FP&A Framework for Finance Leaders to Drive $15B Growth with AI & Forecasting Tools - Brian McGrath

In this episode of FP&A Tomorrow, host Paul Barnhurst welcomes Brian McGrath, Co-Founder and COO of FutureView Systems, to explore how FP&A teams can scale smarter, automate faster, and operate as strategic business partners. With over 20 years of experience leading finance transformations in high-growth companies, Brian dives into why finance must be more than a cost center, it should be a driver of operational success and storytelling. From automation frameworks to AI and the power of curiosity, Brian shares lessons that can help FP&A professionals become essential, not just operational.

Brian McGrath is the Co-Founder and COO of FutureView Systems, a firm dedicated to delivering scalable, technology-enabled FP&A solutions for growing companies. A graduate of the University of Florida and UNC Chapel Hill, Brian has helped organizations streamline processes, eliminate manual workflows, and build finance functions that influence real-time decisions. His hands-on experience, systems thinking, and deep commitment to automation and business alignment make his insights invaluable for any finance professional ready to modernize their approach.

Expect to Learn:

• Why automation should be baked into FP&A from day one

• What accountability-based forecasting looks like in practice

• How to shift FP&A from a cost center to an operational partner

• Practical methods for protecting your most valuable asset: time

• Why “humble curiosity” is essential to understanding the business

Here are a few quotes from the episode:

• “The best way to elevate your career? Focus more on your customer’s success than your own.” - Brian McGrath

• “FP&A should be embedded in operations, helping deploy capital in ways that truly move the business.” - Brian McGrath

• “Accountability-based forecasting means budget owners own their numbers, finance is there to support, not control.” - Brian McGrath

Brian McGrath delivered a compelling vision for the future of FP&A, one where automation, process thinking, and operational alignment are non-negotiable. He emphasized that great FP&A professionals are not just technically skilled, but also curious, empathetic, and strategically embedded within the business. From designing scalable systems to navigating AI and storytelling, Brian’s insights offer actionable guidance for finance leaders looking to evolve from number crunchers to decision enablers.

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Earn Your CPE Credit
For CPE credit, please go to earmarkcpe.com, listen to the episode, download the app, answer a few questions, and earn your CPE certification. To earn education credits for the FP&A  Certificate, take the quiz on earmark and contact Paul Barnhurst for further details.

In Today’s Episode

[02:04] - Brian’s Background

[07:42] - Scaling Finance Teams

[09:52] - Accountability Forecasting

[14:00] - FP&A as Ops Partner
[20:23] - FP&A Get Involved in Ops

[24:59] - Developing Curiosity in Finance

[29:16] - Guarding Your Time in FP&A

[43:21] - How AI is Reshaping FP&A

[48:47] - #1 Technical Skill for FP&A Pros

[56:14] - Final Advice for FP&A Success

Full Show Transcript

[00:00:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst:  Hello everyone. Welcome to FP&A tomorrow where we delve into the world of financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst aka the FP&A guy, and I'll be guiding you through the evolving landscape of FP&A . Each week we're joined by thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who share their insights and experiences, helping us navigate today's complexities and tomorrow's uncertainties. This week, I'm thrilled to welcome to the show Brian McGrath. Brian, welcome to the show.

[00:02:00] Guest: Brian McGrath: Thanks, Paul. I'm excited about the conversation.

[00:02:02] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you here. So a little bit about Brian and his background. Brian is an FP&A leader with over 20 years of experience in building finance teams, designing decision frameworks, implementing and leveraging technology, and improving budgeting and forecasting processes at highly data driven companies. His passion, and the bulk of his experience lies at the intersection of finance, data and technology. Brian earned a bachelor's degree in management and economics from the University of Florida, an MBA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. So, Brian, we always like to start with this question. If I asked you to define or tell me what it takes for someone to be great at FP&A , what would you say?

[00:02:52] Guest: Brian McGrath: So I think, you know, there's all the table stakes stuff that you have to be able to do to be good at a, you know, the kind of core skill set stuff. I think the level up to be great requires some softer skills. I think, you know, in order to work effectively across the organization and to have the biggest impact, I think, um, one being customer focused, I think that somewhat comes unnatural for finance people sometimes to think about your internal stakeholders and, and the people that you work with every day as your customers, but especially as I've taken the journey into entrepreneurship and starting a company, you know, seven years ago, I realized that, you know, that customer focus is very important for people to really kind of transcend into what I feel like is great for. I think there's also curiosity. I think you have to be curious, in fact, which lends itself to asking those why questions. Right? Like, why is something the way it is? And really digging down, you know, a couple layers below the surface level explanation. And I think the last thing that I would add is being able to tell a story. So much of FP&A is being able to convey information in a way that resonates with your audience. And I think storytelling and being able to present something in a compelling way is, uh, is something else that separates great FP&A people.

[00:04:14] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. Thank you. I appreciate that. So I think you mentioned your storytelling curiosity really being able to communicate. Right. Look and that customer focus or some of the things I heard there that really takes you from good table stakes. We all know modeling Excel analysis, building a budget forecast, whatever it may be to go into really being great at it. So thank you. Appreciate that.

[00:04:38] Guest: Brian McGrath: Is there anything else that you've seen that you know, kind of separates people that you think is compelling?

[00:04:44] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That's a great question. So there's a couple things I would add I think one, the ability to simplify, I think great FP&A professionals are able to take complex things, whether it's models, conversations. Stories, data and simplify it and use those non-financial terms. The other thing I would add is I would say, and I think, you know. Sometimes people wrap this up in communication, but is empathy really putting yourself in the business partners shoes and really trying to relate, because then you're much more likely to focus on solving their pain points instead of your pain points, which is easy to do. We've all been there because, you know, FBA can be painful, and it's like, I just need you guys to help me instead of remembering where they're customer. So those are probably a couple things I'd add.

