Olga Rudakova
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Let me welcome you at the Digital North American FP&A Circle. My name is Olga Rudakova. I'm FP&A professional, data storytelling expert and FP&A trends ambassador. I'm happy to facilitate this event for you today. Today's topic is FP&A storytelling. Craft stories that influence and impact. And that topic has attracted way over 300 registrations. Let's have a look at the agenda for the event. First of all, we'll speak a bit about the future of FP&A storytelling. We will go through storytelling lessons for FP&A. We will have an example of simple storytelling with waterfall charts. We'll speak about storytelling as a superpower of finance professionals. We'll cover the role of technology in FP&A storytelling and definitely we will have conclusions, recommendations and Q&A session. Now it's time for me to introduce our panel for today. Please join me on camera, and I will start introductions one by one. So let me start with you, Kavita. Our first speaker for today's event will be Kavita Aggarwal. She's a senior director of finance at Condé Nast. Kavita is based in New York. She has extensive experience in financial planning, forecasting, and business partnering across functions including technology, real estate, facilities, people, legal, PR, and strategy. Kavita, I'm glad to have you with us today.
Kavita Aggarwal
Thank you for having me.
Olga Rudakova
And meanwhile, all of the panelists, please join me on camera and I will move on in our introductions to our second speaker for the event. Renata Berbert is director of FP&A at Amerit Fleet Solutions. Renata is based in San Francisco and she's a leader with extensive experience across diverse industries. including technology, construction, logistics, and automotive services. Renata, thank you so much for joining today.
Renata Berbert
It's a pleasure to be here today, Olga.
Olga Rudakova
Our third speaker will be Anna Zdanowska. She's a commercial finance director for Institutional Europe at Ecolab. Anna is based in Krakow, and she has over 18 years of experience in areas of financial planning, forecasting, and budgeting in both international corporations and government-owned organizations. Anna, thank you for accepting our invitation and joining us.
Anna Zdanowska
Thank you, Olga. That's a great pleasure to be here.
Olga Rudakova
And our 4th speaker today will be Dominic Nguyen. He's FP&A Technology Advisor at Wolters Kluwer at CCH Tagetik. Dominic, I'm glad to have you with us.
Dominic Nguyen
Olga, nice to be here. Excited to get started.
Olga Rudakova
And I'm excited to get started as well at the beginning. Let me introduce our FP&A Trends group through some key numbers and let me pick out some of them for you today. The first of all, we have held 283 international FP&A board meetings face to face since April 2016. More than that, we had 179 FP&A trends webinars since March 2018, and we have launched 35 FP&A trends research papers. These are numbers we are very proud of. And you feel how enormous this knowledge base is. So join us and share all our resources with us. Before we start, let me thank our sponsor CCH Tagetik by Wolters Kluwer for making this event possible. Embrace the future of finance with AI-based corporate performance management software. I will start by the brief introduction into the topic, in the topic of FP&A storytelling. And I would like to open it with a quote. Quote by Stephen Few, data visualization expert. He's one of very few experts in the field who are already retired. That's very young and dynamic field, field of data storytelling and data visualization. In one of his books, he said, numbers have an important story to tell. They rely on you to give them a clear and convincing voice. And that is especially true about FP&A storytelling. About FP&A numbers, they need you and your convincing voice. We will be sharing lots of tips, lots of frameworks on how to use storytelling in FP&A. We will be definitely speaking about using right visuals and applying them to your stories. We will be speaking about public speaking tips and how to improve your presentation side. We will be speaking about understanding the audience and how to craft the message exactly for them. That's why I really would like to start with a simple framework. Think, feel, say, do. That's a model, a framework often used in marketing, in design thinking, in communication. It helps us understand and influence end user, our customer, our audience. And in order to do that, we try to map four key components. We actually create an empathy map. We focus on audience thoughts, what they are thinking and wondering about, what expectations do they have, what bias they might have. What other thoughts are running through their head at the moment? Feel. And we speak about emotions and feelings of the user, of the listener. Is this a joy, frustration, or maybe confusion? So really reading that through facial expressions, through body language can be extremely helpful in crafting your message. Say what they actually are saying, what do they verbalize, how exactly they say it, and finally do. What actions do they take? Observing all that, mapping all that is crucial for understanding pains and gains of the audience. It's crucial for developing a solution and it's crucial for crafting your message. message for your audience through FP&A storytelling. And I'm pretty sure that many of our speakers will be referring to understanding the audience as well. And that's key component for our FP&A storytelling. So having said that, I really would like to start our evening by the first presentation, presentation by Kavita Aggarwal and she will be speaking about storytelling lessons for FP&A. Kavita, let me slowly pass microphone to you and I will disappear and leave the stage. The stage is yours.
