How To Make FP&A Software Tools Work For You And The Future Of FP&A With Ben Pierce
In this episode of FP&A Unlocked, host Paul Barnhurst talks with Ben Pierce, General Manager of Workday Adaptive Planning, to discuss the evolving landscape of FP&A, the challenges of planning software, and the future of finance in an AI-driven world. Ben shares his career journey, from semiconductor engineering to leadership roles in the FP&A software industry, and dives into his vision for how AI is transforming the way businesses plan and make decisions.
Ben Pierce is an experienced executive with over two decades of experience in the enterprise software industry. Currently, he leads Workday Adaptive Planning’s global strategy, growth, and innovation efforts. Prior to joining Workday, Ben held senior roles in several companies, including River Logic, Tidemark, and IBM, where he honed his expertise in analytics, financial software, and business leadership. His career has been shaped by his passion for leveraging technology to improve business operations and drive impactful change.
Expect to Learn:
Why Ben believes the future of FP&A is in AI and analytics
The importance of challenging the business with actionable insights
How to make FP&A tools work for you, not just as a data repository
What to consider when choosing and implementing FP&A software
The balance between strategic planning and flexible budgeting processes
Here are a few relevant quotes from the episode:
"A great FP&A partner doesn’t just provide data, they come to the table with a point of view and push you to do better." – Ben Pierce
"At the end of the day, it’s not about the tool, it’s about the implementation and how you engage with it." – Ben Pierce
Ben Pierce offers invaluable insights into FP&A, emphasizing the need for technology to not only streamline processes but also enhance decision-making capabilities. His advice on selecting the right FP&A tools and the importance of having a supportive implementation partner is essential for any finance team looking to modernize their planning processes.
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Free Trial of Workday
Try Workday Adaptive Planning free for 30 days - https://forms.workday.com/en-us/sales/adaptive-planning-free-trial/form.html?locale=enus&aud=ada&stage=ce&size=all&pblr=wd&assettype=oth&productfocus=pl&utm_medium=evnt&utm_source=evlv&step=step1_sales_contact
Follow Ben:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpierce23/
Company - https://www.linkedin.com/company/workday/
Website - https://www.workday.com/
Earn Your CPE Credit
For CPE credit please go to earmarkcpe.com, listen to the episode, download the app, and answer a few questions and earn your CPE certification. To earn education credits for FPAC Certificate, take the quiz on earmark and contact Paul Barnhurst for further details.
In Today’s Episode
[02:50] – From Engineering to Software Leadership
[04:56] – What Makes Great FP&A
[08:02] – The Power of Challenging the Business
[12:05] – How to Choose the Right FP&A Tool
[13:33] – Advice for Moving to the Vendor Side
[16:03] – The Future of AI and FP&A
[18:12] – Bridging the Gap Between Planning and Analytics
[21:04] – The Role of Zero-Based Budgeting
[25:46] – Best Practices for Annual Budgeting
[28:06] – Handling Headcount Planning Challenges
[32:28] – Getting the Most Out of FP&A Software
[36:52] – Closing Thoughts and Final Advice
Full Show Transcript
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of FP&A Unlocked. Are you tired of being seen as just a spreadsheet person? Will others get a seat at the table? Well then welcome to FP&A Unlocked, where finance meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A guy. Each week we bring you conversations and practical advice from thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who are reshaping the role of FP&A in today's business world. Together we'll uncover the strategies and experiences that separate good FP&A professionals from great ones helping you elevate your career and drive strategic impact. Speaking of strategic impact, our title sponsor for FP&A Unlocked is campfire, the ERP. That's helping modern finance teams close, fast and scale faster. Today's guest is someone who helps p and a professionals earn that coveted seat at the table by helping them implement their FP&A software, helping them select that tool. I'm excited and thrilled to welcome Ben Pierce to the show. Ben, welcome
Guest: Ben Pierce (01:00):
Paul. Thank you so much for having me. A long time fan of yours. So it's personally exciting to be on the show.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:06):
No, I'm really excited. I know we've got to know each other personally over the last year and we've talked about this for a while, so I'm glad we've been able to make it happen. I know you've been busy there at Workday,
Guest: Ben Pierce (01:18):
Been very busy here at Workday and yeah, it's been great to get to know you over the last year and I've been looking forward to this. So thanks for having me on.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:25):
Yeah, no, thanks for joining. So just a little bit about Ben's background and then we'll jump into some questions here. So Ben is the general manager of Workday Adaptive Planning, where he leads the business unit's global strategy, growth and innovation. He's based in Dallas, Texas. Ben is focused on shaping the future of enterprise planning by combining workday's market leading platform with new advances in AI to deliver transformative value for customers. Since joining Workday in 2016, Ben has held multiple senior leadership roles across financials, analytics, and emerging products, building high performing teams and scaling businesses that now serve thousands of organisations worldwide. Prior to Workday, he was chief revenue officer at River Logic, the vice president of sales of tidemark and held sales and leadership roles. At IBM, Ben holds an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor's degree in electrical and computer engineering from Michigan State. He began his career at Motorola Freescale Semiconductor as a design engineer and product marketer, giving him a unique foundation that bridges technical innovation with business leadership. So before I get to my typical first question, I have to ask, how did you go from semiconductor engineer, electrical engineering to kind of sales, and then on kind of general manager at Workday? How did that path come about?
