How SaaS CFOs Can Fix FP&A Gaps to Scale Performance and Boost Profitability with Paul Lynch
In this episode, Paul Barnhurst sits down with Paul Lynch, the energetic and straightforward CEO of Centage. They dive into what makes great FP&A in today’s world and why so many companies are still stuck with outdated tools and bad habits. From growing startups to leading mature SaaS businesses, Paul shares lessons learned, mistakes made, and why data, not gut instinct, is what really drives success. You’ll hear why Excel refuses to die, how sales and finance can (and should) work better together, and why chasing growth without understanding your numbers is a recipe for disaster.
Paul Lynch has spent his career leading B2B software companies and helping them scale with better decision-making tools. He’s been CEO at Assembla and Import.io, and now heads up Centage, a modern FP&A platform. Originally from Dublin and now living in Texas, Paul brings a mix of humor, experience, and blunt truths about finance, growth, and leadership. He’s also a former whiskey salesman in South Africa, a passionate cook, and a lifelong Liverpool fan.
Expect to Learn:
Why reporting is not just planning should be the core of FP&A.
How poor unit economics can quietly destroy your business.
Why hiring data people early matters more than sales or recruiters.
The lasting dominance of Excel and what that says about innovation.
How Paul’s early sales career in South Africa shaped his leadership style.
Here are a few quotes from the episode:
“We need to stop worshipping Excel and start building tools for the next 40 years.” - Paul Lynch
Many companies chase growth without even knowing if they’re making or losing money.” - Paul Lynch
“The moment you think you know more than your customer, your business starts to fail.” - Paul Lynch
Paul brings energy, candor, and real-world perspective to a topic that’s often bogged down in spreadsheets and jargon. This episode is a must-listen for finance professionals who want to rethink how they use data, sharpen their business instincts, or learn from someone who’s built and led through both booms and busts. If you’ve ever questioned how to grow responsibly, build a smarter team, or move beyond Excel, Paul’s insights will challenge your thinking and leave you with practical takeaways to act on.
Corporate Finance Institute:
Master real-world finance skills with CFI’s FMVA program to learn financial modeling, valuations, and strategic insights top finance teams use. Get 30% off any plan and take the next step in your career. Explore now at https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/pricing-FP&A guy/?utm_source=FP&A guy&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=podcast_ads
Follow FP&A Tomorrow:
Newsletter - Subscribe on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=6957679529595162624
Follow Paul Lynch:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulglynch/
Website - https://www.centage.com/
Follow Paul:
Website - https://www.thefpandaguy.com
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguy
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
[01:25] - Welcome To The Episode
[03:37] - Real-Life FP&A Example
[06:28] - Starting in Sales
[09:39] - Customer-Led Roadmaps
[11:53] - FP&A in Sales
[14:18] - Key SaaS Metrics
[16:09] - Ignoring Unit Economics
[18:26] - VC and Growth
[24:13] - Innovation in FP&A
[32:51] - Rise of Data
[35:42] - Key FP&A Skills
[38:27] - Get To Know You
Full Show Transcript
[00:01:25] 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 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 be joined on the show by Paul Lynch. Paul, welcome to the show.
[00:01:58] Guest: Paul Lynch: Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me on.
[00:02:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Welcome. We'll easily remember the name. I just got to think of myself. Got two Pauls. Alrighty. So, a little bit about Paul's background. Paul Lynch is the CEO of Centage and has a wealth of experience as a B2B SaaS leader, innovator, and disruptor. Paul has a proven track record of driving growth in fintech developer tools and messaging businesses. Paul previously served as CEO of Assembla, leading it to its exit in 2018, and later oversaw the merger of Chargify and SaaSOptics under Battery Ventures. That's it for now. That's right. Yeah. Most recently, he was the CEO of Import.io, an enterprise leader in the web data extraction and e-commerce analytics space. He's now at Centage. Paul is passionate about transforming financial planning and analysis, helping businesses move beyond spreadsheets with modern FP&A solutions. He's originally from Dublin, Ireland, but he now lives in San Antonio with his wife and three young children. All right, so first question. We like to ask every guest, What does great FP&A look like to you? If you were to describe Great FP&A, what would that be?
[00:03:14] Guest: Paul Lynch: Great question. Great one to start with. For me, it's all about reporting. You know, the best FP&A tools that are out there are the ones with the best reporting, the ones that allow you to gain insight, to move beyond purely manipulating spreadsheets or anything else, and get real time insight that you can use for whatever data driven decision making policies you have in your business. So it's all about the outputs. It's all about making the inputs easy and the outputs clear.
[00:03:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Can you share an example where you've seen that, where you've seen great FP&A in your career and maybe where it's helped you?
[00:03:43] Guest: Paul Lynch: I mean, aside from obviously, oh, of.
[00:03:45] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Course that's a given.
[00:03:46] Guest: Paul Lynch: It's funny, and I'm not dodging the question, Paul. I mean, I think the FP&A space has seen an enormous lack of innovation over the last couple of years. I think it's an area that's ripe for disruption. So, you know, where is it helping? It's helping around performance management. When you move into that sphere, you can't manage what you can't measure. I think there's a like there's a huge white space in this market below your high end providers, you know, your oracles of this world for a real effective performance management tool in the space. And, you know, I'm a big believer in analytics. And my children are telling me they're hungry. I say prove it with data. You know, there's a lack here. There's a wide space here and there's an opportunity to be grasped. So where is it helping? It's helping in performance management. It's helped me in planning. It's helped me in scenario insights. But where further could it help me? You could help me by getting a strong tool into this space that's not, you know, so like persevere of high end enterprise customers, high value contracts, long term contracts, affordability, real insight and fast.
