelligence of an organization. It increases the speed and accuracy of insights and empowers the entire business to respond with the agility they need to succeed in today’s ever-changing market conditions. Complete Planning automates laborious, manual tasks to save time, money and effort that can be spent on higher value and more strategic priorities. By adopting a “Complete Planning” approach, you’re positioning your finance department to become strategic partners to your business by providing the simplest, easiest means to automate complex data processes—providing instantaneous insights, data storytelling and business intelligence at the exact moment other departments in your organization need it most.   “Vena is the only Complete Planning platform with a native Excel user interface, supporting you in your finance function and beyond,” Andrew explained. “As companies deploy Vena from finance-led planning to extended planning and finally to beyond planning, they organically build a ‘data warehouse’ in Vena—connecting systems, disparate data sources and multiple users to be able to provide strategic value for their organization.” However, you can’t have truly effective “Complete Planning” without the right technology to help drive your business forward, Andrew explained. “Vena is the only vendor that truly balances flexibility and usability to provide customers with a platform that allows them to plan the way they want, while ensuring cross-functional users can seamlessly participate in planning cycles.”  In his session, Andrew also discussed some of the handy innovations that are now available in Excel, including Office Scripts and Analyze Data (formerly known as “Ideas”). “Vena continues to invest in enabling customers to leverage these features to help them plan to grow,” he added. Excelerate Your Growth Right now, 5,000 professionals are excelerating their personal, professional and business growth at Vena’s third annual virtual conference, available live and on demand. Don’t miss out. The Kansas City Chiefs Excelerator Showcase     Speakers: Michael Ragsdale, CPA, Director, Strategy and Analytics, Kansas City Chiefs; Rebecca Swank, CPA, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, Kansas City Chiefs; Jenny Crawford, Customer Success Manager, Vena  The Kansas City Chiefs finance team was using data from disparate systems for budgeting, forecasting and reporting. They couldn’t upload their Excel spreadsheets themselves. Their users called their Accounting department to whom they then emailed their information. The accountants would then upload the data to their ERP on behalf of the finance team before converting the reports to PDF. There was no user buy-in for their then-ERP. The tipping point to find a new solution? Version control problems and inefficiencies when producing budgets and reports for the monthly reviews to the executive team. When these poor user reviews reached their Chief Financial Officer Dan Crumb, he assigned Michael Ragsdale to evaluate vendors. Michael said he was looking for a “one-stop shop” and wanted better structure and communication to gain oversight of user access (which they didn’t have) and data transfer (which had occurred primarily through email). He chose Vena for its security, collaborative capabilities and familiar Excel-Native interface. They had had a poor implementation process prior to Vena. “We wanted to work with a great group,” he said. As the Chiefs’ use of Vena grew and transformed, so did Rebecca Swank’s career. She began as one of their external auditors before supporting the Chiefs’ implementation of Vena.  She said, “I originally started as an external auditor. As I was gaining familiarity with Vena and helping others use the platform, I realized what I could do and shifted my role to strategy.” Today, along with budgeting, forecasting and reporting, the Chiefs use Vena for their 20-digit general ledger structure. They also use Vena for OPEX and salary planning, which includes their players. They assess injury probability per player and if the team needs to take out insurance policies for injury. If they don’t, then that opens up the budget for other areas. Michael said, “Vena makes life easier for the guys on the football field to focus on their side.” He said that people ask him what it takes to win a Super Bowl. How does he answer? Michael humorously noted that the Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2020—a year after they implemented Vena—and that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl in 2021—again, a year after they implemented Vena—defeating the Chiefs in the big game. As of late, the Chiefs have been winning on—and off—the field. They’ve significantly improved how their users consume information by growing their use of Power BI to produce different ways of consuming information. He’s excited to show their leadership as they plan, maintain and grow their data-driven strategy. Michael said, “We want to be leaders in the sports industry, but also in business in general.” Demo: Power BI Embedded Pre-Built Dashboard Showcase Speaker: Rishi Grover, Chief Solutions Architect, Vena Rishi Grover showed us how fast and easy it is for users to gain actionable AI-powered insights from Vena with Power BI Embedded. It’s data done differently—self-service, instant insights for a data-driven culture in a secure and collaborative way. This means out-of-the-box and no coding. He walked through visualizations for analyses of scenarios, profitability, revenue, OPEX and more—all with predictive forecasting capabilities. Rishi said, “The only limit of Vena with Power BI Embedded is your own imagination.” He took us through some AI features available, such as Key Influencers, the Decomposition Tree and Anomaly Detection, and then demonstrated how the best data visualization solution in the marketplace makes intuitive assumptions to visualize your data the way you want it. For every pre-configured solution offered by Vena, users receive industry-agnostic pre-configured workflows and pre-configured Power BI dashboards that follow best practices to provide quick time-to-value. He demonstrated with a decomposition tree of Net Interest Margin Rate—that drilled down into Earning and Loan Closing Volume as well as Deposits and Loans Volume—for the pre-configured Banking and Credit Unions solution. He then drilled down further by filtering to only Commercial Loans and then analyzing Gross Margin Predictive Forecast. “What we’re doing here is creating a strategic data hub,” Rishi said. It’s a hub that’s only limited by our imagination. (Want to learn more from Rishi? You can watch recent videos of him guiding us through six advanced Power BI features or new videos of him teaching us how to create a dashboard in Power BI in 10 minutes.) Workshop: Data Visualization in Excel       Speaker: Chandoo (Purna Duggirala), Microsoft MVP Back by popular demand, Purna Duggirala (a.k.a. Chandoo), took the virtual stage for his second year in a row. Chandoo led a fun and interactive workshop on building dynamic budgets in Excel that incorporate the latest best practices in data visualization. Here at Vena, we can’t resist a good Excel joke, which is why we knew Chandoo was off to a good start when he kicked the session off with some finance-based fun. As any finance professional knows, data visualization is a skill that’s highly in demand. During his workshop, Chandoo