Kavita Aggarwal
Thank you, Olga. To add to what Olga said at the beginning, I currently partner with our enabling team stakeholders here at Condé Nast to build operational budgets, turning complex cost into clear, actionable stories that help them make better decisions. Before we get into that, I would love to share some insights on who we are today at Condé Nast. We're an iconic global media company, home to brands such as Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ and more, reaching audiences across 30 plus markets. We're digital first, data-driven, engaging over a billion monthly consumers through video, commerce, subscriptions, and premium storytelling. We're innovative and influential. A modern media powerhouse connecting culture and brands across every platform. All of this sounds glamorous, right? But. Behind the scenes, we were wrangling with our cloud bills and software renewals just like everyone else. That reality is exactly where this story begins, as you can see on the right side of the slide. Have you ever had a cloud invoice or software renewal suddenly blow up your budget, only to hear leadership ask, why didn't we know this sooner? That was exactly my tech opex reality here. Usage-based tools, surprise overages, renewals, costs all felt so random. With no reliable forecasting system, we were stuck in spreadsheets, manually piecing things together. We weren't forecasting, we were firefighting, and that's when it clicked to me. Finance can't just report numbers after the fact. We needed a forecast that worked like a story stakeholders could actually use to steer decisions before the crisis hit. That realization set the stage for a completely different approach. One built with our partners, not for them. The breakthrough wasn't another spreadsheet tweak, it was collaboration. Instead of finance building numbers in isolation, I sat down with our tech owners, procurement, to co-build our forecast. Together, we created a rolling 12-month forecast grounded in real drivers such as contract terms, renewal timelines, Every update wasn't just a number change. It was a conversation about those changes meant for the business. What truly set it apart was the narrative layer. Each forecast update came with a short story, what changed, why it mattered, and the actions you should consider. So I like to draw your attention to the flow diagram at the bottom. Think of it like this, inputs. This is where all your concrete details go into, such as contract terms, usage dashboards, renewal dates, and vendor pricing escalators. That all flows into your forecast, a living model that we update monthly and link to procurement renewal calendar. then that gives you your story, a short narrative every time something change. For example, you should spike here because of X feature launch, or vendor-wise increase in price is coming in Q3. Here's the impact of that. As a result, we can take action. What did we actually do? We renegotiated a contract to avoid overspend. We reallocated those savings to another function's need and expanded the model beyond tech. That simple shift from silent numbers to shared stories gave us clarity and buy-in across teams. And it opened up the door for forecasting to become more than a report, it became a strategic tool. One moment that really proved the power of this new approach, our forecast flagged a spike in compute usage cost months before it actually hit. Because we engaged procurement early, we were able to renegotiate a contract and completely avoided the overspend. But that didn't stop there with that one win. The model gave transparency across tech, procurement, and finance. As trust grew, other functions wanted in. They saw how this forecast could expose risk early and guide smarter decisions. Even our controlling team started beginning to use this to code expenses correctly, and our team was able to load budgets into our EPM system with more accuracy. So what started as a simple forecast model became a storytelling tool. Usage data and charts stopped being just about analytics. They became stories that people could actually act on. We move from explaining past variances to actively shaping what happens next. And that shift from reactive to proactive influence is at the heart of the four takeaways I'll leave you with. Someone would stop you after this presentation later today and asked you what really stuck to you from my session. I'm hoping that these four takeaways would be something that you would remember and you could tell them first. Finance storytelling should shape the future. Instead of explaining variances after the fact, finance can actually steer the ship. making forecasts part of the decision making process. Number two, collaboration makes the numbers stronger. When we build forecasts with tech and procurement, not for them, we get better inputs, stronger buy-in, and less finger pointing. Number three, drivers make the story real. Grounding our forecasts and usage trends make the story believable. People trust it and they act on it. And lastly, great forecasts spark action. The best forecasts don't just sit on the deck. They change what happens next, catching risk early. So that's it. Four takeaways I'm hoping that you can share with your team. And if you forget everything else, just remember this. Forecasts are stories that can save your budget. Thank you.