Guest: Ben Pierce (02:50):
Well, some of it is I just kind of fell into it and opportunities presented themselves, but I guess after the.com bubbled burst and I was coding in a cubicle with a sun microt workspace for eight to 10 hours a day, I guess I kind of just decided that this is not what I want to do with the rest of my life. So went back to business school and then after business school followed a close friend of mine into sales of all things at IBM where IBM's a great place to learn how to sell because they're kind of like the Home Depot of it. Whatever you want, they've got it. And so I've kind of learned about a bunch of different things from selling servers and networking to business analytic applications like Cognos, which is how I fell in love with FP&A and then do an SAP and Oracle implementations and things like that.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (03:40):
Got it. So ended up getting into sales after grad school and with IBM fell into it, so to speak.
Guest: Ben Pierce (03:46):
Yeah, I'd say just kind of luck of the draw and fell into it. It's funny because as an engineer I always thought there's no way that I can do sales, and I guess I couldn't have been more wrong.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (03:58):
No, it's funny, I never picture myself doing sales, but running my own business, I do a lot of it now.
Guest: Ben Pierce (04:03):
Yeah, exactly.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (04:03):
You kind of learn as you go, nor did I ever picture myself in FP&A, so I get it. Kind of funny how life works.
Guest: Ben Pierce (04:08):
I say You're doing pretty good at both.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (04:10):
Yeah, they've worked out pretty well. I enjoy it. So that's the main thing, right? Finding something that you at least feel like you're good at and enjoy.
Guest: Ben Pierce (04:18):
Yeah, exactly. That's my message for my kids. Just do something you love and eventually if you keep doing it, you'll get great at it.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (04:26):
Yeah, so much truth to that. If you persist at doing something, it becomes easier. You become better at it. That's why I tell people all the time, go, how are you get so good at Excel or someone who's a presenter, how do you get so good at presenting and practise? Dunno what to tell you. You got to put in the reps
Guest: Ben Pierce (04:40):
10,000 hour rule.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (04:41):
Yep. There's a lot of truth to it. So this is a question I'd love to get your perspective on. As someone who does not work day to day in FP&A but supports the profession, when you think of great FP&A, what does that look like to you? What comes to mind for you?
Guest: Ben Pierce (04:56):
Well, I've got a little bit of a unique perspective having done this for a number of years and watching implementations be extremely successful and then I've certainly seen my fair share fail, but also as the GM here of adaptive planning at Workday, I own a p and l and I've got finance business partner who is in charge of helping me as the general manager come up with a budget to the monthly forecast, analyse where we're tracking what the variances are, et cetera. And so I'll just take this I guess from my own perspective as the GM and as you can imagine running a planning business, I am very analytical, very much in the data. And so I think great FP&A support is not just providing the data but actually coming to me with a point of view and challenging and pushing me. I want my business partners, whether it's FP&A or it's hr, whoever it might be to be pushing me.
(05:59):
And if it's not a little bit uncomfortable then I don't think probably you're doing it. So I want them to come to me with a point of view. I want them to push me on, here's what you should be looking at, here's an analysis of the business. Why aren't we growing more here? Why aren't we putting more resources here? I kind of want my finance team to be better than me on the data and be better than me on the business and be pushing me because there's so many things day to day that I have to look after. I do love getting pretty deep in the data, but I really want my finance team to be pushing me and I'd say a great planning process or a great budgeting process and we just completed ours and went through ours is something that's easy and frictionless to the point where you can, I'd like for every plan to start with just a TurboTax form, what's changed this year?
(06:51):
What's changed going into next year? Just like your personal taxes, did you buy a house? Did you get married? Did you have any kids? Pretty similar in business, right? Are you hiring anybody? Are you doing anything different here? Are you doing anything different there? So start there I guess is what's changing going forward and leverage and everything else should be like I would think filled in for you as a starting point. And then it's just really looking at what do we need to do change wise to grow the business in a growth business. So we need to keep growing, so how are we going to really grow the business? And that's where the discussion comes in with my finance team is how are we going to grow the business? Instead of just asking me how I'm going to grow the business, come work with me and come tell me, here's where you should be growing the business. And that's by looking at both the market, our competitors in the field, but also the rest of our company and where our company is growing. We have a unique position of being within Workday that we can draught off of a lot of things that Workday's doing and we should get some lift from that. There's
Host: Paul Barnhurst (08:02):
A couple of things I really like there in that answer. And the first is the whole idea. If I'm not being challenged, if there's not a little bit of friction, they're probably not doing the job. One of the big things I hear from people is FP&A should challenge the business FP&A should come with ideas. So often we come with numbers, but then we don't tell the business here's what we think should be done or here's some ideas or one of the advice I love from someone I interviewed, she called it the 1 3 1 rule focus on one problem offer three solutions and one recommendation. And I just love that idea. If you go to somebody with that, if my admin or someone works to me comes to me with that, it makes it much easier to decide where should we go versus Oh hey, I saw this in the data, what should we do? You just spent six hours with it, why don't you help me understand what we should do?