shared his top tips on “how to create magic” using Excel charts and graphs. “Dynamic and interactive charts are one of my favorite Excel tricks. I use them in almost all of my dashboards and Excel models and my clients are always wowed by them.” Workshop: Advanced Data Visualization in Power BI Speaker: Parvinder Chana, Microsoft MVP Microsoft MVP Parvinder Chana led us through best practices for creating a scalable solution in Power BI during his workshop, providing tips on data preparation, choosing options and settings, data modeling and data visualization. Parvinder spent most of the time speaking about data preparation because he felt this step was the “make or break” stage of your Power BI use. He offered practical tips, such as labeling your columns consistently and hiding unwanted columns to improve user experience. Parvinder also advised us to bring only columns needed for visualization and to convert numbers to whole numbers or fixed decimal numbers when possible. He said it’s easier to transfer data from development to production than it is to remove data. These two tips reduce data size and preserve memory to accelerate your performance and save you time from watching your data visualizations load and update after every click. Another tip that saves data file size is turning off the global auto time/date setting, because “you always want to create your own data dimension table,” the Microsoft MVP said. Parvinder finished by highlighting the importance of creating theme files and report templates. This means consistently using your corporate colors in your data visualizations and reports. Inconsistent design decreases user adoption, while consistent design increases users’ ownership of the data. Don’t Miss Day Three of Excelerate =SUM(it) Learn about "The Art of Gathering" from New York Times bestseller Priya Parker, discover best practices for agile revenue planning from Vena experts and find out how you can build engaging and interactive dashboards to easily communicate business intelligence throughout your organization using Power BI.

Today was the first day of Excelerate =SUM(it), and we had some inspiring sessions led by our all-star lineup of speakers, including Vena CEO Hunter Madeley, Dr. Robert Cialdini, Paul Barnhurst (The FP&A Guy), Vena Chief Solutions Architect Rishi Grover and many more.  Read on for our highlights from day one of Vena's third annual virtual conference.  Missed a session? Register now for Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 to watch all content live or on demand. 1 Excelerate Your Growth 2 The Science of Ethical Influence 3 The Complete Planning Advantage 4 Introduction to Financial Modeling Keynote: Excelerate Your Growth Speaker: Hunter Madeley, Chief Executive Officer, Vena Vena’s very own Hunter Madeley kicked off day one of Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 with an inspiring keynote that set the tone for an action-packed week of personal, professional and business-oriented growth. With more than 50 speakers and sessions, 10 keynotes, 20 instructor-led training sessions, interactive workshops and product demonstrations—plus the opportunity to earn over 25 CPE/CPD credits—Hunter elaborated on Vena’s mission to elevate the Office of Finance and enable organizations to drive operational excellence through both technology and methodology. Hunter also discussed last year’s conference theme, “Strength in Numbers,” which was all about connecting attendees from all over the world to share stories of transformation, resilience, growth and innovation. He then brought up one of this year’s core conference themes—"community"—and how it felt like a natural evolution from last year's virtual event. “Community is powerful. It’s essential. It drives innovation, supports rapid learning and extends the value of one to many well beyond our individual networks,” he explained. “There’s strength in numbers, and that’s why we’re here. Our purpose is to excelerate your growth through the power of community.” On the subject of “community,” Vena spoke with some finance professionals and asked them what the word means to them. Here’s what they said: Additionally, Hunter unveiled some exciting new initiatives designed to power your growth and help achieve Vena’s mission to build the industry’s most engaged community: Our all-new PlanToGrow.com, featuring live and on-demand content including livestreams, monthly meetups and more.  Vena Plan To Grow Forum™, where you can dive deeper into the topics that matter most to you while conversing and exchanging ideas with your peers.  The brand new Vena Academy, featuring instructor-led training and CPE/CPD courses on demand. Vena Templates, where users can share and leverage best-practice templates for a variety of use cases. Keynote: The Science of Ethical Influence       Speaker: Dr. Robert Cialdini, PhD New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling Author, World-Renowned Psychologist How do the principles of ethical influence apply to work? Dr. Robert Cialdini, world-renowned psychologist and author, explained that having the ability to influence your team and others helps you outpace your competitors who can’t do this. While you may exert influence through power, compensation and penalization, those methods have a cost: financial and/or social capital. He discussed changing the way we present the merits of our case, our language and its sequence—and applying influence and persuasion ethically to “get a yes.” Dr. Cialdini took us through his seven principles of ethical influence—the first four reduce uncertainty and give greater confidence, the last three build and strengthen relationships: Scarcity Authority Social Proof Commitment/Consistency Reciprocating Liking Unity Using stories from research cases, Dr. Cialdini presented evidence of increased ROI gained by Bose, Mcdonald's, restaurants in Chicago and China and other businesses. He talked about the “Moment of Power” after someone thanks you, the three qualities of giving that increase the likelihood of reciprocation (and why you should give first) and the worst platform on which to negotiate. Excelerate Your Growth Right now, 5,000 professionals are excelerating their personal, professional and business growth at Vena’s third annual virtual conference, available live and on demand. Don’t miss out. Keynote: The Complete Planning Advantage Speaker: Rishi Grover, Chief Solutions Architect, Vena In his keynote, Vena Co-Founder and Chief Solutions Architect Rishi Grover explored the Strategic Office of Finance and the transformation of finance as a critical business partner through the power of people, process and technology. “We’ll go ahead and kick off today with this really simple idea,” he began. “The reason we’re all here today is because we recognize that businesses cannot change, adapt or ultimately grow without a strategic mindset. And at the heart of that strategic mindset is finance. And that’s because more than any other executive, the finance mind—with your comprehensive view on strategic priorities, capital allocation and financial performance—is best positioned to challenge the business on both short-term and long-term decisions.” In his keynote, Rishi also shared some of the most common questions he hears from today’s finance leaders who are confronted with constant change and complexity, such as: How do we remove data silos and improve collaboration while ensuring accountability and accuracy?  