[00:05:37] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yeah, no, I totally agree with all those great points.

[00:05:40] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Thanks. So I'm curious, you know, you mentioned I think you've been a founder now for about seven years. You helped found Future View Systems. So how did that come about? I know you spent most of your career in FP&A and then started your own company. So talk a little bit about how that started and what that journey's been like.

[00:05:56] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yeah. So my partners and I built finance functions at a couple of companies prior to starting Future View. And as we were starting to look at our next opportunity, we realized instead of going and doing this at another company, you know, as a as an employee or set of employees, we could bring the capabilities of, you know, we realize we have a different playbook, you know, for building scalable and efficient finance teams at companies. And the problems that that playbook solved were very prevalent in small to medium sized, high growth companies that are just underinvested in finance in general. I mean, nobody starts a company with the idea of building a great finance function. So when your expertise is working with small, high growth companies that are on a trajectory to scale, you're often coming in behind the investment curve from a finance perspective. So the question becomes how do you get an organization that's underinvested in their ability to tell the financial story very quickly to a place where they're ready for scale. Right. And what is that accelerated half up the finance maturity curve look like. And our goal in starting Future View was to bring that playbook to as many companies as we could. And so rather than doing it at one more company, we decided to start a company and build the capability to deploy that playbook to companies using a technology enabled service approach. So we have technology that we deploy, which is a technology, and then we have a shared service,FP&A and accounting capability that we deploy on top of that to make sure our clients are getting what they need in terms of their ability to reach a scalable finance function quickly.

[00:07:41] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Okay. And I'm curious, you mentioned, you know, you scouted out a couple companies before you started your own company, and you have a basic framework you use what is kind of that framework that you find works well when you're coming in and really trying to help a company sell its, you know FP&A and finance processes.

[00:07:58] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yeah. So there's some process based stuff that we deploy. But really it's a rigorous dedication to automation and using technology. So a lot of times what happens at small companies or smaller companies that are building their finance functions, they'll hire 1 or 2 people and have those 1 or 2 people try to be the jack of all trades, and everything gets built without technology around it. So you end up building this portfolio of highly manual processes with people who have to step into a bunch of different skill sets. As you know, Paul, finance is not one skill set. It's not two skill sets. It's probably a dozen different skill sets, you know, that kind of come together into a mature finance function. And so what we bring and our approach is start with the technology framework, start with the automation In mindset and build the capabilities around that from a skill set standpoint to operate on that framework. And we can help kind of deploy the skill sets on a shared service to do that. But it's it's that automation mindset of how do you start with that process and, you know, front and center that you want to have so that you can get all of the reporting that you want and half the time for the analysis that you want and also build in those planning, you know, cadences from the start. Right? So we're big proponents of monthly forecasting. We're big proponents of accountability based forecasting. We're big proponents of a KPI framework that helps you kind of tie together all your operating and financial metrics, those sorts of things. And it's really about kind of flipping that mindset to say, don't hire one person to try to be the jack of all trades and and use Excel as your predominant tool of choice to do all of your, your, uh, you know, day to day work. Start with a different mindset.

[00:09:51] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Okay. There's one question I had, as you mentioned, that you mentioned that you're a big fan of accountability-based forecasting. Can you describe what that means for audience if maybe somebody hasn't heard that term before? Or how do you think about accountability-based forecasting?

[00:10:05] Guest: Brian McGrath: Sure. So, um, there's kind of two approaches to, uh, two basic approaches to budgeting and forecasting from an accountability standpoint. Uh, one finance does everything. And, you know, to some degree maybe shares the output with the business partners. Um, and it's all kind of an Excel big, big Excel modeling exercise or two. The finance owns the process, but the budget owners own the responsibility of developing their forecast. Now finance is obviously supporting those business partners and that sort of thing. Uh, but when we talk about accountability, we're talking about giving budget owners the visibility into their results. Right. So having access to the information on where they're spending, what they're producing, that sort of thing, which means designing the architecture from an accounting perspective in a way that allows for that, as well as having them develop their own estimates for what they're going to spend. You know, I need to hire these number of resources and, and spend on these vendors, that sort of thing. And then finance's role is to support that process help them get the information they need. Collate it all together and tell the overall story for management. But the accountability back to the results lies with the people who are responsible for making the decisions that, you know, produce those results. The second is much harder than the first, right? The second requires a lot more sophistication, both in terms of the budget owners as well as the process itself Versus the first, which is oftentimes a lot more fun for finance outside of the all of the responsibility lying on, you know, lying on their shoulders. But I get to build a big model. I get to kind of have control over the whole thing, you know, that sort of thing. But where they're the second is much more difficult to execute on.

[00:12:05] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And you mentioned it's more difficult. Why do you think that is? Do you think it's just because you have so many different people involved? Is it the fact we've all heard it? You know, a lot of people in the business don't like budgeting or forecasting because, you know, often you complete your annual budget and it's wrong before the papers even dry, as we like to say, the ink on the paper. So, you know, maybe what are your thoughts of why? You know, it's so difficult because at the end of the day, you know, finance, we're there to help hold the business accountable and help them achieve their goals. That's what we should all be striving for. But I think, as you pointed out, that's a much harder approach. So what are some of your thoughts on why that is?

[00:12:42] Guest: Brian McGrath: Well, there's a couple of buckets to that which you alluded to. One, there's kind of the people bucket and two, there's the process and technology bucket, right. If you have 12 budget owners at your organization and they all have their own way of operating, and you try to manage this through Excel, you can create templates, but you're going to send those templates out. They're going to add, you know, their own tabs. They're going to change the templates. You can try to lock them down but that you know that sort of thing right. There's also the people's side of it, which everybody likes from a budget owner perspective, they come to the table with different sets of experience on how they like to operate, how much they know about the process, you know, that sort of thing. So it requires a lot more of an umbrella of control over that process to help make sure that they are concerns of the budget. Owners are represented in the process itself and are reflected in the way that the process operates, but that everybody's operating to the same process.