[00:04:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So the real question is how often do your kids go hungry?
[00:04:52] Guest: Paul Lynch: Never because they're used to proving stuff with data.
[00:04:56] Host: Paul Barnhurst: This I want to see. Let me know when I can come over and watch.
[00:04:59] Guest: Paul Lynch: I said in my in my days, in my last days. You know what I mean? What's the first hire you should make as a startup? Somebody that's able to look at your unit economics is able to look at your cash, your LTV. Someone that's able to take data and help you use this to drive your business. You know, Benioff always said his first hire is the sales force recruiters. I think the world has changed. Your first hire should be data analysts, people that are able to take data and help you make data driven decisions. Otherwise, you know you're in Vegas playing craps. You know, playing roulette. Use the data. Get it? Use the data. That's it.
[00:05:33] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You know, funny you say that because my first hire when I became a director in an FP&A role was a data person. They didn't have finance experience. They had data experience, because that's what I needed.
[00:05:42] Guest: Paul Lynch: Yes. And you're forward looking. With so many startups and so many early stage businesses in this space, they don't have that viewpoint. They go out and they hire a load of recruiters. They're backed by VC. They hire a bunch of salespeople with no leads. They don't track their unit economics. They don't track their cash. They don't measure performance. And then they fail. I wonder why.
[00:06:02] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So you're basically saying what gets measured is what gets the attention. If we measure something and pay attention to it, we start to actually make a difference there versus just running around and trusting your gut.
[00:06:13] Guest: Paul Lynch: Yeah. There'll always be a component of good feeling in business. I think I'd call it experience. But, you know, you married that experience to a proper, you know, performance and management tool to proper data, to proper data insights and analysis and reporting. You're onto a winning scenario.
[00:06:28] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I like that. So I want to step back a little bit. And I know you started your career in sales. What was that like starting as sales? How did that kind of come about. And maybe talk a little bit about, you know, start of your career?
[00:06:40] Guest: Paul Lynch: It's an interesting story and you're not going to be expecting. I left university, I moved to South Africa, I went to Cape Town on an Irish government plus industry sponsor program to sell whiskey. I got to Cape Town, met. I worked for two weeks in the office in Cape Town in a marketing capacity. My primary qualification is marketing in Spanish, and my CEO, David Demuth said to me, dude, you're a sales guy. They took me out of the office, they gave me an Opel Classic car and a cell phone, sent me to Durban in the Natal region and said, when you drive north, when you hit Mozambique, that's the end of your territory. Drive south. When you hit the Transkei, that's the end of your territory. Go inland. When you hit Pietermaritzburg, that's the end of your territory. That's how I got into sales. And for the next two years as a 23 year old, I drove around South Africa selling Jameson. I don't know how much I sold, but I certainly consumed a lot and it was a lot of fun.
[00:07:32] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So you're still not sure if you consume more or sold more?
[00:07:35] Guest: Paul Lynch: I think it's probably 50 over 50 at that point in time. In 98, coming up to the second free elections there, I think a bottle of Jameson was about a month's salary for your standard South African. So it was a very high end premium product. Given the economic situation in the country. So yeah, we certainly consumed a lot of it vis a vis selling it.
[00:07:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. And so what did you learn from that? What was your takeaway from that sales experience? Sounds like you're kind of thrown into it and in another country. Difficult product to sell. What was the takeaway? How has that helped you in your career?
[00:08:07] Guest: Paul Lynch: So again, a great question. I mean, my whole career has been framed by that experience. You know, like one, you know, you gotta never speak to enough customers, never, always, always be seeking feedback. Yeah. To the customer isn't always right. But if you let them, if you listen to them, yeah, they'll always guide you in the right direction. You know, I always say within every company, the first day I came into and I spoke to the company here, I said, look, if your job is not in sales, your job is to support somebody that is in sales. You know, we're here to our customers if our product is good, our customers will tell us what we can improve about our product, our customers will give us that insight. Having a customer led product roadmap is exactly where you should be as a software fintech FP&A developer tool, allowing the customer to dictate it. That's different. If you allow the customer to dictate your product roadmap, you'll be pulling in every different direction. But we want to seek input and that comes from coming from a sales background. You know, people misquote, you know, Steve Jobs and they misquote Henry Ford around, you know, it's available in every color as long as it's black. You know, if I ask the customer what they wanted, they would have said, faster horses. All of these things lead back into a very strong product that was defined from the customer's perspective. The model T, the iPhone and everything else. So yeah, that customer first mentality that comes with a sales background is super important to everything we do. And the moment you start thinking that you know more than your customer knows in terms of what they want, that's the moment your business starts failing.
[00:09:39] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So how do you balance? You mentioned you want a customer led product roadmap, but not customer dictated. So any advice around how you manage those things? Or how do you know when you're starting to become more customer dictated versus lead love? Just your thoughts on that. In general.