Where can we “lean in” with data and expertise to guide the business even further than where it is today? How do we go deeper with data to understand the “why” and “how”? How do we address change management and navigate the landscape of change throughout the organization? How do we help extend the reach of the current decision-making process and strategic execution of the business? Where do we need more control and where do we need greater agility? Lastly, Rishi touched on the evolution of the finance-business partnership—beginning with the role of “Reporter” all the way up to the elevated role of “Strategic Partner”. "By repositioning Finance as a Strategic Business Partner, the department will be empowered to guide more informed, agile and proactive decision making with a focus on value creation and growth," he explained.   Workshop: Introduction to Financial Modeling       Speaker: Paul Barnhurst, Founder, The FP&A Guy Paul Barnhurst, also known as “The FP&A Guy” in the finance community, delivered an Introduction to Financial Modeling workshop which he alternatively named, “What I Wish I’d Been Taught.” Paul defined a financial model and presented eight common types of financial modeling. Earlier in his career, he designed and built financial models that weren’t good practice, describing them as “barely held together.” Paul highlighted the importance of simple formulas and not overwhelming your users with excessive assumptions in your financial model. (He once came across one with more than 6,000 assumptions.) Paul took us through elements of a poorly designed financial model—such as using hard-coded numbers, not linking to other sheets and what he felt was most consequential: not telling the user what questions it’s trying to answer. So, what are the steps to designing a good financial model? According to Paul, there are nine—each of which he offered its own parallel to homebuilding.   That first step—planning your financial model—is akin to designing the blueprint when building a home.” Paul estimated that approximately 70% of financial models start without planning—”What is the question being answered?” He said if his nine-step process had a tenth, it would be maintenance, much like updating your budgeting and forecasting model with your actuals. What else is in a good financial model? A few include: adding a minimum of three cases—best, base, worse—color coding, but most importantly a good user experience. He said this means “thoughtful and laid out in a way that’s very easy to follow.” Paul advised us to fully understand the business first, by conducting a SWOT analysis, before designing a financial model. He advocated speaking up and not accepting assumptions that you’ve inherited if you don’t think they make sense.   Don’t Miss Day Two of Excelerate =SUM(it) Learn about the future of planning technology from Vena Chief Technology Officer Hugh Cumming, hear about the Kansas City Chiefs’ transformation story and attend workshops on data visualization led by Microsoft MVPs.

You probably know him as “The FP&A Guy.” For years, Paul Barnhurst has been a leader, influencer and educator in the FP&A community. Ahead of his two sessions at Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022—one on financial modeling, the other on contemporary skills—we sat down with Paul to chat. We discussed Microsoft Excel, how he cultivated a community of FP&A professionals on LinkedIn by sharing his own insights and best practices and where he believes the future of FP&A is heading. Here’s part one of our two-part interview with Paul Barnhurst, “The FP&A Guy.” Could you begin by sharing your story as to how you first got started with using Excel professionally? Paul Barnhurst: The first time I used Excel professionally would have been before I was working in FP&A in the early 2000s. I started my career with the government as a Contracts Specialist, so we'd receive financial proposals through Excel and have to review them. I still remember relatively early on in my career while I was still learning Excel, my boss said, “I've heard these pivot tables are cool.” This was probably around 2004. I had no idea how to use pivot tables at the time and had to figure everything out for myself. I’d find myself putting all the text data into the pivot table and wondering why it wasn’t providing useful information. Those are probably some of my earliest experiences with Excel. What ultimately led you to a career in FP&A? PB: I never set out to work in FP&A. After I worked for the government for a little while, I quickly realized that writing government contracts wasn’t the right career for me. There’s a lot of red tape and regulations and it just wasn't a great fit. I ended up moving over to our systems office and went back to grad school. I was doing an MBA. I had planned on studying Supply Chain and doing a double Master's in Information Management. However, I took a Finance class and really liked it, so I went on to take advanced classes. I talked to the professor and ended up switching to do a Finance specialization in Supply Chain. At the time, I was thinking of possibly trying to do something in investment banking, but I completed grad school in 2008 and it wasn’t the best time to try and break into investment banking—back then, all they were doing was shedding jobs. I ended up going to work for American Express, starting out as a hybrid business/finance analyst. I did a lot of report writing work, worked with SQL. I also managed a cashflow forecast that supported our FP&A team. From there, I got the opportunity to work with the FP&A team at American Express and I've essentially been working in FP&A ever since. I worked for American Express in FP&A for about eight years, starting as a Finance Analyst and then moved on to a company called Solera for five years. I’m currently in the process of starting my own business. What do you love about FP&A? What’s kept you in this space? PB: The part I enjoy most about FP&A is really the “business” element. In my last role, I was given the opportunity to partner a lot with go-to-market, marketing and sales teams which I loved. I did a lot of things that fell under sales ops in addition to FP&A—but that strategic planning element and helping the business achieve its objectives by providing insights as a key partner to the organization are some of the things I enjoy most about FP&A. Also, digging in and providing analysis and value-added insights so that [cross-functional departments] can really have those insights that they need—those are the things I really like about FP&A. You mentioned how much you enjoyed sharing insights within the organization to help drive business performance. How did you move from sharing insights within a business setting to sharing insights on LinkedIn? When did you realize that you had tips and tricks that others may be interested in? PB: It really just happened by what I call “dumb luck,” so to speak, while looking for a job. A lot of people start with LinkedIn when looking for a job. While on LInkedIn I ran across a guy by the name of Ken Fick who runs his own business and a website, FPAexperts.com. And I reached out to him saying, ‘Hey, would you give me 15–30 minutes of your time? I'll buy you a Starbucks gift card and we can have a virtual meeting. I'd like to get some career advice as I’m looking for a job.’ And he responds back with, ‘I'd be happy to meet with you, but I don't want a gift card. I want you to write an article for my website.’   I was initially skeptical as I thought I'm a terrible writer, but fine—I'll do it. Maybe it'll be a good experience. So I wrote my first article for him and it was horrible. It was on BI and probably a couple of pages long, but he liked it and was like, ‘Hey, will you do a couple more for me?’ And so I did—I think I did two more for him before I just got too busy. I did a little bit more on LinkedIn and that got me started with writing.     Later on, I decided to become even more active as I was looking for new career opportunities and I started to find that I liked [writing] the more I did it. It was fun to comment back and forth with people. I got some opportunities to be on some webinars for FP&A Trends, wrote an article for them, did an article on financial modeling with someone out of Australia and Anders Liu-Lindberg reached out and asked me to do something and it kind of just started to build. I found myself moderating one of the largest FP&A forums on LinkedIn. And then after that, I was like, ‘There's something to this and I'm liking it.’ So I just kept building it out, started my own website, which was originally excelreviews.net. I’m now rebranding that to thefpandaguy.com. The more and more I did it, I found, ‘Hey, this is fun. I enjoy it and I feel like I can offer value.’ So I just kind of kept going with it.   Learn Key Skills From The FP&A Guy Don’t miss Paul’s sessions on financial modeling and contemporary skills for strategic finance professionals at Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022, available live and on demand. For FP&A professionals who want to increase their presence and grow their network on LinkedIn, what's the best advice you have to share with them? PB: Firstly, it’s important to know what you want to accomplish. Some people are just afraid to get started. My advice to them is, ‘Just try it.’ I make spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes—all kinds of mistakes every day. I've been called out by people on posts. I've had people who sometimes have had a hard time with what I say. But for the most part, people have been really supportive. You're always going to get some who may disagree with you, but you just have to realize that you have something unique to offer—everybody does. And if it's something that you really want to do and it's fear that's keeping you from doing it, I say, ‘Just jump in. Get outside of your comfort zone.’     For those who might not see the value, I'll share some experiences. On LinkedIn, I'm now viewed as an “FP&A expert,” and the reality is that I'm not that different from other people who work in FP&A. I have some strengths, I have some weaknesses, but I've been doing this for a while now. I feel like I'm very analytical which makes me good for the FP&A space—but by no means do I consider myself to be some world-class expert who knows everything about FP&A. It just came down to this: I started sharing and the opportunities you get from that alone can be endless. It can be whatever you want to make of it. I've got the opportunity now to be part of an advisory board for a venture capital firm and I've had four job offers from LinkedIn. Two of them have been in marketing—nothing to do with FP&A. But it just goes to show that if you share yourself and if you're willing to be vulnerable and give back, there'll be lots of opportunities. You'll get to help people and people will help you. And you never know what that can turn into—whether it be a new career, a business or some great friendships.   On giving back and sharing with your community, which topics among your posts generate the most engagement, conversation or even debate? PB: One topic that's always a little more popular is Excel. I ran a poll one time where I asked, ‘Will Excel ever be replaced?’ I put multiple choice answers: “less than 10 years”, “10 to 20 years” or “more than 20 and basically it's immortal like the Greek gods”. Over 50% of people who voted said Excel was immortal. There's just a passion within the finance community for Excel. The other day, someone in my network said, ‘It's basically like Windows is for the computer.’ Excel is built for the finance profession. It's the operating system in a lot of ways and an interesting way to look at it.   Let’s fast forward to today: With finance teams becoming increasingly agile to adapt to volatile market conditions, where do you think the future of FP&A is heading? PB: I see a few things in the future of FP&A. One is that automation isn't going away, but nor are people's roles. There's still a need for humans. Automation is going to help allow us to add more value when implemented correctly, so I continue to see technology and automation increasing, but in a good way that adds value to the jobs we do not by taking our jobs away.   The second thing is around data analysis. We now have access to more data than ever before that can be used to help provide insights to drive performance across the business, but with more data comes the need for stronger data analysis skills. FP&A professionals are going to need to upskill to remain competitive. There’s going to be more data to analyze and companies are going to need a better understanding of that data—as well as more trust and recognition that the best place in an organization to centralize data is within finance. We're seeing more and more of that. Not that you have to centralize it there, but it often works well. Another thing I believe we’ll see is more business partnering. Becoming viewed more and more as a value center instead of just a cost center. Because finance has always been thought of as “back office,” and by virtue of that, FP&A has been viewed in that way. As I like to say, it used to be FP&R—financial planning and reporting. You’d put together a 50-page deck that nobody read and that was the job. And every month you went through a bunch of stuff and put it together. And it’s so much more than that now. The final prediction is a growing need to integrate planning company-wide and more recognition that FP&A can lead that integration and play roles outside of the Office of Finance in collaboration- and connection-type roles across the business. Just the other day, I was talking to a guy whose FP&A team didn't even report to the CFO. They reported directly to the CEO and they integrated everything—including operational and strategic planning—and brought it all together under the CEO. And I see this happening more and more. Now that doesn’t mean to say that I see FP&A sitting under the CEO in every company, but I do see the importance of continuing to grow and really connecting the strategic, operational and financial processes together to help create value for the business.   Here's part two of the two-part interview series with Paul Barnhurst, where we chat about the essential skills that finance professionals need for the future, how you know you’re adding value to your organization and the business plans he designed in high school. Power Your Growth With “The FP&A Guy” Paul Barnhurst Join 5,000+ professionals at Vena’s third annual virtual conference to hear more tips from Paul Barnhurst designed to excelerate your financial modeling knowledge and build key contemporary skills for finance professionals.