Olga Rudakova
Let us move on. Let us move on to the discussion. And that's where all together we will explore a more open question. In your experience, what's the most common reason finance presentations fail to influence decision making? Storytelling or lack of storytelling might be an obvious answer, but let's explore some other reasons finance presentations fail. And let me start with you, Renata, here. What do you think? What is the reason?
Renata Berbert
I think one of the reasons is lack of actionable recommendations. When we as FP&As highlight problems without offering some clear and actionable solutions, we leave our audience without the next steps, right? And then sometimes it takes time for them to get back to what needs to be done. And then with day-to-day businesses, the insights get lost, right?
Olga Rudakova
Indeed, indeed. If we don't know what needs to be done, how we can possibly influence decision making as a strategic advisor. Let me move on to you, Anna here. What do you think? What is the most common reason finance presentations fail?
Anna Zdanowska
So when I think about the good storytelling, right, the first thing that comes to my head is it has to be simple. And for us people of finance, it's not always simple. It's abbreviations, a lot of figures, 300 pages. and we just swamp it in the data, in the figures, and it's simply not easy to digest for someone who is on the other side of the business in other functions. So I think that's one of the reasons, and then we cannot conclude it easily, right? So I think those two factors that are connected. to each other.
Olga Rudakova
Indeed. Lack of clarity and ability to adapt your presentations. Definitely that all can affect results. Dominic, what do you think? Why finance presentations fail?
Dominic Nguyen
All great points. Just to add to that, I would say making sure we communicate the benefits, especially in finance with data information, it's important to communicate things like the return on investment or a payback period or something that finance will also gravitate, especially some of the executives and CFOs. So yeah, so make sure we communicate all the things that the panel said here on addition to the benefits.
Olga Rudakova
Indeed, indeed, that's crucially important as well. Back to you, Kavita, what do you think? Why do financations fail?
Kavita Aggarwal
Well, to add to what everyone else just said, I would say focus on decisions, right? Every slide should answer. So what? Now what? So if you can come with that, I feel like you could help steer your business stakeholders in the right direction.
Olga Rudakova
Amazing. Thank you all for your answers, covering all the angles and all the reasons we might fail. Hopefully we won't fail that often after that. And let's move on to the second presentation for today. Renata Berbert will be speaking about simple storytelling with waterfall charts. Renata, let me pass the microphone to you and I myself disappear, leaving all stage to you.
Renata Berbert
Hi, everyone. Today, I'm going to talk about simple storytelling using waterfall charts. As an FP&A executive for over 20 years, I can say that one of our biggest challenges in the function is to effectively communicating our insights. As FP&As, we are known for dealing with very complex data, known for building complex financial models, but I do believe that our biggest impact comes from turning this complex financial data into compelling stories with strategic narratives that resonate with our audience. And to illustrate that today, I'm going to share a case study from my experience at Amerit Fleet Solutions. Amerit is an industry leader in providing preventive maintenance and service repair for commercial fleet. We have one of the biggest commercial fleets in the country like Target, FedEx, now has over 2,500 technicians working at 1,800 different shops spread across the country. And to support and manage this operation, we have around 60 regional fleet managers, which are our operational leaders. In this industry, we have really high turnover rates. not only among the technicians, but also among these operational leaderships, which drives a very low financial literacy among them, right? These operational leaders are true experts on running the business day-to-day, on ensuring that these field technicians are productive, that most of the hours they work during the day are billable to our customers. However, These leaders, they often feel overwhelmed with financial presentations and financial reports because most of the times they are not familiar with these concepts. They are not familiar with financial KPIs. And they struggle to connect their operational metrics with the company's financial results. But bridging this gap can foster not only collaboration, but also data-driven decision making across these teams. That's where the waterfall charts come in. They can be such a powerful yet simple tool to present financial outcomes, especially variances to plan. They are an intuitive, visual, and accessible tool, and it helps us turn numbers into narratives. And with that, we can help and support these operational leaders to understand their financial performance better, and also link their actions, what they do day-to-day, with the company's results. Before walking through an example, I would like to share some useful tips on building these waterfall charts. First of all, keep it simple. Try to use not more than six or seven steps to explain the variance. Focus on the most significant factors. Be strategic here. Second, break down the components. Try to organize the variances into logical components like revenue, cost, expenses. Try to be as simple as you can be. And last but not least, share the chart with the managers that can be held accountable for the numbers at least 48 hours in advance. This can make time for them to review, reflect and come prepared with comments. This approach is not only an opportunity to listen to