Guest: Ben Pierce (08:52):
That's a good chat GPT prompt as well too by the way I've heard is the 1 3 1 rule. So I'm going to ask the same thing of chat GPT. I think that's a good method.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (09:02):
Interesting. I'll have to try that. I hadn't thought of doing that with catch GPT, you see learning new things all the time. So I know Gartner just recently I think in the last month or so is pretty recent released it's Magic Quadrant and I know for you guys for the fourth straight year you're recognised as a leader. What does that accomplishment mean for you at Workday? I know you've been there for all four of those years and how do you think of that?
Guest: Ben Pierce (09:23):
I think we think about it in a couple of different ways. One is we're always trying to improve underneath the Gartner Magic Quadrant as a list of critical capabilities and we look at each one of those and we try to advance on each one of those. And this year was really the first year where we made strides on every single one. So I was really proud of our product organisation and kind of what they're doing. There's no such thing as a perfect software product. I don't care if it's planning or if it's ERP or it's your home note taking app. There is no such thing as perfect software. And so there's always areas that we can improve upon and so I was really proud of our product team for making strides on all the underlying things that go into this. Two is I think we're the only vendor that's also been for the third straight year Gartner Peer Insights customer choice award.
(10:18):
And to me that says so much because at the end of the day that's what it's all about. It's all about our customers and making sure they're successful. And if we do that then I think we build a business that is going to be sustainable for the long term and hopefully going to build upon itself as a flywheel. And we do see that in our business. We have so many returning customers that every single quarter there's FP&A people they tend to move positions Paul as you know from time to time. And so when they do, we get a lot of calls from our past customers that, hey, we just moved in a new position and we're looking for a solution. But to me having the highest number of reviews and the highest rating on Gartner peer insights, that's gold to me. That means more to me than anything else.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (11:12):
It really does come down to the customer and what do they think? I love when I get testimonials from people emails, especially when they're unsolicited. I get 'em on LinkedIn just saying, Hey, thank you for putting this out or you helped me with that or we were able to accomplish this because of something you shared. It's always rewarding. So I totally agree with you, different area, but same idea as you want your customers love you because when I think of FP&A software, I mean you've worked for multiple vendors, there's no perfect tool.
Guest: Ben Pierce (11:42):
You
Host: Paul Barnhurst (11:42):
More than one tool can work for every company out there. So it's what are you doing to make it a great experience from selection to implementation to use that entire cycle that really separates the companies only so many different ways you can plan analytics. There's a lot reporting, there's a lot of core similarities that every tool is going to have
Guest: Ben Pierce (12:05):
A hundred percent. And at the end of the day there's so much to be said for what kind of partner are you going to be at the end of the day when somebody picks up the phone. And this is, I try to drive this through our team, but this is one of our core values at Workday too, and I've seen it over the last 10 years to be true is when somebody has an issue, what do we do? Do we jump on it? Even if it's not your job, even if that's not your customer, even if that's not, I've had so many people reach out to me just over LinkedIn or something and say, Hey, I'm just looking for this, can you help me? And so how do we react and how do we treat our customers because it's not going to be perfect and people are going to run into challenges or they're just going to run into issues. And so how do we help our customers regardless of what your role is at the company is a really important thing from my perspective.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (12:55):
A hundred percent agree. And speaking of helping people, this is shifting gears a little bit, but I think it's along the lines of helping people. I hear from time to time people who want to make that switch to working for an FP&A software vendor like, Hey, I'm tired of a day-to-day FP&A, I think it'd be interesting to help with implementation or product or whatever the role may be with software, sometimes it sells. I've had a good friend that went into the sell side of things. What advice would you offer to someone who's maybe working in FP&A and they're thinking, Hey, it would be interesting to work for a vendor. Often I see 'em, they go to work for the vendor they implement a lot of times is how they first get into it, but I just love your thoughts on that.
Guest: Ben Pierce (13:33):
Well, certainly the majority of people that are on our services team definitely worked in FP&A, but also most of the people that are in our solution consulting organisations. So the people that really try to understand the challenges of the people that are looking for a solution and then try to help communicate how our solution can help address some of those requirements. Some of those challenges. The majority of people on our solution consulting team are former FP&A professionals for over a decade or more. And then a lot of people on our product team end up, it kind of goes from usually you come in, you do some services, you move to solution consulting, and then at some point you might move into a product role. We have a lot of people that have taken that path. I think the one piece of advice I'd have is go implement a couple of different solutions because then you'll get really a perspective on some similarities.