It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s, well, it’s National Superhero Day. That’s right. National Superhero Day is the day everyone (okay, barely anyone) celebrates everything superhero-related. So move over Justice League, Avengers and Fantastic Four—we’re using this day to celebrate our own brand of superhero. The finance team. In today’s ever-changing market, where the future is so uncertain, businesses need a finance team that will rise to the occasion. One that will step up and save the day—predicting the future, seeing through the noise and fighting the big baddies (disparate data sources, overspending and stagnant growth, to name a few). So what superheroes do you have on your team—and what superpowers do they bring to the job? In our opinion, the best teams have a Captain America, a Wonder Woman and a Spider-Man in their ranks, plus a secret weapon behind the scenes empowering the whole team in their efforts to make the world (or at least their business) a better place.  So that begs the question: which superhero are you? 1. Leading the Team: The Super CFO If you’re a Marvel fan, you know Steve Rogers—a.k.a. Captain America. The First Avenger, he was born in the 1920s and was an underdog before joining the military and becoming the Captain. More importantly, he leads The Avengers, putting his long-lived experiences as a tactician in the military to work. In the field of finance, Captain America would be the one in charge: an empathetic leader and strategic mastermind helping to move the business towards its goals. He leads with his heart but plans with his head—always a great combination for a superhero, and not a bad set of skills for a CFO or Vice President of Finance either.  In our minds, then, if you’re leading your finance team, you’re the Captain America of the group. Instead of pulling out a fancy shield or calling on your superpower friends to help, though, you use the technology, people and processes you’ve put into place to prepare for any possibility ahead. But the rest is basically the same: the best finance leaders lead by example, setting their team up for success; they strategize for every possibility, using their experience to guide them; and they’re the first in the fray if there is a problem, constantly analyzing their team objectives and how to achieve them. 2. Warrior With a Plan: The Power Director Who doesn’t know Wonder Woman—otherwise known as Diana Prince? An immortal Amazon in the DC universe, she's a powerful woman who works perfectly fine solo, but is also a key member of the Justice League. She’s got an arsenal of tools at her disposal—from an invisible jet and the Lasso of Truth to indestructible bracelets that come in handy when she needs to deflect any bullets being shot at her. The way we see it, this is the equivalent of your Vice President or Director of FP&A. After all, Wonder Woman is resilient but adaptable—you have to be when you live forever—and so are the best heads of FP&A. What’s more, she’s good at making a plan and confident enough to bring it to fruition successfully. Your head of FP&A probably has many of these same qualities. They’re the attributes you need in order to set business goals, plan for an uncertain future and provide insights to senior leadership to guide your business forward. And while your Director of FP&A may not have an invisible jet at their disposal (if they do, do you mind if we ask for a ride?), they do draw on an arsenal of tools to assist them in accomplishing their job. Not to mention, they’re good at dodging bullets too. 3. Junior Superhero: The Amazing Analyst Peter Parker—also known as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man—is razor-smart, but he’s also just a teenager. So even though he has great power (and we all know that “with great power comes great responsibility”), he still has some learning to do. He makes mistakes, is a little too trusting and doesn’t always plan far enough ahead. But he’s learning, and he’s not afraid to ask powerful friends like Iron Man and Dr. Strange for help.  In other words, he’s like some of the more junior members on your finance team: the financial analysts, accountants and business analysts that provide powerful value to your overall aims but are still gaining knowledge and working their way up the ranks.  But, learning curve aside, Spider-Man has also saved the world more than once. Just like your accountants and analysts have probably saved your business from costly mistakes on occasion too—keeping timelines on track while supporting the organization for future growth. While these team members may be more junior, then, it’s a good idea to nurture their superpowers so that they can grow in their role. Adding new efficiencies to your business and reducing the wasted manual effort that often falls on them can also help them grow. 4. Powerful Support: IT for the Assist Even the best superheroes need excellent support. Take Black Panther as an example. Also known as T’Challa, he’s the king of the fictional country, Wakanda—a utopia with technical advancements that far surpass most of the world. But neither T’Challa nor the rest of Wakanda would get very far without their not-so-secret weapon: Black Panther’s sister Shuri, the princess of Wakanda. Okay, so technically Shuri isn’t a superhero, but she’s still super skilled. In fact, Black Panther constantly relies on the innovation and technology she brings to the table to get his superhero-ing done. Not only that, but she’s been instrumental in saving any number of Avengers and helping them save the universe too. Sound like anyone you know? Your head of IT may not technically have a role on the finance team, but they’re integral all the same, providing you with the tools you need to put your superpowers into action. In doing so, they empower you to drive the business to its goals—meaning they’re an invaluable resource you probably couldn’t do without. Superheroes Unite The thing about superheroes, though, is that they often work alone. While they may gather in The Avengers or Justice League, for most of them (with some notable exceptions) solo superhero-ing is what it’s at. And that’s where they differ from your typical finance team.  With the exception of the smallest companies—where there may be a single superstar driving finance—finance teams get many of their superpowers by working together, collaborating cohesively using the right tools to get the job done. And that team needs a Wonder Woman as much as it needs a Captain America, a Spider-Man as much as a Shuri.  It’s only when you’re all working together that your team will truly thrive. You may not actually be able to climb skyscrapers or deflect bullets, but it’ll feel like you can. What’s more, the right team can think strategically and help lead the business forward—excellent superpowers in themselves. You may not be saving the world, but you’re making your part of it thrive. So why not use Superhero Day as an excuse to celebrate your team? Stay Agile Learn how Vena can help you plan for the future and stay agile or change.