these leaders' key operational challenges, but it's also an opportunity to increase everyone's understanding on the financial performance. And with that, we can collaborate together on a solution. whether it is creating a new tool, a new report, or any dashboard. Now let's walk you through an illustrative example of a monthly operating profit margin variance to budget. Of course, these numbers are completely illustrative. And as you can see, we have shortfall of $1,000 in margin. And the waterfall chart will help us tell the story behind the numbers step by step. As I just mentioned, organizing the variances with the same flow as we have in the P&L statement, starting with revenue, then costs, and then expenses. I'm also using colors to identify the variances that increase and decrease the margin. So it's a clear chart, very insightful and very accessible. So let's start with an example. If I was presenting this today, I would start with the first variance for the revenue. And as you can see, I'm connecting the operational metrics, which is 12 open positions for the period with the financial impact, $550 in the revenue. And then you can start working on the whys, the reasons why that happened. And then you can start leading the conversation, suggesting some of the causes like, was it because the recruiting team struggled to hire these technicians in certain locations? Which ones were the location where that happened? Was it because of the turnover rates were higher than we expected. And then we can guide the discussion, sharing with the audience that you understand how difficult the business is because you have context, right? And then you become a partner to the audience, not just someone pointing problems with their business, right? I also like to use this presentation to bring concepts and KPIs that these operational managers struggle with understanding, for example, overtime hours. Most operational leaders believe that by working overtime hours, the more hours work, the better for the company, right? Which is partially true because when we work overtime hours for most customers, We make revenue. We have a billing rate for that hour. But for the overtime hour paid, we spend around 1.5 times more, which leads to a lower margin. And then here is an opportunity to showcase that when we work overtime hours more than plan, we have a miss on our margins. And again, here, I'm connecting the operational metrics, 30% of overtime more than plan, with the financial impact $250. So with that being said, I like to say that simple storytelling like waterfall charts can help the FP&A function be the voice behind the numbers. And why is that? Because it helps eliminate distractions, driving meaningful outcomes because we help the audience to focus on what is strategic for the company enabling faster and better decisions, and helping also shift mindsets when you connect operational metrics and financial results, we make ourselves a partner of the function and everyone can be held accountable for the financial results. And in the end, we can position FP&A as a strategic partner.
Olga Rudakova
I would like to ask other panelists to join us here on camera, and we will discuss connected but open questions. What techniques work best to keep executive audiences engaged during a finance presentation? Tricky question, and I will start with you, Anna, here. So what techniques help you to keep executive audiences engaged?
Anna Zdanowska
So what I try to apply on a daily basis is not to only answer questions on what happened, right? Why it happened like that, or what if kind of analysis of scenarios, but also based on that, give a clear recommendations, right? So this is something that I think Renata mentioned already in the previous discussion. Let's try to treat it a bit more personal, right? If we are too much factual without this kind of like, hey, that's my opinion, this is how I feel we should approach the topic, then I believe it's really hard to engage someone that you talk with, right? There is no connection. You don't feel like you are the owner of the problem, simply speaking.
Olga Rudakova
Indeed, indeed. With emotions, it's hard to engage anyone, not only executive audiences. Let's move on to you, Dominic. What do you think? What techniques work best to keep executive audiences engaged?
Dominic Nguyen
Good question. I would add to my colleague here is knowing the audience and the executives because they all have different needs. and pain points that you want to address. So just kind of understanding their personalities and what impacts them. For example, some might be more strategic or some might be more into the details. So kind of just being flexible to kind of accommodate those different executives.
Olga Rudakova
Indeed, indeed. Kavita, what do you think? How to keep executives engaged?
Kavita Aggarwal
I agree with the previous two speakers, but to add to that, tie the numbers to the impact, lead the money to the business drivers. I think that's how you get their attention and keep them engaged.
Olga Rudakova
Renata, back to you. I know that you have practically answered these questions through your presentation, but if you have something to add, how can we keep executive audiences engaged?
Renata Berbert
I think using confident, clear delivery, right? Looking in the eyes, understanding your audience, but also looking like you really own the subject, that you understand everything about your insights. So the executives feel that you can be a strategic advisor in the company, not only a number reporter.
Olga Rudakova
Great, thank you. I loved how you already touched our delivery, our presentation skills, and we'll get to that as well during today's session. Meanwhile, let's move on to our third presentation, and Anna Zdanowska will be sharing with us why storytelling is a superpower of finance professionals. I'll pass the microphone to you, Anna, and I will disappear myself from the stage. It is yours.