[00:09:55] Guest: Paul Lynch: Customer lead is you're not innovating your product in a vacuum. You're not sitting there in a room full of your employees and dictating what your customers need and not talking to them. So setting up customer advisory boards, setting up steering committees involving customers is always super important. The difference between dictated and led dictated, you know, a customer comes to you and says, I want an integration to an EMR system, an emergency medical record system in Barbados. And you're like, okay, I can win a $50,000 deal if I do this, like quickly run over there. You know, that's a dictator and that's not scalable. And lots of early businesses fall foul to this where they have a, you know, this that that great political expression in the US, the tail wagging the dog. Your sales department or even your leading salesperson starts to dictate your product roadmap because they're, you know, they come and say, I can do $1 million next month if you give me an integration into, you know, NetSuite. I'm not picking on NetSuite. They're great tools. Right? So you rush off and you build that, but you know more into the process of planning it. Where the next. You know what, forget NetSuite. I can win $1 million if we integrate this into Paylocity. So like that, each customer comes back in with a loud voice, talking to a champion inside of your business, and suddenly your customers start dictating the direction your business needs to go with. The reality is like, would they be valuable integrations? Potentially. Should. However, is your product team focusing on the lousy UI and UX of your product? Definitely. You know.
[00:11:25] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. No good advice. And I like that of making sure you understand the pulse and the needs of your customer, but you're not driven by everything a customer says and letting you have an overdue influence when it doesn't make sense or may not be the right decision, makes a lot of sense there. So going back to cells, I know you're a big believer in a, you know, proper sales process having come from sales, you know, making sure everybody has their Jameson. No, I mean, uh, you know, but, uh, how do you see FP&A particularly, you know, more the professional kind of helping the go to market sales function. What role does FP&A , you know, play in there and just kind of helping make sure things are working well?
[00:12:05] Guest: Paul Lynch: I mean, performance management.
[00:12:08] Guest: Paul Lynch: I mean, that's sort of like if you're looking at your go to market, what is your LTV, what is your lifetime value? What is your cost to acquire each customer? All of these are different like basic financial performance analytics. They must be accurate, they must be timely, and your business must be driven by them. So, you know, you look at a BPM solution that's in the FP&A space. Okay, where are we drawing data from? How are we automating it? You know, what does it mean for our security? What does it mean for our compliance? All of these things are absolutely essential, you know. How does it help your go to market function? Like let's say you want to sell into SaaS. It's very sweet to me, you know, I mean, right now sandwich sells, we sell into SaaS, but we also sell into healthcare. We sell into a bunch of other different verticals. Right. Look at Saas. Saas lives in Salesforce. You want to be credible in the SaaS space around selling for tools, and you need a Salesforce integration. You know, once you get Salesforce integration that's being pulled in, you start looking at budgeting and forecasting. You start to automate these things and make them smooth.
[00:13:06] Guest: Paul Lynch: You close two large opportunities in Salesforce as lost. What's the revenue impact of that? Like if you close them in Q2? In Q3, do you have sufficient pipeline in there now to make your financial goals? It's core. It's key. It's crucial. Um, you know, so people look at FP&A tools. Yeah. Fair enough. You're selling into the office of the CFO in many cases. But, you know, when I was selling Charger Fi, which was a billing and contract management tool like this was at the center of your fintech stack. So we were often selling this to developers. We laughed and said, you know, charging a fee was a tool that was bought by developers but used by accountants, you know. You said an FP&A tool into the office of the CFO that's got an integration into your CRM and is pulling down and giving you insight in terms of what pipeline value with a defined close rate, that's that's historically pullable what that pipeline decrease or increase means for your potential to hit those goals on a performance basis at a future forecast point. That's how you make data driven decisions there.
[00:14:06] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. No, I appreciate that. I'm curious. I know you spend a lot of time in SaaS businesses. Is there a top 2 or 3 metrics that you, you know, are kind of your North Star that you really like to look at? Like, is there one and go to market and maybe other areas that you're like, I'm looking at that regularly, you know, every day, every week, whatever it might be.
[00:14:25] Guest: Paul Lynch: So I will answer the question around SaaS metrics. But the first thing I would say and I always say is look at actual financial metrics. The amount of businesses that we see in the smaller kind of space that don't care about gross margins. They don't care about EBITDA, they don't care if it would make your hair stand on end. So first things last. You know, my old mentor, Leslie Buckley used to say to me, Paul, revenue was aspirational. Opex is real. Understand the costs in your business. Understand your gross margins. You know, first thing, okay, now getting into particular SaaS metrics, if you're going to spend money on demand gen marketing, have proper attribution, understand where that money is being spent and where it's yielding. This, the free money era that we call it, like going back to, you know, Covid in around the Covid era and after firehose money at sales and marketing. Get the leads, get the interest, drive organic, you know, drive and page impressions. Crazy. So like what is my cost to acquire customers in real terms? What is my LTV in terms? What's my lifetime value of those customers once onboarded? What's my gross margin? I want to grow this business so much that my actual cost to acquire customers is above. Like the time frame to which my customers will churn out is my customers lifetime value. 12,000 is my cost to acquire 16,000. If that's the case, then your business is worthless. It doesn't matter how fast you're growing, you're going to get seen through the first time you look to raise or exit this business. So like there's lots of others. But for me on a go to market basis, understand your LTV to your ratios, essential and goodness. Like look at the basic fundamentals of business and financial management. What is my gross margin? What is my opex to revenue ratio? What is my EBITDA? Again, I sound like I'm overstressing this. The reason I stress it so hard is because there's so many businesses that I've seen over the last ten years that have paid no attention to these things.