[00:13:43] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. Now it makes a lot of sense, and I tend to agree with you. So I kind of appreciate you breaking that down a little bit more. You know, I want to shift gears a little bit away from that kind of budget there to a comment you made when we chatted. We had an opportunity to chat before, you know, this interview. And during that time, you mentioned in many ways that FP&A is financial operations. Could you elaborate on what you meant by that? Like, why is that?

[00:14:09] Guest: Brian McGrath: Because I thinkFP&A has the opportunity to be embedded much more in the decision making of the organization. And at its best, finance is an operating business partner to the people who are trying to make decisions about how best to deploy capital to get results in the organization. Right. And so I've always viewed a goal ofFP&A is to be that operating business partner. It's very similar. Some people frame this as like strategic finance you know. And to me, that's just a little bit fluffy. And it's hard to know what that means when you talk about operating like the people who are operating a business or the people who are out there selling building products, you know, that sort of thing. The more FP&A can partner with those people and, and truly kind of serve them as the internal, as the internal customer. I think the more FP Anna has an opportunity to drive real value by optimizing the decisions that are made on the like with the operators. Does that make sense?

[00:15:16] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It does. You know, really being embedded with those operators and kind of that operational focus. But I'm curious if we hear these terms. Fp Anna, we hear the term finance or financial operations. Now we hear more and more about strategic finance. Are there in many ways different names for the same thing or are there often clear distinguished roles in a company? I'm just curious about your take, because I've talked with a lot of people about this, and I think for most people there's a lot of overlap and it's murky. So I'd love your thoughts.

[00:15:49] Guest: Brian McGrath: When I say operational finance I mean the well one. Yes they are. There is overlap between all of them. And you know, I try not to get too bogged down in the nuances of verbiage. Right. Strategic finance, operational finance I think these things, what they are is a target to shoot at, to make sure that FPA is reaching its value, creating potential within an organization, and not viewing ourselves or being viewed by the rest of the organization as a transactional cost center. Right? So for me, it's much more about framing FP&A as a value added business partner that wants to view you as the operating person in the organization. As a customer who I want to be successful, versus me being viewed as the person who sends out a report every month with an overlay of, you know what I think happened, right? Those are two very different perspectives. So I'll give you a specific example. Sales and finance often have a little bit of friction or a lot of friction in organization. Right. I fundamentally believe especially for an organization that is growth oriented, which is where most of my background lies. You know, smaller, you know, venture backed, high growth type organizations. Sales is where the meat of the business is, its top line growth, right? So if I'm a finance person in that organization, and I haven't fully integrated my approach to how I approach, you know, how I do my work to resonate and align with the sales function so that we're at least on the same page with what we're trying to accomplish and that we are supporting sales.

[00:17:40] Guest: Brian McGrath: I'm not being the operating partner that I could be. Nor is the output of what I do as valuable as it could be. Right. I want sales to be effective. I want those salespeople to make as much money as possible. And I want sales, the sales leadership, to understand that if I'm coming to you with a cost concern, it's because I don't feel like you're getting the ROI for the spend that you think you're getting. And here's why, right? I want to be able to transparently and honestly have that conversation. And I want that trust to be there, which means I've got to meet them as a customer in the middle and truly try to help them. Right. And then if I have a concern, I have a lot more ability to have that conversation with them. And there's mutual trust there. That to me, whether you call that strategic finance or operational finance or whatever, it doesn't really matter to me. I think what it is is a goal for FP&A or a vision for FP&A to truly have an impact in the organization.

[00:18:40] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I fully agree with you. I mean, right, we could semantics the rest of the podcast of how you define them, but somebody else would be like, no, this is how you define them. And you know, it doesn't. It doesn't matter as long as finance. I think FP&A is doing, like you said, helping the business, making good capital allocation decisions, helping them make better decisions. One of the best definitions I ever heard was by Stu West, CFO of Grammarly, and he said finance. And I liken it to FP&A specifically, but he was talking about finance in general. Finances, you know, mission is to help the business make better, faster decisions.

[00:19:17] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yeah, I love that.

[00:19:18] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Now, after that, we can talk semantics all you want, but at the end of the day, they're your customer. Your job is to help them make better, faster decisions and make sure they're, you know, spending capital wisely, that it's a return. And we've all seen the situations where it's not. And I kind of had a laugh when you said high growth business. I supported traveler's checks for a few years. Zero sales. Yeah, that was a unique business. But yeah, you know, we still made quite a bit of money because we had billions of dollars of float that we invested. So I definitely learned kind of the opposite of a sales business.

[00:19:51] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yeah. But that's a great example where you have to understand what, what is the goal of the organization. Right. And how do you partner with the people in the organization to again increase that ROI? I think that that quote is a great North Star for finance.

[00:20:07] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I agree. And so, you know, we've talked a lot about really getting embedded in the business. So how do you make sure you really understand operations? To me, operations and understanding how the business works is in many ways at the crux of FP&A. So what advice would you offer to people to make sure they're really getting involved in understanding the operations, instead of just sitting at their desk or just working in Excel? All the terms we typically hear about for that back office transactional view.

[00:20:39] Guest: Brian McGrath: Humble curiosity.

[00:20:41] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Want to elaborate on that? I love that term. I've heard curiosity plenty. I've heard of humble curiosity. So I like that.