Anna Zdanowska
Thank you Olga very much. Big thank you for the invite. Honestly, I'm very enthusiastic about today's discussion and there are two reasons for that. First one is that I'm really a strong believer that storytelling is a superpower for us people of finance, right? So it's not just a catchy slide title that you see on your screens. On the other hand, today's discussion helped me also to revisit my beliefs, right? It was kind of a signal for me, hey, dig in deeper, see whether it's only like that for you. Maybe it's only my organization that treats storytelling in such a way, or is it really something that you see on the job market? So with that, I've done something that most probably we typically do when we need a quick answer to a question. And I asked AI, ChatGPT, Copilot, what are the most wanted, the must have skills for FP&A professionals and final professionals? And here, honestly, I didn't have any major surprises, both communication and storytelling. was in the top skills that the finance professionals should have to advance our career, right? Now, when I started digging in, what worried me a bit or was slightly in a conflict with my approach to storytelling was that even though it was somewhere high in the list of the top skills, Deeper in when I looked at the materials, I felt storytelling is still treated as this cherry on the top, something that is good to have, something that might help you advance your career, but is not perceived as necessarily something that is a pillar, something like fundamental skill for your career advancement, right? And as I said, here is my conflict. So in majority of the materials, storytelling is still perceived as a soft skill, right? And for us finance people, soft skill is like this kind of second type of a skill that we need, right? And I personally believe that storytelling is a core skill, not only for FP&A professionals, but for all of us finance professionals. If we look at storytelling like that, then you would expect that the proficiency, the advancement of the skill amongst finance people is on a high level, right? Imagine someone working for finance without Excel skills, right? I mean, when you hire someone in your team, most probably you need the person to be at least advanced in an Excel. And this is the same with the storytelling. I would expect that if I hire someone the person in my finance team has a proficiency in storytelling. And here is a sad message that I need to share with you guys. That's not the case. Roughly 30% of finance professionals can say that they are advanced in storytelling. 30%, depending on the survey, depending on the documents that you go through, but it's still very low share of the group. What does it create? It creates a huge skill gap. A skill gap that roughly covers 70% of professionals. And here there is a survey supporting that tells that 76% of CFOs claim that we as people of finance, we need to improve our storytelling skills. So if we have this kind of simple statistics, there is a simple question to be asked after all, right? How we can close this gap? And here I prepared for you my personal recommendations. So this is nothing official, right? This is coming from my experience purely. But I hope with that, whether it's for you individually, for your teams or bigger organizations, we will be able to get slightly higher in this advancement on how we craft stories. So the first one that I would like to talk about is quitting talent excuses. In my professional career, I've heard 100 times that, yeah, well, storytelling is not something that I will be able to improve because I'm not talented at that, right? I'm good at numbers. I can prepare perfect financial models, but storytelling, I'm not good public speaker, I'm introvert, I don't like to be in front of the people, it's not for me. And here, no, storytelling is a skill. It's something that if you want to practice, If you say I can do it, yes, you will do it, right? It's just a matter of changing your mind towards the storytelling and saying it's just a skill. You can make it better for yourself. The second one, if we align that this is skill, the skill that can be developed, make it clear objective for yourself, right? Obviously, it's much easier to say, hey, work on your Excel skills, work on your Power BI skills, you name it, because those are much more measurable. With storytelling, it's a bit more difficult to measure it. But the moment as we for ourselves or for our teams will put it as a clear objective and we'll put clear measures. This is the number of a public speaking that you should deliver to practice. Any others, it will be much more easy to Track it, monitor it, and I'm sure that it will have a reflection in the condition of your storytelling. Then the third one, and I believe it's very important, find mentors. Find people that you believe are inspirations for you when it comes to storytelling, when it comes to the style, the tools that they use, how they do it, right? On the other hand, Try to also adapt storytelling to your style. And here I have a bit of a personal message to you guys. When I started my career, I constantly heard that I speak too loud and fast. And I've been fighting with that like hell. And at some point of time, the fact that I speak loud Honestly, it was very beneficial. When there was a big room with big audience, it was much easier for me to be heard than for others. So try to find your style, try to think how you are crafting those stories, right? Something that is making you stand out. And then last three points are kind of obvious, but sometimes we forget about it. Practice. Practice a lot at every occasion, whether you talk with your colleague about what you just prepared in your forecast, whether you talk with your boss on what you just achieved, whether you talk at your home, right, with your family on what you are doing in your daily life at work. Honestly, that's a good one, right? Because then you need to make it simpler for them to get it. Practice on every occasion. Practice with every audience, and I think we've discussed that. Honestly, this could be a topic itself. Whether you talk with finance people or sales, you have to adjust your language. So make all the possible occasions, try to get different audience as well, right? If you talk with people that you know, obviously those people you can influence, you understand their style, you understand what motivates them, what kind of information they need. But you can do the same when you do public speaking in a huge event. Do a research, prepare yourself, get all the facts that will help you deliver crafted and tailored message to the audience. And the last one is practice with various tools. For us people of finance, Typically, it's Excel, it's PowerPoint, right? We tend to stick to some kind of at least a page, one pager that will help us to walk the audience through the message. But honestly, it's not always needed. Simple e-mail, a team message is part of a storytelling. So again, practice it at every occasion with every tool, with every single audience. That will be it from my side. I'm sure that if you decide you can improve your stereotyping, you will be able to do that and I hope those advices will help you a bit with that.