(14:32):
So if you've done two implementations of two different solutions, you have a pretty good base. And then the other advice that I'd have is think about the travel piece of it because there is a travel component to working in the software industry and where I've seen people I guess not really enjoy moving to the software industry is when travel becomes an issue on the home front. And I have a lot of friends as I went to business school at Texas, I have a lot of friends that ended up going into consulting. They went into the Deloitte and PWCs and FTIs, et cetera of the world and some of them are still there, but the majority of them, after they had kids, they ended up going into corporate finance because the travel was just out of control. Not that it would be necessarily in every single job, but there's a healthy amount of travel in the software industry, something to consider because if you home life is not balanced, then nothing else is going to matter.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (15:28):
Yeah, no, I agree. It's one of the big reasons I considered consulting and investment banking and I'm like, I don't want to travel all the time. I don't want to work 24 hours a day. So that eliminates investment banking and consulting.
Guest: Ben Pierce (15:40):
Not quite that bad. I almost took a job doing consulting as well too, and I'm glad I ended up not taking that role, but it's not that bad, but certainly the travel component to it.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (15:53):
Yeah, no, and not say it's all the time, but it was just that idea of constantly being on the road. And Mike, I get it. I think it's a good point. It's definitely something to keep in mind.
Guest: Ben Pierce (16:03):
I would say one of the cool things about working in a software company, especially in FP&A is that you get to interact with so many different companies and so many different people. It gives you a perspective and really teaches you so many different things about so many different businesses because FP&A is kind of like a Harvard business case in a box, everything comes into the model because you're really trying to predict what the financial results are going to be and in order to predict the financial results, you really need to understand the operational drivers of the business. So one place in a company where, I mean that's why they call it a model, a business model because you're literally trying to model a business and predict what's going to happen. And so what's cool about being in the software business is that you get exposure to so many different businesses and you really get to learn what's common across all of 'em. And then some of the unique porter's, five forces, competitive dynamics, et cetera, that exist across an ice business. For example, which I worked with an ice company here in Dallas I think 10 years ago when I was a sales rep, and it was fascinating to learn how they build ice, how they sell ice. It's an ice business, but it's really fascinating to learn how an ice business works. You just kind of get to do that every single day, learn about new businesses.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (17:28):
You're not the only who said that. I recently interviewed an implementation specialist because I love going in and learning about the different businesses in the industries, especially in the early days as I was first doing this and worked with different companies. It was just fascinating.
Guest: Ben Pierce (17:42):
Yeah, it's a cool part about the John.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (17:44):
Yeah, I would imagine. I love getting to learn a little bit about different businesses as I interview people. It's a different level, but same kind of idea, so I can totally appreciate that. Stepping back up a little more to the industry as a whole, when you and I chatted, there was something you mentioned and I wanted to bring this up. You said you feel like FP&A software and not speaking to any tool but kind of the industry has had some unfulfilled promises. Can you talk a little bit about what those are and why you think that is the case?
Guest: Ben Pierce (18:12):
I picked up a phrase called we're going to give you the A back in FP&A probably 20 years ago when we started selling Cognos at IBM. And it turns out that phrase is older than that because as I met people who were selling Hyperion and S space in the nineties, they were saying the exact same thing and today we're still saying the same thing. I think that the challenge with that is that there's only so much you can make the P small to give back time to get the A right at some point. There's only so small that you can make that. And so the challenge is is that if your whole thing is we're going to make the P smaller to give you back more time to work on the A and look, I think a lot of these solutions, the fact that they just bring everybody into the same system and there's one version of the truth versus a bunch of spreadsheets running around, that absolutely gives people more kind of insight into the business, allows 'em to focus more on analytics, but it's got to go beyond reporting.
(19:11):
It's got to go into the thing we talked about at the beginning, which is how are you going to advise your business partners on what they should be doing? And to do that, you really need I think a deeper level of analytics than any planning solution can provide today because planning and analytics were really bifurcated because of technology and it was bifurcated because there was a high volume read database solution and then a write back database solution. So we bifurcated really the capabilities that every FP&A needs into really two technologies over the last 30 years. And I think with AI and with some of the new capabilities that are out there, we have the opportunity to fix that issue and to bring that back into a system where FP&A can do their entire job and to include creating narrative reports to include communications, to include all the analytics that are required to help advise the business and get off of this thought process that it's just about a planning system.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (20:19):
Yeah, no, I a hundred percent agree with you. I remember I still interviewed, it's one of if not the most popular episode I've had on the show and he said, I would love to change FP&A to FANP to focus on the analytics. He thinks so often we spend a lot of time on the A or as another cj, Gus vicinity does mostly metrics call it one time. He goes, most companies have a fat P and a skinny A. He's like, it should be the opposite way around in that you should be spending most of your time on the analytics, and you're right, you can only make the piece so skinny. You have to plan. Planning is part of life, any productive business if you don't plan as the quote goes plan to fail. So you have to have it. And I agree with you on the technology and AI and all those things are allowing a lot more to be done.
(21:04):
I think you're seeing more and more, I'd love your thoughts kind of a blurring of the line of BI tools and analytic and FP&A tools as they become more analytic based as they do more on the reporting side and the analysis. What's your thoughts there?