[00:20:47] Guest: Brian McGrath: Actually being curious about why people operate, the way they operate, how they think about things. You know, if I go back to my sales example, right. Like if a salesperson is coming to you with an incentive plan that they want to roll out, right. What is it about that sales plan that you think is compelling? Like how does that differ from the sales plan that we have? And, you know, just asking questions to help people out, you know, help understand how sales teams operate and being humble to like, respect the fact that they're coming with expertise. Right. I can look at it purely from a cost perspective and say, that's going to generate more cost and therefore we should not do it right. That's a cost center based approach, right? But if I can understand and truly try to look at it from the other person's perspective and realize why they want to do what they do, I may actually be wrong, right? I may be wrong, and I may need to be an advocate for this thing that they want to do. Because the more I understand about what it is they're trying to accomplish, the more they may be right? Right. And they may be able to convince me that we should be doing something different. But if I come to it with a mindset that I know what the right answer is, I'm just going to more than likely butt heads with that person that has rightfully the position that they have, and the set of expertise and skill sets that they bring to the table.

[00:22:13] Guest: Brian McGrath: And if I'm not humble in my questioning, it's going to come off as me trying to just get information so that I can fortify my position. Right. And if you abstract that out from just the financial transaction side of things and truly try to understand how an organization operates. Like how and I don't. I don't mean organization there as a company. I mean a function, right? A marketing department, a sales department, a product engineering department, whatever it is. How do you make decisions? Right? How do you actually know what the sales cycle looks like? How do you demo the product? How do you know, things that are not traditionally financed in nature. The more you understand about that, the more you're going to be able to help that person be successful as well. You're going to understand more about the operations of the business. And if we go back to that storytelling, if I know how the pipeline works. Not from a metric standpoint, but from a selling standpoint, from a value prop building standpoint, whatever. If I know how the salesperson thinks about running their organization, I'm going to be able to put a better story together about what happened. Without a lot of interaction from other people. Right. I become more powerful as a result.

[00:23:31] Host: Paul Barnhurst: A lot to unpack there, but I really like the example you gave with sales, particularly around sales commission plans, because I think anyone who's done dealt with a high growth organization and been closely tied to sales, has had to review those plans and has had those tough conversations at times of help me understand why this makes sense, but it needs to be more of that versus let me tell you why this doesn't make sense. It's helped me understand because there are times when spending more money is the right answer but generates more revenue, right? People. People respond to well-designed incentives, and if they're well-designed and the economics makes sense, pay them whatever. But I think it's a great example because we have that nature. But wait, that's going to cost us more. And I don't want to, you know, I've been told we need to cut costs. And so if you're not humble and you're not curious, you're definitely going to butt heads.

[00:24:28] Guest: Brian McGrath: I've seen it over and over and over again. Um, and but I think, again, like, it goes back to the curiosity you have to truly want to know the answer to those questions. And you have to truly want to understand why, you know, somebody is coming from where they're coming. And that gives you the credibility to then present your position of what you're seeing and why you think that makes sense, and what the numbers portray. And you can kind of walk them through that at that point. And usually you find that place that makes a better overall decision.

[00:24:59] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So I'm curious, when it comes to curiosity, do you think it's mostly just kind of innate in the sense of people's personality to be curious? Do you think it's a learned trait? I kind of I'm just curious, your thoughts on curiosity in general and how do we make sure we become more curious? You know, I think, you know, if you think of something that's learned, how do we make sure we're really, you know, developing that?

[00:25:21] Guest: Brian McGrath: I think to some, I mean, some people are naturally more curious than others. I think people I've worked with are people who are naturally curious about business as well. Like, they just kind of like business, and they kind of want to understand how models work and, you know, things like that. I do think you can practice and learn to be better at being curious. Right. You can. There are ways to kind of build that muscle. One that I like is to put yourself in the shoes of the CEO, right. You're getting this email that you're about to send, right. And this is it correlates with curiosity. But it's just a good exercise to flex a lot of different muscles. Right. So I put an email together. I think I've done my due diligence and kind of put my analysis together. I step away from it for an hour. I come back, I reread it through the lens of like, if I'm sitting on the other side of this, what decision am I going to make? What you know, what question am I going to have, and use that as a way to inspire your curiosity to figure out how you answer that question, right? If it's something that you need to do another analysis on, if it's something where the framing is not necessarily the way you want it to be, or is not as clear as you're trying to actually make the decision of what you would do with that information. You can flex that curiosity muscle a little bit by looking at things through a different lens.

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[00:27:55] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I think that's a great exercise. You know, funny, you made me think this isn't the place. I would have thought of that. But you made me think of AI, which is a great place to ask. Hey, give me a different perspective on this. Help me understand how the person who asked this question is thinking, you know, it's great at playing that kind of devil's advocate. And so I just thought of, you know, the CFO is like, okay, what could the person be thinking? Why are they asking me this question? Give me some reasons. If you're struggling to think about it, it's a great way to brainstorm and get that conversation going. I know I've used it for, you know, many different things, and I've heard of a lot of people using it for that type of thing.

[00:28:31] Guest: Brian McGrath: It's also a great app. It's a great application for all of, of, um, you know, the LMS and I, you can, you can tell it to look at things through a different lens. Right. Yep. You're the CEO. I'm sending you this. What questions do you have? Right. What am I missing?I prepared this analysis. What am I missing? You know, things like that. You can give it different roles and ask it to be curious. And that's another way that you can kind of learn other ways to think of questions that you may not have thought of.

[00:29:01] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Of course. Easier than it's ever been in that sense of always having almost a coach to a certain degree.

[00:29:08] Guest: Brian McGrath: You almost have no excuse. You know, these days, uh, other than just not being aware that it's available.

[00:29:15] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I would agree. So I want to talk about another, uh, topic change. Change gears here a little bit. You know, one of the things I know you've said is the most valuable asset in FP&A professional has is their time, and they need to guard it. How do we guard our time? Because I know when I worked in FP and A, I felt like I was working way too many hours and there was always more work to do than time in the day. I don't know about you, but it was always a real struggle for me. So, you know, how do we guard our time? What are your thoughts on that?