Olga Rudakova
I invite all of you together for a short discussion again. What I would like to discuss now with all the panelists is what advice would you give someone trying to improve their storytelling skills without a large budget for tools or training? And this time, I'll start with you, Dominic. What do you think? What is advice from you?
Dominic Nguyen
Yeah, that's a great question. I would definitely lean to some of the mentors that was communicated earlier because that's the best way. Find somebody that you're comfortable with, learn from them, their experiences. Everybody's different, but always having mentors that help you along your professional journey is important.
Olga Rudakova
Great. Thank you for that piece of advice. Kavita, what do you think, how we can improve storytelling skills without a large budget?
Kavita Aggarwal
Yeah, so going back to the poll results that I just saw, you know, what I would say is you to build that confidence, right? And without a budget, what should you do? I would say get to know the subject matter, right? Like, what are you in charge of budgeting? Who is your audience? Who do you manage a budget for? In order to do that, you can actually link up with your stakeholders, right? Get to know them, how their operations are run. What are their challenges? What is the market doing? I feel like those are simple ways to help improve your story because now you understand the context better.
Olga Rudakova
And I think we're hearing it already for the second time how understanding context is crucial for structuring the story. That's probably getting the same importance is understanding your audience really without those components. We cannot move on. Renate, what do you think? What advice would you give someone trying to improve their storytelling skills?
Renata Berbert
I think we can try to read about and study books, study stories. Nowadays, we have available not only books, but articles and videos like, in the internet that talk about storytelling techniques. I also, I have a recommendation, actually. There's a really good book about it called Storytelling with Data by Cole Netflix. She also has a website with the same name, Storytelling with Data, where there are a bunch of free tools available. So studying is always a good option, right? And cheap one.
Olga Rudakova
Indeed, indeed. And back to you, Anna. I know that you have answered these questions through your presentation. But if you wanted to highlight one thing, what advice would you give to someone trying to improve storytelling skills?
Anna Zdanowska
So this will refer back to what I shared with you, but will be very practical. What helped me a lot is recording myself while practicing. It seems odd and seems very weird at the very beginning when you do that and then when you watch it. But honestly, for myself, it was such a huge help. When I had any bigger public speaking events, I just simply turned on my camera in my telephone. I recorded myself. I have done it two, three times. Every single time it got slightly better. But honestly, it helped me realize how many weird stuff I do with my hands. when I'm blinking or doing any other things that are most probably not welcome. So I highly recommend for you to try it. It's really something that is eye opening to be very frank about yourself as well. So that's the practical one and ask for a feedback. So that's look at yourself through a camera, but also ask people Hey, how was it? And do it in a way that you really want to listen, right, to the feedback. Because I saw some cases where someone asked me for the feedback, but more to hear that it went well rather than to get something meaningful, right? So be intentional, ask for feedback, and practice in front of the camera.
Olga Rudakova
Thank you. Great storytelling and public speaking tips. And by the way, many more are coming your way in the following presentation. Dominic Nguyen will be speaking about role of technology in FP&A storytelling. Dominic, let me pass microphone to you, and I will disappear myself to leave you alone with your camera.