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Guest: Ben Pierce (22:18):
I think there's a lot of BI tools that have started to incorporate planning capabilities into it. I think that that's certainly possible. The planning, there's so much nuance into, there is so much nuance. I mean the level of requirements sometimes that we get for a planning solution are 15 tabs in an Excel spreadsheet long right now I would argue it doesn't really need to be that complicated, but a lot of times it is. And so a lot of the very specific things people are looking for in order to plan their business from specific kinds of driver-based planning to allocations to just the concept of understanding debits and credits and how to build a balance sheet cashflow and everything like that. There's a lot of nuance to that. And so I don't think it's super easy to take an analytics solution and just each IT planning, A lot of times you need a planning solution specifically for financial planning that is really context aware of all things finance versus taking some kind of an analytic solution and just saying, we're going to teach a finance.
(23:30):
I think that there is a requirement for very different kinds of technology to address the different use cases that FP&A needs, but I think for the first time you can bring that together leveraging AI without having to have people jump between multiple different systems and having disjointed experiences. And so that's where I think the future is going and I think you can take that and then extrapolate that to integrated business planning, which I worked at a company where 10 years ago trying to build integrated business planning all the way back to financial planning. And it was really challenging to do. Very, very challenging to do and I still think it would be challenging to do it if you're trying to build one system to do it today, but I think in the world of AI with MCP, you don't have to do it anymore to hold an SNOP meeting.
(24:24):
I think you could have that happen in five seconds with AI agents that are sitting in supply chain sales operations and finance and go create all the different scenarios that you need to create. Ultimately bring that information back to whoever it might be, the CFO, C-E-O-C-O-O, and present them with three to five of the best risk adjusted forecasts based on the constraints of your organisation. I think that is where the future is ultimately going from not just being about financial planning, but truly to planning your business, to making business decisions, not just finance decisions, not just operations decisions, but bringing it all together. And so that's where I think the blend of planning and analytics is going to come together and it's going to come together because we're going to be able to put AI on top of it and have agents talk to each other.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (25:18):
That makes a lot of sense and it's exciting to think of AI and how the agents can speak together for integrating the planning process and having ability to better make sure you're aligned everywhere on those operational financial. We've all been there where there's a disconnect, you see the financial number, you go talk to someone and you realise, oh, what you guys built in doesn't include all the cost or doesn't include this assumption or whatever it might be. And then you're scrambling to figure out how you close that gap.
Guest: Ben Pierce (25:46):
Yeah, the simplest, actually most common example of that and specifically one that we see all the time being workday is just headcount and headcount planning. And you could say that that's kind of an operational use case. And by the way, every single part of the organisation looks at workforce planning totally differently. If you're the COO, it's all about the resources and having the right capacity to go deliver on what you need to do operationally. If you're in hr, it's more about skills and strategic workforce planning and if you're in finance, it's about headcount cost. And so it's funny to see each one of these three components of a business in something like planning your headcount be completely different and have totally different views. And a lot of times they have different models and none of the models actually sync with each other, so it happens all the time.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (26:40):
Yeah, no, I know head count's a big one. I've definitely dealt with the pain of trying to align head count and even just getting everybody in the right place then making sure you're all on the same page after that. It's amazing how much of a challenge it is. You'd think we'd have it figured out already.
Guest: Ben Pierce (26:56):
And then most of the time when I'm talking to finance, it's usually about reconciling the headcount plan. Anybody could come up with a headcount plan. It's actually tracking what actually happened after you came up with an headcount plan. That's hard. Were these people hired late? Were they hired in a different location? Were they hired at a different job level? Were they just never hired at all? What's actually driving this? And being able to tie that down to a position so you can actually track it. It's challenging.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (27:28):
No, a hundred percent agree. Definitely been there where you're like, but we hired them in this. You have multiple legal entities. They worked for a big company, they had a bunch of different legal entities and for various reasons we get people we had to hire 'em in this legal entity. Oh, that's why we didn't know they were hired. Okay, so who is that and how do we get the cost to the right place? There definitely could be various reasons for it, but been there on that one more than once. So when it comes to planning, I know you've seen a lot of different processes from seeing companies do it to kind of help leading it yourself. What are some of the best practises you see when people are managing that annual budgeting process?
Guest: Ben Pierce (28:06):
I'll talk a little bit about the challenges first, and we have this challenge as well too. And one of those challenges is you start doing kind of strategic planning summer, July, August, you start really getting into your annual planning, September, probably lock that down end of October, roll into a couple revisions in November, try to commit it in December or something like that. And then you're into it. There's so much that has changed during that time period and you've spent so much effort trying to come up with a 12 month plan and for good reason, right? Because you need something to guide the business. You need something to hold people accountable to. You need to at least have that tied and linked to what your annual corporate fiscal calendar it looks like. So you can give the board and whoever your investors are guidance, but at the same time things are moving really, really fast.
(29:02):
And even during our planning process, there has been a number of different changes both from a market standpoint with ai from an internal standpoint that have made our budget a little bit already, we haven't even totally committed it and it's a little bit out of date. And so I think that's one of the challenges. So I think really good annual planning and annual budgeting comes down to let's be okay with just being directionally correct. Let's not go way overboard here because at some point there's diminishing returns on the level of effort that you put in and you could spend another 80% of effort and you could get maybe five more percent out of it. And is it really worth it to pull everybody away from actually working in the business to a little bit work on the business for an extra 80% of the time?