[00:29:47] Guest: Brian McGrath: You start at day one and you do the best you can. Um, it is kind of the first. Right. So I go back to when I talked about why we] found a future view. Automation is more readily available today than it's ever been in the history of finance. Right. Like, there's so many ways that you can automate things, but if you wait to start automating them until your plate is full, you're constantly sitting there thinking, okay, I could go home and have dinner with my family after a full day of doing manual stuff, or I could spend my evenings for two weeks automating, you know, three hours of my daily tasks. Right. Because now you've got a backlog. But if you start from the beginning and take every opportunity you possibly can to bite that chunk off along the way, you will find that the way you approach problems going forward will change. You will take more time up front the first time you do something to build with automation in mind. Build with efficiency in mind. Oftentimes, we get a task as a finance person, and either because we're very busy or, you know, the way we tend to approach things, we just try to knock it out as quickly as possible. Right. Or because somebody says, I need it as soon as possible. Right.

[00:31:11] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. Because they wanted it yesterday.

[00:31:12] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yeah. It's very hard. I understand in those positions and situations to take an extra 30 minutes, an hour or two hours to build something that is repeatable or more repeatable. But I have this philosophy, basically, that no request is a single request, right? If you get a question once, you're going to get it again. So if you build that thing to answer the question with the idea that this is the only time I'm ever going to have to answer this question, you better believe you're going to be doing that process again. So why not make it easier on you than on yourself the next time? So that's item number one is just that a rigorous, disciplined approach to building automation into every step wherever possible, or deciding to spend the time to re-engineer all your manual processes once you're full to to build automation to kind of increase your capacity. The second is something that I recommend people start practicing when they get a little later in their career. I do not recommend this for people earlier in their career, but it's something to pay attention to as other people do it around you, and it's something to learn as you get later in your career. And that is how to say no. So what do I mean by that? I don't recommend people early in their career learn to say no because you risk catastrophe, right? You're not in a position to say no.

[00:32:41] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You might be unemployed if you say it a little too often when you're the junior analyst in the company.

[00:32:45] Guest: Brian McGrath: But once you understand how to create value with your time and your career, and your time becomes a very valuable asset in your career, you have to learn how to prioritize your time or you will drown. Now, to be clear, when I say no, I don't mean say no. What I mean is ask clarifying questions to understand the priority of what needs to get done, and start to make decisions for yourself about how you prioritize time. Prioritize your time to maximize your potential value. So as an exercise, you know when you're in a more senior level position at an organization, you might have 15 people coming to you every day with questions like, what if we did this? Or can you look into this or can you do this? I started asking a very simple question. Right. If I gave you the perfect answer to that question, what would you do with it? And if they did not know the answer to that question, immediately I started to question whether it was the best use of my time. Because if I do that analysis perfect, and I hand it back to you with exactly the information you asked for and you don't know what you're going to do with it, then I'm just spinning in circles to give you some information that you may not actually do anything with. Right? Does that mean I'm not going to do it? No. Right. I'm still. It just means that the questions that I'm going to ask next are where I slot that into my prioritization, or how I talk about that with my CFO is going to change. Right? That's an example of saying no, not actually saying no, but asking those clarifying questions to help me understand what I need to say no to. And then if I actually need to say no, I'm going to get cover. I'm going to do some work to make sure that I'm explaining why I'm saying no, and I'm going to set realistic expectations about when I can say yes.

[00:34:48] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Great, great example there. And I would agree, the higher up you get, the more you need to learn how to say no. The art of it, having the cover and really being able to focus on what the priorities are, because there's the squeaky wheel syndrome. And if you go around and chase that squeaky wheel, you're getting what you're going to drown. And two, you're probably not really focusing on the priorities.

[00:35:13] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yeah. Yeah, everything's if it's, uh. What's the phrase if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority, right.

[00:35:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Mhm. Yeah. It's like I, you know I had a letter that said if you have more than 3 to 5 important tasks you're going to be mediocre at all of them.

[00:35:28] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yep. Exactly.

[00:35:30] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Like you need a few things you can really focus on.

[00:35:33] Guest: Brian McGrath: It's easy to drown.

[00:35:35] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. We've all been there in different jobs. And you'll learn as you go. The first one you mentioned is the automation side. So what skills do professionals need in automation? Do you think they, you know, Power Query VBA? You know with LMS you hear a lot of talk around, you know, Python and different things. What's your thought as far as that technical skill level that's needed to really be able to generally take those manual processes and automate and simplify them?

[00:36:05] Guest: Brian McGrath: I think there's a lot of ways to solve that problem. And I think technical skill, I think a lot of times people believe that they need technical skills like broad technical skills in order to automate things. I think that's a false flag. I think the more you have, the better, right? Like if you can, if you can build a data warehouse and write Python code and write VBA and, you know, like amazing, you're going to be able to do a lot of stuff, right? If you can't, you can still automate things, right. So a couple of examples. Early in my career, I didn't know how to write VBA. I didn't know how to do any of that. I didn't know how to write SQL statements. If you Google a problem, you can figure out there's like code snippets that you can literally copy and paste in to solve things and then work your way through that. Excel has a record macro. So if you're doing the same thing over and over again, record the macro and start from there. Right. You don't have to be able to write these things from scratch. Little things like if you're logging into NetSuite or QuickBooks and downloading reports, are there ways to automatically schedule those to end up in your inbox, right? As opposed to having to go in and click all the buttons and, you know, just little things like that.