The other day, I saw an event advertised online that I wanted to take part in, but it was an in-person event taking place in a different city. And I thought to myself, how is this an only in-person event? How about everything we learned from the last two years in terms of what we’ve been able to do with virtual connections? Yes, we’re slowly returning to  “normal”,  but it’s a new version and we’re still defining the parameters. A lot has changed and the world continues to change, transforming how we work, how we do business, how we live and how we gather. This is our new normal and there are many learnings from the last couple of years we should really consider carrying forward in all aspects of our personal, professional and business lives, especially when it comes to removing the in-person and physical requirements as we look to redefine what gathering means online. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve missed in-person connections too. But instead of returning to them as the only option, can we think of new ways to accommodate learning, growing and connecting for everyone, regardless of where you are in time and space? But what’s more, how can we continue to deliver a sense of togetherness and community in a virtual world because as the last few years have shown us, it’s not only possible, it’s what some of us need now, tomorrow or indefinitely.  These were the kinds of questions we were asking ourselves as we were planning our third annual virtual conference experience. We are all active participants in the ongoing evolution of strategic finance and partnering across the business. Our commitment to enabling FP&A and the entire “office” of Finance, business operations professionals and leaders to grow and thrive hasn’t changed. What we’re doing now is going beyond our commitment—by creating intentional moments of connection—to enable all of us to grow and thrive together anytime, anywhere, in an increasingly virtual world. We delivered our first-ever digital conference back in 2020, brought key takeaways into last year’s event and are carrying all of our learnings over to present our third annual virtual conference experience from May 9–13 which promises to be better, better never best, based on the feedback you give us. Let’s take a quick look back, then, and give you the insider scoop of what you can expect from this year’s Excelerate =SUM(it). Highlights from Vena’s Annual Virtual Conference 2021 Last year’s Vena Nation week theme was “Strength in Numbers,” which was all about  connecting attendees from all over the world to share stories of transformation, resilience, growth and innovation and to discover how to bring people, process, technology and data together to power their Plan to Grow™. Our exciting lineup of keynote speakers captivated our audiences with their insights, experience and actionable takeaways. They explored Agile Finance, the new world of work, how to build winning teams within a people-first culture and how to master effective data storytelling and workshops. We had more live and interactive roundtables, a brand new CFO Confidential breakout discussion and delivered the ultimate Excel Nerd experience with Excel legend Purna Duggirala (a.k.a. Chandoo), who is back this year to share best practices in data visualization using Excel charts and graphs. Make sure to check out his workshop, Data Visualization in Excel, on Tuesday, May 10 at 3 PM ET. We surveyed business leaders and finance operations professionals across 41 different industries and asked them what they took away from 2020, what they’d done in 2021 and what was impeding or supporting their success going forward into 2022. We published our findings in The State of Strategic Finance: Vena Industry Benchmark Report 2021 and you can read all about it in this blog where you can also download the report. What To Expect From This Year’s Excelerate =SUM(it) When we were putting together our jam-packed agenda and choosing our keynote speakers, we were thinking about how finance, operations and business executives are building teams in our new world of work and how they're also fusing connections and driving collaboration across the organization through a much-needed transformation—every single day. So, aside from giving you the how-tos through technology, processes, frameworks and the best practices, we also wanted to commit to helping you make smarter, happier and healthier choices when it comes to your personal, professional and business growth. This year’s week-long event is all about excelerating that growth—by leveling up your technical and non-technical skills, all while virtually learning and networking in a virtual environment with a diverse community of professionals.   We also wanted you to know that you asked for more personalized learning and we listened. You provided feedback at last year’s event and told us that you wanted us to meet you where you are in your learning journey by offering different levels of training. And that’s exactly what we did with our thought leadership, instructor-led training and workshops.  People, processes and technology are always changing, and so are you. You can enjoy general foundational training in Complete Business Planning, Agile Revenue Planning, Excel, Power BI, change management, hiring, building teams and more. For those looking to sharpen your technical skills, you can do so in more advanced workshops. Find out how you can level up your strategic finance skills in these 10 must-attend sessions. In our product demos, you can view complete planning in action in the Vena platform with our tailored solutions that serve all industries, with specific sessions by industry. For our customers, find out how you can power your personal, professional and business growth that goes beyond Vena’s Growth Engine in our Customer Exclusive Excelerators Program. Earn CPE/CPD credits as you learn and discover more ways to grow and prioritize your personal growth needs, whether that means joining a yoga session with our very own Pam DeMesa, or taking a coffee break with a member of Vena’s executive team. Connect 1:1 with your peers or in our smaller forums. Network at scale in our Microsoft networking events where you can connect with Microsoft professionals and executives you might not otherwise meet. Need more reasons to join us? Here are 7 ways to get the most value from our conference.   Best of all, all the content will be available for you to stream live throughout the week, or to access on demand after the conference, so we can all continue to learn, connect and grow together—in our own ways and on our own time—regardless of the fact that we’re not sharing the same physical walls. I’m looking forward to the days when hybrid events are the norm, not the exception. And in the years to come, Vena will be building and offering more ways to connect online and in person.  Did you get your free virtual ticket yet? Did you invite your teams to join us too? I’m excited  to excelerate with all of you. Power Your Plan To Grow at Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 Join us on May 9–13 to discover best practices for agile budgeting, forecasting, scenario modeling, workforce planning and more at Vena’s third annual virtual conference to excelerate your personal, professional and business growth.