Dominic Nguyen
Yeah. So I want to start with FP&A storytelling is, in my opinion, both structure and art. What I mean by that is there's a there's a framework that we could follow, but also kind of an art piece around that. In my role here as the technology advisor, I do a lot of presentations and public speaking to customers, whether it's one on one or large groups, just a little history. When I was in high school, I was so scared to talk and do public speaking. And recently, a couple of months ago, I did a presentation at Gartner. So you kind of see that over the course of your career, you can gain confidence based on that framework. So like to get started with kind of a quick fundamental agenda in terms of what I'll cover today. Every framework has a great structure, so beginning, middle, end. I think it's very important to talk a little bit about the opening and knowing your audience, making things very memorable in terms of your presentation. I also feel introducing characters, whether it's a personal story or whether it's a testimonial with another client or another use case of somebody in their industry. And adding some of the things that I think is very important in terms of emotional appeal, connecting with the audience, using visuals to do that. And as a final thought, I think we reiterated this quite a bit. Keep it simple, making sure it's consumable information and not too complex for the audience. And we'll close it up with key takeaways. So let's focus a little bit on the structure first in terms of having a great opening. So in terms of a great opening, let's go back. Sorry about that. Can we go back to the first slide, please? So in terms of a great opening, in terms of being able to know your audience, I think it's very important whether you're Researching them on LinkedIn, some of their affiliations, company websites are very common. Why that's important is that you get to understand a little bit about, you know, the audience and people you're connecting to. Bring your personality into the meeting. I think it's very, very important, you know, how you can relate to people. Because at the end of the day, a lot of FP&A folks are just, you know, people. So understanding their personalities help connect the story to the audience. And lastly, just leaving a very good final impression, right? So just having that structure is very valuable. And in terms of next steps, in terms of being able to do things from the structure, we can kind of see here a great example is I'm a chief financial officer, right? They may have different requirements, different needs. A lot of times, you know, they want to see things at a very strategic level, very high level. So, you know, maybe not getting into the weeds too much, knowing their goals, but their needs are extremely different potentially than other parts of the finance organizations or other parts of the other stakeholders in the audience. Right. So that's just a quick example. Another great example I talk about here is I was tasked to ask, what was your favorite report? But when you analyze the question, it's important to understand that it's in the eye of the beholder, because what's important to 1 individual and another? So. Interviewing them, getting their feedback is very valuable. So for example, one might be more interested in dashboards and KPIs or another one might be into the various details around the report and be able to drill down to those details. Understanding that spectrum and knowing your audience and how you can communicate to them, I think it's a very important topic or example. Introducing characters and an emotional appeal. This is a great one. I was actually at a on-site presentation in Montreal with a customer and knowing them, for example, they spoke both English and French. That was great knowledge. So having that. emotional appeal in terms of maybe introducing yourself, speaking a little French or learn French just so that you can connect to the audience or being able to tell a story around a character that applies to them, like maybe a customer story very similar to the industry that are doing the same thing, solving the same pains and really tying that pain and challenge to the audience. is very valuable, right? But at the end of the day, just summarize the results, how they can benefit around that and showing them how we can take them from, you know, understanding their challenges all the way to how they can leverage FP&A solutions to tie it to the benefit. So again, adding that emotional appeal and introducing characters is also very effective, in my opinion. I think we talked a little about this in terms of throughout the presentation today, keeping it simple. I think it's is a very good best practice, right? Simple agenda, be very concise, be very to the point. One of the challenges that you often see in presentations is it just has too much detail or the slides has too much information and it's not clear and concise. So it's hard to have the audience take away from that. I also think, you know, making sure you go at a good pace adjust to the feedback of the audience. You never know who in the audience may have questions. Just be kind of aware and be very, very straightforward, but also pause to kind of have people understand that. And lastly, summarizing all the key points, right? So again, keep it simple. Three points is kind of the best practice, right? A lot of users can only consume so much information and keeping it very simple is at the very top of the list. So some of the key takeaways from this presentation in terms of what we recommend. Number one, having a great opening, right? So a lot of times people talk about weather. Well, maybe it's something you can connect. I think it might be better. Like maybe it's something that is tied to the company's products or services or maybe complementing the city that they're in and maybe connecting to them in that way. So having that great opening builds credibility, also builds good value in terms of them connecting with you. And lastly, keeping it simple and being memorable. In my role, oftentimes we're presenting and it's multiple companies presenting at the same time to the same customer prospect and being memorable or connecting to the audience helps differentiate your presentation because two weeks from now they're only going to remember potentially one or two and they're going to remember you if you become a lot more memorable in the presentation. Appreciate everybody's time. Thank you for taking time to listen to the presentation. So back to you Olga.