[00:16:18] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Why do you think that is? Why do you think businesses get caught up in paying no attention to those key metrics of understanding their margins and their opex?
[00:16:27] Guest: Paul Lynch: And I wrote a.
[00:16:29] Guest: Paul Lynch: Bit a couple of years ago about, you know, the collapse in 2008 eight when the financial collapse happened and basically you couldn't get the banks were either bankrupt or they were so tied up in terms of government legislation around their ability to loan, that there was this huge, cavernous space appeared in the market where people really where were they to go to get capital to grow? Where were they to go to get capital to create companies? And VC really emerged at that point when the early VCs were great. You know, they guided young entrepreneurs through. But, you know, soon, as is always the case in free market economics, you had a cohort come in that weren't really interested in returning any kind of investor value. They just wanted to raise deployments, and they wanted to raise their next fund so they could get their two and 20 there, you know. So these guys then came in and said, grow, grow, grow. Don't worry about everything. Don't worry about your costs. We figured out that like growth cures everything and they just destroyed so many good potential businesses. They destroyed so many good founders. That's where this kind of growth at all costs, growth in all areas.
[00:17:34] Guest: Paul Lynch: And you know what happened. This is what happened. The tide went out. Those businesses that had been trying to grow like crazy and have been giving no thought to their unit economics, to their financial structures, went back to that VC and said, hey, you know, we blasted through the 50 million you put in as our series A. Let's get our series B going. And they were like, well, we can't follow our money. We've not returned any value to our investors, and our investors have bailed on us. And those businesses failed and are failing. I mean, it's not that I talk about this in some way for some reason about being in the past. This is the present. This is where we live right now. Lots of VC firms that were that were irresponsible with the capital from the LP capital raised and deployed poorly, have been unable to raise again, and lots of businesses who were steered in the wrong direction to grow, grow, grow are going back looking for an additional series to continue to drive this insane kind of economic policy and are unable. And they're failing.
[00:18:26] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And I'm curious, as did you ever find yourself kind of getting caught up in that free money area at any cost? Or has it always kind of been your view? Let's make sure we balance the cost and growth. And really you mentioned opex is so important. So I feel like you've kind of always been on that side. Hey, even if the money's there, let's make sure we're really doing this in a very measured and mature manner.
[00:18:46] Guest: Paul Lynch: So I don't.
[00:18:47] Guest: Paul Lynch: Like, do I believe that there's a there's a place in the world for VC? Absolutely. Sure. Do I like VCs? No, I don't like it as a model. I think, um, you know, if you go to founders and say you bootstrap, like feel the pain, like, understand it. I mean, there is no free money, the free money that you're spending so recklessly someone had to earn it. You know, there's checks and balances everywhere. So often the fundamentals that young entrepreneurs lack are because they raise too early, go through the hard stuff like we all did, you know, learn how to grow businesses on a shoestring, work the hours, you know. So have I ever got caught up in it? Never. As far as scale is concerned, the venture equity fund that sits behind sandwich like we believe in profit and reinvestment. We believe in control, manage growth. We typically don't run burn in our businesses. Now we have done in the past if we have a particular business that is growing very strong. No problem. You know what I mean? We'll feel the growth. But, um, you know, dropping money into businesses to drive, like, low growth. No, not not not for us. And, you know, it's something I've never got caught up in. You know, I have gray hair because I do worry about the capital that I need to return in terms of money that's been invested in any of our businesses or any of our funds, someone had to earn it. Never forget that.
[00:20:05] Guest: Paul Lynch: Yeah.
[00:20:05] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I mean, great way to look at it. I appreciate that someone had to earn it. And I totally understand when you said, hey, if it's high growth, we're happy to fund the growth. We expect the return. But just to continue to throw money at something, expecting it to go from low growth to high growth is not a strategy.
[00:20:20] Guest: Paul Lynch: And, uh, you know, it's not sustainable. It just does not work. Now, like I always laughed and at one point my marketing team. Will we laugh about this to this day? Like, I mean, I always felt that sort of social media was a vanity metric for fintech tools. So I said, turn off all our social media spend. You know, if you believe something, then have the conviction to prove it right. So I always said, like, you know, advertisements for fintech billing tools on a social media platform, and no one on that platform is buying those tools. So I turned it off. And my organic search tanked. It tanked. And I went, that's interesting. People channel switch. So they may see you on Instagram or Facebook and they come to you on organic. So, you know, like that be like you're not going to throw money at something to get it from. No growth to high growth. There's so much more to it. There's CategoryDesign. There's a strategy. There's messaging, there's positioning. There's the product. Money does not cure will not get you from flat to growth. No way. It'll just get you in trouble with your investors and with the bank.