(29:55):
I don't think that it's, so that would be, I'd say what is really good at budgeting and planning is finding that balance. I think it's hard to find that balance of how much time you put in versus how much you actually get out, but if you're able to find that balance, I think you'll have business stakeholders that are a lot more willing to participate in it. I think when they feel like, oh, I'm going to get beaten down with 17 revisions, that's when people start to pull away and you start to miss deadlines and they start to not really pay as much attention to the numbers and therefore you get inaccuracies and things like that. So I dunno, what's your experience Ben Paul? Yeah,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (30:34):
So there are two thoughts is I was listening to came to mind is I've come to the conclusion that it's similar to hiring. Studies have shown that after three rounds, having an interview with additional people doesn't really change the decision and I kind of feel like the same with the plan in a lot of ways when you're up to revision 4, 5, 6, 7, often very little changes and you're just losing people. I mean I've had one that we didn't lock it down until six months into the new year really can we finally agree on our number like the year's half over, I mean I had another time where we agreed on numbers and then corporate decided we were too far ahead. We basically, we were given the direction, we're not going to miss their numbers this year. The company had missed the last three years, so they were soft numbers.
(31:16):
We all knew going in that as long as things went reasonable we should exceed. But halfway through the year, corporate decided to just redo 'em all and give us higher targets. It was so bad. One month I literally submitted in my variance commentary, I have no idea what's driving the revenue because you guys gave me a number and I can't make sense of it. It was only one time I could get away with that. So I really like what you said. I think reducing the number revisions, something else I've seen that I think if you keep it high level is beneficial at American Express we would do what we called a zero 12, which was a high level exercise at the very end of the year to take whatever we'd locked down for budget and adjust it before we went into the new year based on that.
(31:58):
So we'd lock it down maybe mid-November, then late December we'd spend a couple days and just make those tweaks based on where we were expecting to exit everything. And I always thought that was nice because right, the numbers never, as you said, it's never going to be right. It's always going to change and the reality is rarely is that extra time worth the effort. I agree with you, be directionally correct and then I'm a fan throughout the years trying to do r os as much as you can to limit doing full-blown forecasts all the time.
Guest: Ben Pierce (32:28):
What's your view on zero-based budgeting?
Host: Paul Barnhurst (32:31):
If costs have got out of control, I think it's a good exercise to contain them. I also think of some of your most expensive areas. It can be good. I don't think it's something I want to do across the board. Pick and choose where it makes sense, where costs are really rising or where you have the majority of your costs and then run rate the rest because generally 20% of things drive 80% of your costs, right? Headcount, software, vendors, t and e, maybe one other thing. It's like okay, so take those two or three things that are really important and consider zero base there not everywhere. What about you? And now a brief message from our sponsor is your AI thinking like a generalist or like a finance leader? Here's the thing, most large language models weren't built for finance. They're trained on everything from Reddit threads to recipe blogs.
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Guest: Ben Pierce (34:27):
We just went through our first zero base budgeting and it was really interesting and I think it was really valuable quite frankly when you
Host: Paul Barnhurst (34:36):
Did you do it across the board like everything or
Guest: Ben Pierce (34:39):
We did it specifically in product
(34:42):
And I think the benefit of going through it and we've got a new leadership team in place who's done this in the past, I think the benefit of doing it was twofold. One is when you grow as fast as Workday has grown, when I joined Workday about 10 years ago, we're less than a billion and now we're 10 billion. So we have 10 x the company 10 years. And when you grow as fast as Workday grows, at some point you got to look at the whole thing and say, whoa, I know we were growing super fast and we're just making decisions. But now we have to look at the whole thing and say, are we really optimised for what we need to do going forward? Especially given the change and the turn here that's happening with ai. So I think it was super healthy and a really great exercise first time I've been through it, but I think to your point, we didn't do it across the company and I don't think it would've made sense to do it across the company. I think it was very specific and for very good reason and that was kind of my learning from it as well. Paul, I kind of took away the same thing that you just recommended.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (35:44):
Well good. No, I'm glad it went well and we definitely used it at one of my companies, particularly around all of our contracts, mostly software licences, but all our contracts because we had bought a tonne of companies that never really integrated. So it was a big zero base to say, okay, can we leverage our scale was a big part of the exercise too, and yet consolidate the contracts. We saved quite a bit of money as we worked through all that, realising how much inefficiency we had and contracts that in one we're paying $12, the other we're paying $8 per licence. It's like why
Guest: Ben Pierce (36:17):
We did the exact same thing. We use this tool called EOR to look at every single one of our contracts and we liked it so much we bought the company.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (36:25):
There you go. They must've done a good job for you.
Guest: Ben Pierce (36:27):
They did a great job for us.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (36:29):
Alright, so before we move into, I have some standard FP&A questions a little they get to know you. I have one more question I want to ask here. So obviously I think this is right up your alley. If you have any FP&A professionals that are listening who are looking for an FP&A tool, what advice would you give them to go through that process to increase their chances of success? What are some of those things you recommend they do?