[00:37:19] Guest: Brian McGrath: They're not fancy, they're not sophisticated. But that's automation, right? That's you not having to click buttons to get work done that saves you time and then build from there. Right. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Find ways. Um, I would also say you don't have to have the technical skill set. You need to understand what type of automation you're looking to get accomplished, and then network your way to find people who have that skill set. Right. I used to go to our engineering team, our DevOps team, and ask them for help on SQL queries. When I was learning SQL and was like, hey, I just wrote this query. You know, this was before LMS and all that. It's like it's working, except I don't know how to do this join, right? And they'd be like, well, you know, you need to use the left join or whatever and then join on this or Aw. Okay, thanks. You know, buy him a cup of coffee or something. Right. It depends on what type of organization you work in. It's a software company. You have a whole team of engineers. Buy them lunch. Ask them how they would approach a problem. Right. You don't have to know everything. From a technical perspective.

[00:38:29] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I'm laughing at the SQL example because I did report writing for about two years before I switched over to PHP and A, and there are definitely a lot of questions of what is it doing here? Help me understand this. That was before LMS. Now you'd feed it into the LM and tell me where I'm wrong, what I need to do. Here's what I'm trying to accomplish. And as long as you know some basics. Odds are you can get there.

[00:38:50] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yeah. I mean, literally, like, it's getting to the point where you almost don't even need to know the basics anymore. And, you know, you can write a Python script to automate, you know, something, right? It's getting incredible.

[00:39:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. It's amazing to watch how things are changing. And, you know, we'll get to AI here in a minute, because I'd love to get a little bit of your thoughts on that. But before that, as we've talked, we've talked a lot about processes today. Is there a specific framework you like to use or a method to kind of analyze and improve processes? Do you have any kind of framework that you could share that you recommend?

[00:39:24] Guest: Brian McGrath: The one I always felt I was taught early in my career. I did a little bit of Six Sigma stuff early in my career, and most of it is gone now and hasn't really paid a lot of dividends. But the one that stuck with me that's always come back is, um, I find myself using it all the time. It's the five ways. Um, are you familiar with the five whys?

[00:39:46] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I'm very familiar with the five whys.

[00:39:48] Guest: Brian McGrath: So I love that framework. Right. So when you're sitting there saying, well, we often push for monthly forecasting, right. So it's like why, you know, they'll say, well there's no way I could possibly do monthly forecasting. I can't get through the budgeting cycle. And you say, well, why? Well, because it takes me too long to do a forecast. Well, why does it take you so long? Well, because it's manual. Well, why is it manual? You know, you kind of go through this. You very quickly get down to the root cause of what's happening. And it's not what you think often. And it's often a lot easier to solve than what you have when you're looking at a problem. And you look at it holistically and it's like it just feels like too big of a chunk to bite off. You have to break problems down into small, solvable pieces. And five whys is a great way to break problems down by just drilling all the way down to brass tacks.

[00:40:40] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I definitely think five whys is great. We teach that in my training is one of the methods to use to get to the bottom because right, the first answer is usually almost always superficial. And so you got to dig beyond that. Well why did you miss your numbers. Well because the forecast was wrong. Well, that doesn't really tell me why it was wrong now. Yeah. And you come to find out. Well, because someone used a bad assumption or because business changed or whatever that root reason may be. So I'm with you. I think that's a great method. I really like that one.

[00:41:10] Guest: Brian McGrath: What else have you seen, Paul? I mean, other than that.

[00:41:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You know, there's one I saw. I think another great thing to do is especially if it's a big process, map it out, because when you map it out, especially with the different people involved, you start to realize there's if there's multiple people in that process, there's almost always somebody who follows the philosophy. But we've always done it this way.

[00:41:33] Guest: Brian McGrath: I love that.

[00:41:34] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Phrase. Their process is very inefficient. Yeah. So you start to see it on paper. You're like, why in the world are we doing that? Let's figure out how we can streamline that. Or you quickly start to see where the bottleneck is kind of mapping the time. So I think if there are more complex processes, I think doing that mapping and then mapping what it should be and then figure out how to get there, I think is great. But at the end of the day, yeah, I'm a big believer really. It all starts with a process mindset. It's teaching everybody on your team to be process oriented, like you said. I think you summarized it better than I've heard it from the beginning. Always treat everything as if it's not just a one time request and always be trying to think, how can I optimize this so you don't get into which we've all been there. I've been there so many times. I gotta say, I'm great at process optimization, but you get to the point where it's going to take me ten hours to fix it. I know I can make this way better, but I just don't want to spend the time or I don't have the time, or I don't want to make the time, whatever the excuses.

[00:42:42] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yeah, but again, I've used it just like you. You have to recognize that those are excuses, right? You have to like you have to own that. You have to be accountable to yourself.

[00:42:52] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Which is often easier said than done, especially when you want to go home for dinner.

[00:42:56] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yeah. Yep. Guilty of it as well.

[00:43:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So yeah, I mean, we're all human, right? Some of us are better at it than others, but I haven't met anyone who's perfect yet, and if they are, I couldn't afford them anyway. Yeah. I totally agree. So I mean, an amazing journey as we've watched generative AI take off, right? Ai has been around a long time and there's a lot of great use cases, but I'd love to get your thoughts. How do you see you know what's going on with AI reshaping FP? And what are the changes you see over the next few years? I'd love to kind of get your thoughts.

[00:43:30] Guest: Brian McGrath: I think we're on the cusp of these lens B and I don't. I'm liking less and less than the AI nomenclature because as you said, AI in the machine learning sense has been around for a long time. You know, different formats of, you know, some people will frame like.

[00:43:51] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Statistical.