[00:21:22] Host: Paul Barnhurst: If you're ready to take your finance career to the next level, this is your moment. Corporate Finance Institute, or CFI, is the global leader in online corporate finance certifications. Their FMVA program is built for professionals who want to move beyond theory and master the skills top finance teams actually use with FMVA. You'll learn how to build robust three-statement models, perform DCF and comparable valuation analysis, create accurate forecasts, and communicate your insights clearly using the same practical skills that top finance teams rely on to guide strategy and make better business decisions. Whether you're targeting a promotion, transitioning into FP&A, or aiming to stand out in a competitive job market, these are the qualifications that hiring managers are actively looking for. Over 2 million professionals worldwide trust CFI to gain skills, earn promotions, and advance their careers. And right now, you can do the same with 30% off any CFI plan. Visit Corporate Finance Institute to start building the skills that get you noticed and get you hired.
[00:22:46] Guest: Paul Lynch: Yeah, I like what you said at the strategy and so many things. And I love the example of social media and the channel switching. It's a challenge with attribution and marketing. Right. It's like it started on LinkedIn, but they came to my website and they bought something. It's like, you know, when you ask people, where did they hear about you? Is it really where they heard about you? Maybe.
[00:23:05] Guest: Paul Lynch: Maybe not. Is this.
[00:23:06] Guest: Paul Lynch: Attribution stuff? We've got a great business in the Skyworks portfolio called Full Circle Insights, which is a specialist attribution tool for Salesforce. That's a good plug there for the guys. And these businesses exist because attribution is hard or they wouldn't exist.
[00:23:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. No, I you know, having run my own business now for three years and trying to figure things out is always tough. The one that I've never quite cracked yet is why I get almost as many or more sales for my courses from Canada than the US. I haven't been able to figure that one out, given it's a 10th of the size, but it's one of those that I'm like, all right, you know, I don't know. But hey, if they keep buying, I won't complain.
[00:23:45] Guest: Paul Lynch: It's good. It's Canadian fiscal prudence.
[00:23:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: There you go. Maybe. But it always kind of made me kind of laugh. It's been one of the funny things we joke about.
[00:23:54] Guest: Paul Lynch: One of the things I noted when coming into the bearing in mind. Paul, I've been on the job for six weeks. So, um, you know, I do have a background in terms of fintech in the fintech space, but, I mean, I am relatively new to the space. There's a lot of FBA businesses in Canada. There is, and they're good businesses as well. Like, they're not crappy businesses. They're good.
[00:24:11] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Businesses.
[00:24:12] Guest: Paul Lynch: Yeah.
[00:24:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So yes. No, I agree there are a lot of good ones. Yeah. So what other observations. You've been in the CEO chair. You know, this is my first time in an FP&A business role. What's it been like so far? What are, you know, maybe a couple of highlights.
[00:24:26] Guest: Paul Lynch: So it's very like I love the space. I mean, I, you know, fintech and FP&A , we're not bosom buddies. We're close together. You know what I mean? So there isn't a huge gap between the two. What have I done? The lack of innovation is shocking. I really like and guys like you are driving it, you know, having these conversations, making podcasts like this and bringing it to light like Excel, it's an incredible tool. But it's 40 years old. I'm 40 years old. Is it the best software tool business software tool ever created? Very likely. But surely, you know, in 1985 when we were listening to the Thompson Twins and, you know, talking about Band aid, you know, would you have thought that 40 years later when we're talking about AI? I launched an AI chatbot today, maestro, that we would be talking about the same business tool to measure budgeting, forecasting, you know, to plug into newer tools like BI and Tableau and stuff like, no, you would have said, don't be ridiculous. I mean, it will go the way of WordStar or WordPerfect, you know what I mean? The Amstrad, but it hasn't. So, you know, why is that? I mean, it's a tool that's beloved. Do you really want to attack it? You know, but that's my first observation.
[00:25:33] Guest: Paul Lynch: There has been a distinct lack of innovation. And some of the businesses you mentioned earlier, I mean, these are just plugins. So they're sitting on top of this older kind of technology too. Like, we don't know, weed a weed, a debt finance business here as part of the group. And the CEO, Johnny said to me, um, the only real, uh, finance guy, you know, doesn't use Google Docs. Yeah, they use Excel. So again, I find that funny. This kind of almost, you know, you're either like git GitHub. You know, these GitHub evangelists, like, you know, you say GitHub or crap like, and they punch you. You know what I mean? Like, like this kind of allegiance and this, this kind of reverence that comes to Excel is great. Graves. Google docs are terrible. We closed a lot of businesses where you have an operational team inside of a company that is using Google Docs, and the finance team is using Excel. And we become Switzerland. So the finance team won't move to docs. The operational team won't move to Excel. So boom. How are you going to do your FPM? How are you going to get a third party tool.
[00:26:38] Guest: Paul Lynch: So they come to us for that. So you know we act as that bridge you know again very interesting. You know, um, what else. A huge kind of divergence in terms of the size of business is playing here. You know, you got your biggest companies in the world operating on one end and very small, lean businesses on the other. And not I mean, maybe I'm wrong. This is my observation. Could be wrong with this. And you could tell me. So like not a huge amount of movements up and down the stack, you know, you know, you've got, um, it's very hard for you to get up into that top quadrant. And these guys have been there for a long time. You know, the reporting side of this. Like, we do it very well, but we're 25 years old, don't forget. So we've been around a long time. Still lots of plugins to your third party analytics tools, which I find interesting. People plugging into your tableaus of the world and looker and stuff like that. What else? Is there a clear leader, Paul? I ask, you know, look at version control. It's a clear leader in GitHub. You look at CRM, there's a clear leader in Salesforce. You know.