Guest: Ben Pierce (36:52):
So a couple of things. One is yes, you're going to have your technical list of things, but as Paul said kind of at the beginning of this podcast, all of the solutions that are out there are going to be able to kind of do similar things and we're all going to have differences and we're all going to go try to convince you our differences are the ones that are most important to you. But I think it's more important for the success ultimately of the project and for the success of what you're trying to do with process that you get everybody on the same page and you get specifically the business stakeholders and the IT team, they need to be on the same page. There's been a lot of situations where we've gotten to, you get to the end of sales cycle and all of a sudden there's a business person and a COO president who's like, wait a second, I'm not doing this, why would I do this?
(37:48):
Right? Or you get it saying, oh no, no, no, this doesn't fit into our priorities. We have all these other priorities, we have all these other things going on. So that would be one. Two would be I think you need to get it depends on what your needs are, but generally I would recommend for fp a people get your hands on the keyboard and try to do something with the solution because if you can't own it, then you're going to be in a place where you're going to end up ejecting into Excel and you're going to end up doing most of your work in Excel anyways. And then loading things up in the planning solution. That is the number one issue with any implementation is that it just becomes a repository and what you wanted it to be never is. And you end up in Excel and you end up doing 90% of your work, 90% of your planning in Excel and they use it as a repository and an aggregator.
(38:41):
I would say start with a slide that says we are not going to end up here. Where I think most of implementations when they go wrong, that's where they end up is they end up as an aggregator and it has nothing necessarily to do with the solution. A lot of times when we're replacing one of our competitors, there's a lot of fp a people there that are like, oh, this thing's just an aggregator and we're all stuck in Excel and so we need another solution and we'll happily replace that solution. But I would argue that it's probably the implementation, not necessarily the solution that ended you up in that place. And so the third thing I would say is pick your partner who's going to help you implement it and start from very early on working with somebody and make sure that they fit culturally and from a responsiveness standpoint and you have a project manager that you trust that you feel good about that has good references or that has worked with somebody that you know or you've worked with before.
(39:43):
Because I think that the service provider who's ever helping you with the implementation is probably, I mean it's not probably, it absolutely is the most important part about any one of these projects because we have great software and when it goes sideways it's a hundred percent always something to do. And usually it's culturally and it's just the way that a company works and the way that a project manager or the way that a service provider is working, they just don't mesh. The communication level's not right. The cadence is not right. There's no governance structure set up to be able to escalate issues and feel safe on escalating issues. That's the other part. You have to have a place where you feel safe mental security about being able to escalate issues without pointing fingers that it's like John's fault or it's Susie's fault or whoever. And so that you can get to a point where you can get things resolved. And the last thing I'd say is make sure if you do have a governance structure, it's a three-legged stool. It should be you, your service provider and the company that you're buying the software from. And if there's not representation from the company you're buying the software from then on some kind of governance committee, whether that's biweekly or monthly during the project, then I think you have the chance of it going off the rails and you're never giving the company who you bought it from an opportunity to make sure it goes well.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (41:08):
Great advice and not surprised to hear you mention the implementation partner. As I say a lot is look, if you're not a hundred percent happy with your implementation partner, find a new one or go with a different software because as you said, the problem often isn't the software, it's the implementation that ends up making it a data repository.
Guest: Ben Pierce (41:29):
And I would say too, get your hands on the solution. What does it take to go create a new side model and then link that into the rest of the model because your business will change. So can you go when you have a new business line that you acquire, can you model that? Can you model that acquisition? Can you do that without calling a consultant, without having to call it, without having to write code? Can you do that? Because that is also what makes these systems become repositories is that they can't change over time and they can't change over time because fp a can't own it. And so if you can't own it, guess what? You're going to revert to something you can't own.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (42:09):
A great point. Alright, so I know we just have a few minutes left. I have two questions I want to ask you, kind of our FP&A section we ask every guest and I have a couple get to know you questions. So the first, if I asked you what's the number one technical skill that FP&A professionals should master, what would you say?
Guest: Ben Pierce (42:25):
Data fluency, understanding. And when I say data fluency, it's not just being able to do math or being able to trace numbers, it's being able to speak about the business through data and being able to really understand the model, being able to understand what things mean when you're talking about A-R-R-N-R-R-G-R for me in my business. What are the differences between those? How do you speak about those? What are the things that impact those KPIs? How do you speak about this KPI change, so therefore this changed. Being able to really understand the data, the lineage, the model and how it all syncs together. And then being able, the second piece, this isn't really a technical skill but is being able to explain it.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (43:14):
Data fluency is a great one. I've heard that before. It really is so critical in today's world. What about a softer human skill? Maybe it's explained, but what would you put there?
Guest: Ben Pierce (43:23):
That's definitely presentation skills, I guess. Or the ability to communicate logically without at the right level. That is a skillset. A skillset is being able to communicate at an executive level where you've got executives that are going a million miles a minute have so many different problems to deal with and without dumping an entire three page output on them. Being able to succinctly summarise what are the key issues and what is driving X, Y, and Z and therefore then what actions should be taken. And that's the last piece is a lot of what, as we talked about earlier, I don't think finance is always doing, is then giving the advice on what actions should be taken.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (44:13):
Yeah, I agree with you on the action, as I like to say, it's not data storytelling unless there's insights in a call to action, it's just reporting, which there's times you might need to do reporting, but most of the time what the business wants is that storytelling, not just reporting.