[00:43:53] Guest: Brian McGrath: Like predictive modeling as AI and, you know, but llms generative AI, I think we're on the cusp of every person having the equivalent of like a force multiplier. Like this. These tools, once you really realize what they're capable of, empower you to become 2 or 3 times as effective with the right capabilities wrapped around them. Right. And so I think it's a really exciting time for FP and a, you know, there's a lot of hype around Llms and what they might be able to do in the future and that sort of thing. But when I look at what they're capable of doing today, I'm stunned at the options that become available with some technology wrapped around them. And, you know, we're working on, um, building some applications to unlock these capabilities for finance, because the one thing that I've noticed is, while I'm stunned most people aren't leveraging them very much in their day to day world. And the reason for that is, understandably, concerns around security. Building credibility with the tools. You know, everybody knows the term hallucinations. And how do you make sure you're getting the right answer? And when can you trust the answer versus having to get the answer? Then do the work to make sure that the answer is correct and all that. So I think we're on the cusp of a transformative technology here on on. And I say on the cusp, obviously the technology exists, but I don't think we have in the market yet is a way to truly unlock that capability for finance in a way that is, um, comfortable for them. And that kind of helps them realize the vision of what's possible.

[00:45:47] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I don't think there's a tool out there yet that is really holistic and has done a good job of building into the entire workflow. There are some tools at different levels that there's a lot of great things they do and a lot of areas we can use. But I think the embedded is what we're still waiting for. I think there's data cleaning for a lot of companies that has to happen. What I agree with, there's some pretty amazing and crazy opportunities for efficiency that are there. And even today, if you're not being more efficient with it, you're doing something wrong. I'd say at a minimum, everybody should be more efficient in their job at some level with LMS today.

[00:46:25] Guest: Brian McGrath: I mean, I just think of, you know, there's especially as you get involved in a wider spectrum of things as you grow in your career, you can't be an expert on everything, right? There's some things that you only come across and have experience with every couple of years, and you kind of have a mental framework for it, and then it comes back around and you have to get back up to speed. I can't tell you how many times I've spent, you know, hours at night or on the weekends trying to get back up to speed on a topic by googling and then reading a bunch of articles and just trying to refresh my memory on how to think about whatever problem it is I'm looking at. You know, maybe it's an M&A transaction or something like that, that those things only come around every once in a while. It gives you the opportunity to synthesize that whole process of multi hours of research down to ten minutes. Right. It's like, oh, now I'm back up to speed on this topic. Right. That's amazing. That is just fundamentally amazing for finance people.

[00:47:28] Host: Paul Barnhurst: 100%. The example I give is that I don't] write an indirect function very often. I can never remember the syntax in Excel. So it's like I go to the LM, I give it what I'm trying to do, like add a really complex, complex one that had like 3 or 4 indirect within it all nested and I just broke each part apart, gave it what I was trying to do, but the syntax in its working gave it to next. Took me 20 minutes instead of an hour because I forgot. Oh, you need a single quote here and a double quote there. And it's not that I didn't understand the concept. It's just, you know, it's hard to remember all those little things when you're coding, basically.

[00:48:03] Guest: Brian McGrath: And you have I mean, I don't want to speak for you, Paul, but I have limited capacity up here. I can't remember everything, nor do I want to if I don't have to. I had a math teacher once that said, for the rest of your life, you will have a calculator at your fingertips. Why are you memorizing math equations that you know you don't need to use on a regular basis? Like you have tools at your disposal. You have limited capacity up here. Use it for stuff that matters.

[00:48:29] Host: Paul Barnhurst: A great point, so exciting times for sure. Now we're going to move into the section I like to call this kind of the FP&A section where I asked some very specific questions, similar to all guests, I mix them up a little bit from time to time, but the first few here are ones I think I've asked pretty much every guest if I asked you to say, what is the number one technical skill, the one you would put first for FP professionals to master? What is it?

[00:48:53] Guest: Brian McGrath: Again? I'm going to leave the table stakes stuff off the table. I think a couple of years ago I would have said SQL. Now I think it's LMS. I think you have to start using these tools and master how to use them effectively. They're going, you know, somebody I read a quote, I wish I could attribute it, I don't know where it came from. It is not going to take your job, but somebody who knows how to use it really well might write. I think that's going to be true for FP and a.

[00:49:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You know, I had someone just the other day that listed I they go, I used to I would have said this previously. Now I'm saying that. So we're definitely starting to see that curve and that transition happened there. What about soft skills?

[00:49:33] Guest: Brian McGrath: Uh, I mentioned it at the beginning. I think storytelling, I think people underestimate how important it is. You know, when you see a really good CFO, a really good CFO, especially of a public company, owns the storytelling of the financial performance of the organization and often the operational performance to the investors. Right. So even if you look at it through a tactical lens, forget about the internal operations and all that to rise to the ranks of the CFO and to be effective as a CFO, you need to be able to tell a compelling story. And I think that that is a soft skill that is often underrated.

[00:50:11] Host: Paul Barnhurst: A great example of storytelling is definitely the more you move up, the more senior, the more you need to be able to do it. All right. Here. See how you answer this one. This is kind of a fun one that we recently added. So I think you're the first one I've asked this from. If Excel removed one feature tomorrow, which one would cause you the most panic if it went away?

[00:50:31] Guest: Brian McGrath: I don't panic over much anymore, Paul, but um, I will say I don't know about panic, but I have grown to love dynamic arrays like this. The whole the whole like ability of just expanding and contracting, you know, automatically, and the spill functions and all that. I would miss them greatly. That would be, you know, a huge step back in my opinion.

[00:50:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, dynamic arrays are fabulous and they just keep getting better and better. Uh, I, I would have a hard time going back now. Like unique. I don't know that I've come up with that super long formula to make something unique.

[00:51:07] Guest: Brian McGrath: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could go back if I had to, but I have no desire to.

[00:51:12] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So I'd be using the LM a lot. Yes. Let me just say that if you could wave a magic wand so you're the king for the day or whatever you want to call it. The fairy, I don't know, wizard. Genie and change one thing about FP and, eh, what are you going to change?