[00:27:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: No, I would say there is a clear leader. It's. Yeah.
[00:27:40] Guest: Paul Lynch: Exactly. Okay. Good. There you go. Yeah. And I mean it's been around forever, right?
[00:27:44] Host: Paul Barnhurst: 70% of people still use spreadsheets for planning of that 90% plus Excel. So they're the clear industry leader after that. You know, you go to the enterprise space. No I mean you got Oracle, you got Tm1, you got SAP, you got anaplan. I wouldn't say there's one stream, you know, there are some other smaller ones too. But those are probably the five main, you know, kind of the enterprise anaplan . Workday has some enterprise for sure, but I'd say they also have a lot of upper mid-market, but there's not a clear takeaway. I mean, I could list 30 tools that, you know, probably are 50 close to that, at least 15 that are, you know, over 50 million in revenue and, and up in their FP&A space. And so there is not the Saas tech stack by Ben Murray. He does the Saas Tech stack survey every year. If you look at it, the lowest market penetration for the top five tools was for software at 13%.
[00:28:39] Guest: Paul Lynch: Again, this is these kind of things. Like the business geek, right, I find it very interesting. Right? I know Ben as well. Very well. Great guy. The Saas CFO, if you look at play bigger right. Which is like for me because I'm a big believer in category and category design, you know what I mean? Some people sleep with the King James Bible by their bedside. I sleep with Play bigger. You look at play bigger, right. And it will tell you that there is only room for two category positions, okay. The category king and the category queen. You know where there's Coca-Cola? You only got Pepsi. You know where there's Uber, that's Lyft, where with this GitHub, this GitLab. You know what I mean. The reason why that is, is because they emerge and then capital and labor will flow to the category K. So people will want to work there because they don't want to work at some nameless kind of, um, rideshare app. They want to work at Uber, and all that talent goes there and all the capital goes there. In terms of your larger private equity funds, they want to back the winning company. So where it used to be a case that, you know, you would have a large corporate entity and then a lot like a whale, a lot small little fish will come and bite pizza, bite pieces of it and bring it down and under a perfect, you know, economy and economic practice, that's not the case anymore. Once you establish your position as the category king with the capital and labor, you pull away from the market. That's not happening, in fact. And that is interesting. And I don't know why, but I'm certainly going to figure it out and maybe we can debate it again.
[00:30:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. When you think you have it figured out, let me know. I mean, I'll give some thoughts. I think, you know, an RFP and a software though there's a couple challenges. One, every business plan is a little bit different. And that leads him back to excel again and again. Most companies have a planning tool. Still do some percentage of their planning in Excel, usually revenue. Revenue is the hardest area. Headcount, opex. That's pretty straightforward CapEx. It's usually the differences in revenue models where everybody tends to struggle. It's why we're seeing more of these rev ops go to market finance tools. Things like that are really trying to find ways to make sure all that data is there and keep you doing your revenue and planning. I've seen a number in the last year of the market finance kind of category starting to grow. That's my take on part of the challenge. And the other is everybody wants the flexibility of Excel, but they want the integration, the security, the benefits of a tool, multidimensionality, whatever it might be. We could go on for a while. And I always tell someone, whenever someone asks me about an FP&A software, they're like, I want it to be as flexible as Excel. Well then just say stay in Excel. Semi-structured and unstructured data is going to be more flexible than a database, but there are things you're going to get by selecting a tool that will make your life easier. You have to decide what's most important, but if it's truly just the flexibility you want, a blank canvas is going to be more flexible than a software tool that has a database on the back end. Doesn't mean it's the right choice, but those are some of the things I think that are, you know, making it challenging for there to be a category leader. And there's a big difference between enterprise and small and even sometimes enterprise and mid-market. So, you know, tools that start small almost never get up to the enterprise space. You almost have to start mid-market. It's really hard.
[00:31:54] Guest: Paul Lynch: Super interesting from a business modeling perspective. You know, I mean, I came in, we had an established roadmap and a bunch of stuff on it, and I was like, I just want this, like, I want Excel. Okay, let's double down our worksheets. The component part of it I wanted to operate exactly like Excel. So look, I made this on it, Paul. But I mean, at the same time, as I said, it's probably the greatest business software tool ever released. And people do like it. So like, don't I want my worksheets sandwich sandwich to operate like Excel as if you're in Excel because people are used to it, they're comfortable with it. And uh, like, people don't want to learn like guys my age. Like, it's not that we can't learn new things, but I don't want to reinvent the way that I'm doing things entirely. So, you know, like, so these are my observations. Lack of innovation, straight like peculiar in terms of the way that the business has developed outwards. All those things make it very interesting.
[00:32:47] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. And then I'm going to switch gears from software to minute to people. What's your take of just FP&A as a profession in general? It feels like it's changed over the last, you know, a lot over the last ten, 15 years. And kind of your perspective being a CEO, you know, have you seen what FP&A does, how its functions change, or what are your thoughts as you look at your career and kind of the FP&A ?