The countdown is on. We’re less than three weeks away from Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022—Vena’s third annual virtual conference designed to power your personal, professional and business development—and we’re excited to share the action-packed week we have in store for you. At Vena, we know you’re so much more than a “bean counter.” We believe the finance team of the future employs forward-thinking change agents who drive optimal business outcomes in increasingly dynamic and challenging environments. That’s why we’ve planned a week of learning and growth opportunities for finance, accounting, operations professionals and business leaders just like you—to not only level up your existing skills, but also to help you hone new ones that will empower you to thrive in your organization and prepare for whatever challenges may lay ahead in the post-pandemic business environment. Along with three world-renowned guest keynote speakers set to inspire you throughout the week of May 9–13, we have 50+ sessions on the Excelerate =SUM(it) agenda you won’t want to miss. With unlimited live and on-demand access to keynotes, panel discussions, workshops, training sessions and product demonstrations, it’s your chance to learn the latest in-demand skills, knowledge and best practices you need to stay at the forefront of financial and operational planning. Ready to excelerate your Plan To Grow? If so, read on to get to know some of our inspirational speakers gearing up to take the virtual stage at Excelerate =SUM(it)—and discover ahead of time some key learnings you can expect to walk away with from the conference. Vena Expert Sessions Connect with Vena experts at Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 to see interactive product demos and the latest Microsoft advancements embedded directly in Vena. The Complete Planning Advantage Speaker: Rishi Grover, Chief Solutions Architect, Vena Date: Monday, May 9, 2022 at 11:30 AM EDT | 60 Minutes In his keynote, Vena Co-Founder and Chief Solutions Architect Rishi will explore the strategic office of finance and the transformation of finance as a critical business partner through the power of people, process and technology. He’ll discuss where the heart of strategy lies, how to reposition finance as a strategic business partner, and the pain and fear of choosing technology. Did You Know?: Rishi grew up in Pinawa, a small town located 1.5 hours northeast of Winnipeg, and it’s the coldest place he’s ever been. When attending elementary school there, he won gold medals in gymnastics. The Power of Vena and Microsoft        Speakers: Hugh Cumming, Chief Technology Officer, Vena; Wendy Braithwaite, Chief Financial Planning & Orchestration Officer, Microsoft Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2022 at 11:30 AM EDT | 30 Minutes In this keynote, Hugh and Wendy will examine how Vena customers are benefiting from the latest product advancements in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft 365 and Power BI. They’ll explore the shift in strategic finance and the power of the partnership, and how they’ve changed workflows, data sets and data relationships across organizations. They’ll also discuss the role of finance evolving at Microsoft, and how that’s affected business agility, big data management, data hygiene, Microsoft’s own transformation and more. Did You Know?: Hugh has published two middle-grade fantasy adventure novels and has his grade eight Royal Conservatory in piano. Hiring for the New World of Work Speaker: Tracey Mikita, Chief People Officer, Vena Date: Friday, May 13, 2022 at 11:00 AM EDT | 60 Minutes In her keynote, Tracey will discuss organizational values, growth, talent attraction, talent recruitment and talent retention. You’ll learn best practices in attracting, recruiting and retaining professionals who will help build a differentiating modern workplace culture that thrives in the face of ongoing change. Did You Know?: Tracey learned to downhill ski five years ago (“I'm a late bloomer,” she says) and now skis in the winter months every weekend.   Workshops and Microsoft MVPs Learn powerful tips on financial modeling, data visualization, change management and more from finance leaders and Microsoft MVPs. Advanced Financial Modeling       Speaker: Ian Schnoor, CFA, CFM Executive Director, Financial Modeling Institute Resident and Founder, The Marquee Group Date: Monday, May 9, 2022 at 3:00 PM EDT | 60 Minutes Ian founded The Marquee Group in 2002 to provide Excel-based financial modeling training to finance professionals. He’s built the group into a leading provider of financial modeling training, consulting and accreditation. He’s taught thousands of business professionals and students in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Mexico. He teaches at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and has been named “Instructor of the Year” in the Master of Finance program there. The Marquee Group was one of the founding organizations of the world-renowned Financial Modeling Institute, where Ian serves as Executive Director. The institute provides internationally recognized credentials for financial modeling skills. Ian holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Manitoba. In his workshop, Ian will discuss common problems, challenges and frustrations faced when working with financial models built by others. You’ll discover powerful tips on checking and auditing your financial models, learning how to ensure accuracy, eliminating errors and instilling confidence in your decision makers. Data Visualization in Excel Speaker: Chandoo (Purna Duggirala), Microsoft MVP Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2022 at 3:00 PM EDT | 60 Minutes Purna launched Chandoo.org in 2004. After three years, his website began focusing on Microsoft Excel, and he started sharing new ideas about the computer program and discussing problems he’d been solving. His full-time entrepreneurial journey leading Chandoo.org started in 2009. Today, the website generates approximately 500,000 monthly views and boasts 160,000 active members. It’s become a passionate community where he—now referred to as “Chandoo”—shares Excel tips, charting tutorials, visualization ideas and downloadable tutorials. Chandoo holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Indore