[00:51:28] Guest: Brian McGrath: I wish I loved Excel. This is going to sound like I don't like Excel, I love Excel, it's the workhorse, but I wish people approached problems from a technical mindset more than just reverting to excel as their first and primary way to solve a problem. Often, In Excel is a great consumption layer, but there's a lot that needs to be done before you get it to Excel. That can be handled through better architecture. And I don't think that we, as finance professionals on theFP&A side, think structurally about the problems that we have outside of Excel often enough that I think would solve a lot of problems.

[00:52:19] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I think there's some truth to that. One of the best things I did was two years of report writing, because I learned a lot about table structure, SQL, you know, thinking in a database approach. So even if I'm solving something in Excel, I'm always thinking, how do I normalize this data? So one of the very first things I think of, which solves so many problems that you're dealing with with your data.

[00:52:41] Guest: Brian McGrath: And even if you solve those problems in Excel, the way you structure your Excel file will dramatically change when you think about it through that lens.

[00:52:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, 100% here. I've had others say that as well. Really being able to think from it from a data standpoint. Technical beyond just Excel. All right. So now we're going to move into the get to know you section. This is where we get to ask some fun questions to get to know a little bit about you before we wrap up here. Favorite hobby or passion. What do you like to do in your free time?

[00:53:09] Guest: Brian McGrath: It changes every 3 to 4. I always have something that I'm, like, doing, um, outside of work. Currently it's photography. My kids have all gotten into sports, you know. Um, and I was into photography a while back, and I kind of put it down for a while. Um, I picked it back up about 4 or 5 months ago, and I'm. I'm back into it, so I need something. You know, the thing I've realized for me, I need something that flexes a little bit of a different creative muscle. Um, because I'm so tactical often throughout the day that giving me something that is artistic or creative kind of helps me balance.

[00:53:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Life great. I love it. Photography sounds like a fun one. If you could have one superpower, what are you picking and why?

[00:54:00] Guest: Brian McGrath: Um, I've talked a lot about sales, uh, in this. I always wanted to be able to sell really? Well, you know, just like, um. And I think so. I know it's not technically a superpower, but I view it as a superpower. Uh, because the people who are really good at it are just there. It's amazing.

[00:54:21] Host: Paul Barnhurst: They make great money. They're always employed if they're working in sales. I mean, even if they're not, they're always able to have a big influence on things. Right? If you could sell ice to an Eskimo, you're going to be successful. So yeah, in a lot of ways it is a superpower. I like that one. If you could have any job in the world for one week, either a specific person or a type of job, what would it be?

[00:54:46] Guest: Brian McGrath: Oh, for only one week.

[00:54:48] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You only get it for a week.

[00:54:49] Guest: Brian McGrath: All right. This is easy. I have a bucket list item. I want to do an ocean crossing on a sailboat, but I don't want to do the work to get to being able to do an ocean crossing by myself. So I would be the crew on an ocean crossing, ocean crossing vessel so I could check that box off my list.

[00:55:10] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Well, the great, great way to to bring in the bucket list on that one. Well done. All right. So if you're walking on stage, you're at a big conference. You're speaking in front of thousands tomorrow, and you had to have a theme song to bring you up on stage. What song are you going to use?

[00:55:28] Guest: Brian McGrath: I've always liked the eye of the Tiger.

[00:55:30] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I think that's a great one.

[00:55:31] Guest: Brian McGrath: I think it fits me. I'm somebody that when I walk in on something like, I get, like, fiercely dedicated to it. And so he's in on, like, the whole photography thing and every, you know, like, whatever I, whatever I kind of hone in on, I get, I get very focused on it, so I think I do.

[00:55:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It just made me think of the old Sylvester Stallone movies I just watched the other day. I saw it on YouTube and I'm like, I'm going to watch this over the top, if you remember that one. Some great music in it. But his arm is wrestling. So yeah, kind of funny you mentioned that one after having just watched one of his films.

[00:56:06] Guest: Brian McGrath: Life is full of coincidences.

[00:56:09] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It is. All right. So just two questions left. We'll let you go. I know we're up on time here. If you could offer one last piece of advice to our audience, you know, to be better at FPA, what advice would you give them? What would be your parting words of wisdom?

[00:56:24] Guest: Brian McGrath: Be exponentially more concerned with your customer success than your own.

[00:56:29] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I love that, so be exponentially more concerned about your customer success than your own.

[00:56:36] Guest: Brian McGrath: I've been an employee a long time. I want to make. I want to make money. I want to, you know, increase my outcome, all that kind of stuff. I just found that the more I focus on that, the less valuable I am because I'm spending more of my energy focusing on myself. And if I focus a lot of energy on making the people around me successful, they will speak on my behalf. Get better. I will achieve a better outcome as a result of those people speaking on my behalf than any presentation I could put together about why I should have a different title, or be in a different role, or make more money or whatever. Um, focus on creating value for the people around you and not about yourself. That would be my number one advice to people.

[00:57:27] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Great advice. All right, so last question. If someone wants to learn more about you, get in touch with you. Learn more about the future view. What's the best way for them to do that?

[00:57:37] Guest: Brian McGrath: Uh, reach out on LinkedIn. I will respond. Um, or you can go to our website. Uh, you know, future systems. Email through the website if you want, but LinkedIn is the easiest way to find me.

[00:57:50] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Great. Well, we'll put both those in the show notes and thank you for carving out some time. I enjoyed chatting with you today. Thanks, Brian.

[00:57:56] Guest: Brian McGrath: Great conversation Paul.

[00:57:58] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Thanks for listening to FP&A tomorrow. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating and a review on your podcast platform of choice. This allows us to continue to bring you great guests from around the globe. As a reminder, you can earn CPE credit by going to earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app, taking a short quiz, and getting your CPE certificate to earn continuing education credits for the FPAC certification. Take the quiz on earmark and contact me the show host for further details.