[00:33:11] Guest: Paul Lynch: So again, talking as a user as opposed to the CEO of an FP&A tool, the one big change over the last like 15 years. Data. I mean, like this is we just have so much more of it. And, you know, I look at the import business, to which I was CEO of you mentioned and chairman now. I mean, this is a data scraping tool. We scrape data and we deliver that data back in. And people make data driven decisions using it. You know, this is the big changer. And FP&A lives at the center of that. You know, can I take this data? Can I use it in a format that's going to allow me to measure performance, to measure outcomes, to predict, to forecast? That's it, that's it. And it's getting more and more and more accurate. So those businesses that are using data at the center of their decision making processes are the ones that are going to succeed. I mean, you look at the, you know, what is the big world changing event to make FP&A like the relevance of FP&A become more and more and more significant. It's this explosion in data. You know, what is it like? Who are the winners and losers? The winners are going to be those that take that data, corral it, and use it in a way that they can make decisions. The losers are going to be those that don't and go with gut feeling, you know. You know what? Companies within FP&A are the ones that are going to succeed. Like they're going to be the companies that make this like quick, digestible and allow you to do scenario kind of analysis quickly. And that's it. But the key change is this explosion of data.
[00:34:34] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Now, you remind me of a quote. When you talk about making data driven decisions, the winners will be there. I can't remember who said it, but it was, you know, in God we trust all else. Bring data.
[00:34:44] Guest: Paul Lynch: Absolutely.
[00:34:45] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. So in this day and age, yeah, the amount of data we have available is astronomical. It can be overwhelming sometimes, but you need to be able to figure out how to corral it and use it to your advantage.
[00:34:57] Guest: Paul Lynch: So like, I mean, one of the things I was like from an integration perspective, like which is actually like, as you know, at the absolute core of FP&A , right. Presuming that your data is correct in all your systems. Okay.
[00:35:08] Host: Paul Barnhurst: There's the big.
[00:35:09] Guest: Paul Lynch: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, rubbish in, rubbish out as they say. You know, a proper FP&A tool with a proper integration stack will be absolutely essential. You can automate all this, pulling it in on an automated basis with an underlying AI driven or machine learning driven logic to allow you to forward forecast out. That's where the winners are right there now.
[00:35:30] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Great point. All right. We're going to move into a section I call this kind of our FP&A section where I asked a couple of standard questions.
[00:35:36] Guest: Paul Lynch: I'll do my best.
[00:35:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That I.
[00:35:37] Guest: Paul Lynch: Nice to me. I've only in the job for six weeks.
[00:35:42] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Oh I think you'll have an opinion here. Don't worry. What is the number one technical skill that you think FP&A professionals should have?
[00:35:49] Guest: Paul Lynch: I mean, right now I think it's being able to use Excel, right? Because there's such a lack of innovation. Okay. So I think it varies okay. It varies in terms of what size of the company is utilizing the tool. Okay. I mean, smaller businesses that are using the tools for performance management. The finance team will have a different skill set. So I think the marriage or the merger between finance and it is going like this. It's accelerating through the roof. And Excel to be fair, has driven a lot of that. So it becomes an enabler in your business as opposed to a call center. Hugely important. So you want your finance team to be reasonably technical. Whereas previously, you know, you had a clerk that had a hat on and he had a pen filling out his double entry accounting systems. Right. So what's the number one? The skills that they need. They need to be technical. They need to understand software. They need to understand integrations. They need to understand how these things work in John Deere. We have an extremely technical CFO. He understands software and he understands finance. And you bring those two together. You've got power. So for me you know I want my CFO. I want my finance team to be technical.
[00:37:03] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, you're definitely seeing a convergence and more of that. So what do you think about softer human skills? What's the number one for FP&A professionals?
[00:37:11] Guest: Paul Lynch: So for human skills.
[00:37:12] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. Like softer human skills. Yep. The opposite of tech.
[00:37:15] Guest: Paul Lynch: Again it depends on what are the drivers in terms of using an FP&A tool. Like are you looking to grow your business super fast. Are you looking to pull in terms of your business? Are you looking to drive it to profit and take distributions out? You know what I mean. So like if you want your business to have control growth and you want to be taking distributions out to pay back to your investors. I mean, you need to have a financial professional in there that has that mindset that they're looking to corral costs, opex in the business drive, gross margin. I was at a Saaster several years ago, and the CEO of Twilio, whose name escapes me, but a brilliant software entrepreneur. His CFO told him that they couldn't get their gross margin, was capped at no more, couldn't get any more. So we told him we'd give him $100,000 for every percentage. He made it better over the next 12 months and he improved it by 12%. So it depends on what your motivations are. So it depends what your drivers are. What your motivations for the business are will depend on what the human skills required of your FP&A professionals are. For me, I want to grow this business, but I don't want to grow it at all costs. So I want a team operating my FP&A platform and software that married to that profit and reinvestment, you know, responsibility.
[00:38:26] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Thanks for that. We're going to move into the get to know you section. This is where we ask a couple more questions to get to know Paul a little better. So the first one is my favorite hobby or passion. What do you like to do in your spare time when you're not working?