Guest: Ben Pierce (44:27):
That's right. And I don't want to read a novel, I just want to read, I just want the CliffNotes.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (44:33):
That was my problem. The warden once for giving by way,
Guest: Ben Pierce (44:38):
CliffNotes. I feel like I'm dating myself with CliffNotes. I don't think anybody is going to understand what CliffNotes
Host: Paul Barnhurst (44:43):
Means. You and I will, but there'll be plenty that won't. So go Google it or ask chat GPT to give you the history or whatever tool you use of CliffNotes.
Guest: Ben Pierce (44:52):
There you go.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (44:53):
Alright, so I just have a couple quick questions to get to know a little bit about you. What do you like to do in your free time? Favourite hobby or passion?
Guest: Ben Pierce (44:59):
Free time. So I've got six kids, so I don't have a lot of free time, but when I do and I'm not travelling, I love music. I've loved music ever since I was 14 and found a guitar in my basement that was my dad's whole guitar and started to learning how to play it. So anything around music, I've got a little home studio here. I love tinkering around with this software called Ableton, if anybody's familiar with that. And just creating music. It's really fun and I love music of all sorts. We did a Spotify rap party with the kids last night to see if you use Spotify. They do this thing every single year called rap, which basically is all these stats about your listening and everything and you can do it with a party so multiple people can join. So we did it with all the kids last night and I was the one that won the most eclectic.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (45:50):
Oh, fun. That's great. I have to keep that one in mind. So if you could have any job in the world for one week, what would you pick?
Guest: Ben Pierce (45:58):
That is a really good question. And think if I was going to have one job, I think it'd probably be something in sports I'd love to do. I'm a huge Vikings fan, I'm a big Dallas Mavericks fan and it's been hard because as you know Paul, we've talked about this with the Luca trade and everything, that's really, like my son cried when they traded Luca. That was tough here. But I think it would be really fun to be something in sports like a sports announcer, maybe not even an announcer, just a trainer and just roll around with a bunch of NBA guys for a road trip or something like that for a week. That would be pretty cool. I'll
Host: Paul Barnhurst (46:37):
Be your assistant trainer. We can go do that for a week.
Guest: Ben Pierce (46:40):
Perfect.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (46:41):
Alrighty, last one. What's one of your most unpopular opinions that you have?
Guest: Ben Pierce (46:47):
I've got a couple, but I think probably the most unpopular one is that AI is going to replace a lot of FP&A people. And I don't think it's going to replace everybody, but if you look at accounting and there's been already a lot of offshoring of accounting, automation of accounting, things like that. I was at a conference the other week and I heard somebody bring up the fact that, hey, a lot of accounting's already been offshore or it's been optimised. And so there might be some things there for AI to go after, but there's a lot more opportunity to go after the other side of the house and finance because a lot of that has not been because it's knowledge work, right? It's a lot of knowledge work. But I think that there is the opportunity to say like, Hey, instead of hiring an analyst, I'm going to buy a new AI solution here that's going to basically be my analyst, right? And I'm going to scale that way and leverage instead of having 15 analysts, maybe I only have five, but they all have AI and so therefore each one can act as if they're a superhuman and be equal to three.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (47:56):
Yeah, they're working 24 hours. No, it'll be interesting to watch. So I definitely think AI will delay some hiring. I'm not sure how much, I'm probably a little less bullish, but time will tell. Alright. I should say I am a little less, I don't think we'll have that big of an impact in short term, but who knows how long and over the long run. AI is crazy to think about. But as we wrap up, if someone wants to learn more about Workday Adaptive or maybe get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Guest: Ben Pierce (48:25):
I mean, the easiest way is go to workday.com/planning and get me a demo or go download our free trial. I can go play with it. Either way, you'll get a call from somebody on our team that'll reach out and say, Hey, do you want to learn more? Or just ping me on LinkedIn. Honestly, I'm pretty open, so ping me on LinkedIn. I'll try to follow up ben.Pierce@workday.com, shoot me an email, I'll make sure that you get taken care of and we find the right person to help you out.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (48:51):
Alright, well perfect. Well thank you Ben. Appreciate you carving out some time today. It was great chatting with you and good luck with the rollout workday. I hope you have a great 2026.
Guest: Ben Pierce (49:01):
Thank you, Paul, really appreciate being on here and I've been watching you over the last five years and all of your success and I'm wishing you just a continued next five years of even more success. So thanks for doing all you do. You're always a fun read and a fun watch, so thank you.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (49:15):
Thanks, everyone. That's it for today's episode of FP&A Unlocked. If you enjoy FP&A unlocked, please take a moment to leave a five-star rating and review. It's the best way to support the FP&A guy and help more FP&A professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpe.com. Downloading the app and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education credits for the FPAC certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A guy, and I'll see you next time.