and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Andhra University. He’s been a Microsoft MVP since 2009. In his workshop, you’ll learn best practices in data visualization using Excel charts and graphs, as Chandoo strives to fulfill his own mission to “make you awesome in Excel and Power BI.” (Chandoo’s words, not ours.) Advanced Data Visualization in Power BI       Speaker: Parvinder Chana, Microsoft MVP Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2022 at 3:00 PM EDT | 60 Minutes Parvinder is a Microsoft Power BI consultant and architect at PeryTUS IT Solutions, where he implements Power BI solutions for clients ranging from small to large enterprises. He focuses on end-to-end implementation—from data modeling to data visualization—and scalable BI models. Parvinder has more than 20 years of industry experience. He’s been a Microsoft Data Platform MVP since 2018 and holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. In his workshop, you’ll learn best practices and tips to create scalable Power BI models with a focus on optimization techniques for data preparation, modeling and advanced visualization without compromising on performance. Parvinder will discuss the top considerations for a successful implementation, as well as the most common errors in implementation to help you save time and money. You’ll also learn how Power BI fits into the finance world, how the finance world fits with the Excel world and how Power BI adds value to both of those worlds as a single source of truth. Evolving Relationships With Change Management Methods Speaker: Megan Strant, Microsoft MVP Date: Thursday, May 12, 2022 at 2:30 PM EDT | 60 Minutes Megan is the Principal Consultant of Strant Consulting. She’s been enhancing the end-user experience across organizations for more than 15 years. She’s worked across a number of Microsoft partners, building and managing their change management practices and learning strategies. She drives organizational innovation and learning and reduces work-day stress and complexity. Megan strives to “empower people to move beyond an implementation with training, to longer-term approaches for innovation in process, embedded behavior change and greater value and satisfaction.” A Microsoft MVP since 2020, Megan holds a Master of Education degree from the University of Technology Sydney and a Certificate in Deep Learning and Transformative Pedagogy from the University of Queensland. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy from Monash University. In her session, you’ll learn the five core change management methods that will help you address all preparation areas, from support to reinforcement to deliver organizational change with a more positive outcome. Megan will discuss the role of a change agent, conditions needed for success and building partnerships within an organization to drive change. You’ll learn about methods, commonalities and key tools—such as the Learning Needs Analysis (LNA)—to ensure your next project delivers a positive outcome.   Panel Discussions Get best practices in connected planning across your organization—aligning finance, marketing, sales, human resources and revenue operations—to drive agility and resilience in the face of increasing business uncertainty. Agile Revenue Planning Best Practices     Speakers: Thomas Krolak, CPA, Senior Manager, FP&A, Vena; Ruslan Valeev, Director, Sales Operations, Vena; Andre Proulx, Director, Marketing Operations, Vena; Howard Dresner, Chief Research Officer, Dresner Advisory Services LLC  Date: Wednesday, May 11, 2022 at 2:00 PM EDT | 60 Minutes In this panel led by Howard Dresner, Vena experts—Thomas, Ruslan and Andre—will discuss market research on agile revenue planning and analyze the benefits of employing an agile revenue process. You’ll learn how Vena delivers connected revenue and expense planning, along with best practices in aligning finance, marketing and sales. You’ll also learn about agile scenario modeling and forecasting, and then get a deep dive on templates and processes for best practices in revenue planning, workforce planning and incentive compensation management. Agile Business Forecasting Best Practices Speakers: Laura Victoria, VP, Global Talent Acquisition, Vena; Burzin Contractor, CPA, VP, Revenue Operations & Strategy; Tom Seegmiller, CPA, VP, FP&A, Vena; Shaun Jansen, VP, Sales, Vena Date: Thursday, May 12, 2022 at 11:00 AM EDT | 60 Minutes In this panel led by Shaun Jansen, Vena experts—Laura, Burzin and Tom—will discuss the benefits of employing agile business forecasting. You’ll learn how Vena delivers connected planning across finance, human resources and revenue operations, and how you too can drive agility and resilience in your own organization in the ever-changing, post-pandemic business environment of remote work, supply chain issues and more.   The Kansas City Chiefs Excelerator Showcase       Speakers: Michael Ragsdale, CPA, Director of Strategy and Analytics, Kansas City Chiefs; Rebecca Swank, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, Kansas City Chiefs; Jenny Crawford, Customer Success Manager, Vena  Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2022 at 1:00 PM EDT | 30 Minutes The Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs have been a customer of Vena’s since 2019. As leaders in strategic planning and analysis in professional sports, the Kansas City Chiefs have created a collaborative data-driven culture that’s taking them even further on the cutting edge of strategic finance and analytics. In their keynote led by Jenny, you’ll hear about the team’s transformation story—their challenges before Vena, the tipping point for their transformation, where they are now and where they want to go—and then we’ll hear the transformational stories of Michael and Rebecca’s careers. You’ll learn how the 2020 Super Bowl champions streamlined business-wide budgeting and reporting and their workforce and revenue planning, as well as how they deployed Vena with Power BI Embedded to drive financial and operational excellence in their strategic planning. Earn 25+ CPE/CPD Credits Level up your existing skills and learn new ones at Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022—Vena’s annual live and on-demand virtual conference—taking place from May 9–13. Sign up today and secure your virtual seat.