[00:38:38] Guest: Paul Lynch: I love food. My mother was a chef. I grew up in kitchens. I've always cooked. So I love going to the store. I love looking at the produce I love. I don't buy stuff on Amazon. I want to choose my steak and have the butcher at the meat market and have the butcher cut it down for me. I want to cook seasonal fresh produce. I love wine, I love whiskey. I'm a very social person. I like to entertain. On the sporting side, I'm a big soccer fan. Liverpool being my team and the football side. I like the bills and when it's not -200 in Buffalo we like to go see them. On playing sports level. You know, I had a very active sportsman in my younger years and now approaching 50, my knees aren't the best in cold weather, so it's golf and tennis. Plus I have again as you said, three young children at home which take up a lot of my time.
[00:39:31] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I understand that. Kids definitely take a lot of time. All right. Curious to see what you'll say on this one. If you could have any job in the world for one week, you could have anyone's job or any type of job. What would you pick?
[00:39:44] Guest: Paul Lynch: So there's so many different iterations there. I mean, if I could have that job, what I want to drive into social entrepreneurship and what I want to make things better for people like we do a lot of work like everyone else does, with not for profits. So, you know, do I want to get into one of the larger not for profits and drive efficiencies in there because sometimes they're not that efficient. I make that kind of contribution. You know, do I want to, you know, is this around you know, what's like running space? I mean, there's groundbreaking stuff, you know, very interesting. You know, running rocket ships. Every tech geek in the world would feel that way around that as a product like Elon himself has become quite a divisive character, but not getting to politics. But I mean, his businesses are incredible, right? I should actually say Elon Musk calling him Elon suggested I know the man, which of course I don't, right? Elon Musk, you know, it's a good question. It's a challenging question. Nasa we'd all like to know, are we alone out there? That'd be a fun one. You know, getting answers to that, maybe running the data archive for the US government and having access to everything that might be interesting to.
[00:40:48] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Um, yeah, that could be a fun one. You could write quite a book after.
[00:40:51] Guest: Paul Lynch: Just a week.
[00:40:52] Guest: Paul Lynch: I'm not sure that you're going to get published on that book, though, because.
[00:40:56] Guest: Paul Lynch: There.
[00:40:56] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Could be some challenges with that. But, you know, details.
[00:41:00] Guest: Paul Lynch: Those kind of ones would be interesting.
[00:41:01] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, yeah. No. When you mentioned Elon Musk, I had someone respond, they're like, I want to be him for a week to determine if he's human or not. How does someone run seven different companies like he does? He's like, I want to see if it's really an alien. And I just kind of.Laugh.
[00:41:13] Guest: Paul Lynch: And I think that the money would be on. He is an alien.
[00:41:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: There's probably some truth to that. All right. Favorite travel destination? If you can go anywhere in the world tomorrow, where are you going?
[00:41:25] Guest: Paul Lynch: So, presuming I love the Caribbean, I love Grand Cayman, I love Sicily. You know, Sicily is a fabulous summer destination. When you're staying, say, in terminal and you're looking out over Vesuvius. Erupting. Cayman is just such a lovely, safe place. Beautiful weather, great water. I like to get back to Ireland. It's a beautiful place. The weather, however, is a little bit challenging for me, particularly seeing as I'm used to Texas and you know, I think in terms of less travel places. Sub-saharan Africa. Beautiful. I'm not sure anyone's ever seen the stars in the sky until they've actually gone there. There's so much light pollution in the developed world. I go to the underdeveloped world or the emerging world where we don't have this terrible light pollution, and then you can actually see what people saw, you know, 500 or 1000 2000 years ago, as opposed to what you're looking at every night when you look into a light polluted sky and see the North Star and a couple of others, Alpha Centauri. When you go to Africa and you look up and you see millions upon millions of speckles, you realize that, like, you know, going to Graham Hancock, you know, astrology was, of course, at the center of prehistory because what they see, we can't. That's quite a profound answer to your question, Paul. So.
[00:42:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Well thank you. You gave us a few different options there. So I think we're just about out of time here. I think we'll kind of wrap up. So last question. If someone wants to learn more about you, you know, get in touch, learn more about Centage. What's the best way for them to do that?
[00:42:52] Guest: Paul Lynch: Yeah.
[00:42:52] Guest: Paul Lynch: Ping me directly Paul Lynch at com or come into the website for that a contact us form. We'd love to show you and demo it. As far as from a personal experience perspective, if you've heard something that you'd like to follow up on a personal level, or if there's something that you feel like can help you with your business. Hit me up on LinkedIn. That's the best place to get me. I'm on other social media platforms, but I don't. I don't really use them for me. Like I'm social media for me is around business connections as opposed to telling people what I had for dinner. So LinkedIn is a place to find me. And look.
[00:43:23] Guest: Paul Lynch: I mean, you don't put all your.
[00:43:24] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Dinner menus out there pictures when you go to the butcher.
[00:43:27] Guest: Paul Lynch: I'm just I'm just not that interesting. But, like, here, I'm not wanting to deflect, but I am busy. You know, this. This is everybody, but, like, reach out to me. If I can help out with anything, I'll do my best to carve out a couple of minutes, particularly if you're taking that leap as an entrepreneur for the first time. It's always challenging if I can help in any way, I'm happy to.
[00:43:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Well, I appreciate that, Paul, and thanks for joining us. I enjoyed getting to chat with you today and have a great rest of your day.
[00:43:55] Guest: Paul Lynch: It's been a pleasure to come on. Keep doing what you're doing. You're raising the tide for all of us.
[00:44:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I appreciate that, thanks.
[00:44:02] 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.