Olga Rudakova
Thank you so much, Dominic, for a nice presentation. So many hearts, not even applause is coming your way. And you actually walked the talk. You give us a piece of advice to summarize everything in three points, and you did it right away. Thank you for that. Thank you for showing and putting everything into practice. If you have any questions to Dominic, please send them. You still have time to create a question and we will try to get to them at the end in Q&A. Meanwhile, let's move on to my personally favorite part of the whole event, key takeaway. So please join us on camera. And I would like to discuss key ideas that you would like us to remember. Think if we are to remember only one or two sentences from the whole evening, what would that be? Kavita, let me start with you here. What do you think? What is a key idea from today's event?
Kavita Aggarwal
Well, I would like to say three things. Lead with clarity, start with your headline before you go into all that details, and then connect your stories with the numbers or vice versa. And then lastly, I would say drive the decisions.
Olga Rudakova
Right. Very good phrases to remember. By the way, I was just now getting the question connected to similar phrases. You see people pick out good phrases said by our panelists. Renata, what do you think? What is 1 sentence you would like us to remember?
Renata Berbert
I think that it's using simple storytelling with tools like waterfall charts. It empowers us to turn complex data into clear and impactful narratives.
Olga Rudakova
Indeed, good charts can really make this transformation for us and being finance should really master those tools. And now what do you think? What would be the key phrase for today from you?
Anna Zdanowska
So honestly, I will be very blunt. I will stay on the last page that Dominic presented. I love it. Those three key takeaways. Make it memorable, right? I mean, and start from something big, something that will get the audience attention towards what you're talking about. I think we quite frequently forget about it. And with that, obviously, we create engagement and make it simple. I mean, for me, that's the key thing about storytelling. It has to be simple. The way you talk about your case to a five-year-old person, I mean, it has to be something that you can sell it in a very easy, factual way. So those are the items.
Olga Rudakova
Perfect. Perfect answer, perfect tip from Anna. Dominique, what do you think? What we should remember from today?
Dominic Nguyen
I recommend planning and don't procrastinate. I think that's the most common mistake with presentations, waiting too late and preparing a presentation, you're nervous and so forth. Always planning ahead, giving you the lead time, and don't procrastinate.
Olga Rudakova
Indeed, amazing tip for preparation. You know how it usually goes. We analyze, we analyze till late evening, we prepare slides overnight, and we present in the morning, not leaving ourselves enough time for preparation. Thank you for that great piece of advice. And now we are moving on to your questions. We have collected plenty of questions today. So let me actually start with you, Renata. I have a question addressed specifically to actually more than one, but I've picked up this one. So in your experiences, have you Have you experienced challenges in getting buy-in from executive leadership by trying to introduce new measures or ways to present data? And how have you been able to overcome them? So challenges connected to new metric, new measurement, new way of presenting data. Some change and people are not used to it. What to do with it?
Renata Berbert
I would say that often it happens. It happens often more than we would like to, right? So what I try to do is exactly what I mentioned, I think, during my presentation. For we avoid this to happen, try to connect. The biggest tip for me as an FP&A is building strong connections with cross-functional teams, with all the teams An FP&A needs to understand how everything in the work, everything in the company works, right? We need to explain the results and everything impacting the results, right? So when you build this strong relationships, you have context, you understand what is happening, you understand their struggle. And when you understand their struggle, most likely you are presenting a KPI, a project, a change that will benefit them with some of their struggles. So always create this link and make it clear the connection of what you need as an FP&A executive with the operational struggle, right? And then it becomes much easier when you compare what needs to be changed. Nobody likes to change, but when you make it clear that it is a company's goal, it is aligned with the company's strategy, it gets easier.
Olga Rudakova
Indeed. Thank you for that explanation. It's a difficult question and difficult challenge to overcome. I'll move on to you, Ana. You have inspired the audience a lot, saying that we can practice practically everywhere. in any format of communication. The question that appeared during your presentation is how we can actually find stories in data. And I know that the answer could take the whole book, but if you can give us a couple of tips, how we can find stories in data.
Anna Zdanowska
You know what? I think on this one, I would get back to the point about audience, right? I mean, each story has an audience, so you need to realize for yourself what is important to your audience. Right? I mean, and if this is a GM who's fighting right now with the decreasing gross margin or profitability or losing your volume, ask the question, how with what you are working on, we are going to help with his/her problem, as simple as it is, right? So at the end, there might be kind of a solution, as simple as it can be said, right? And I know it's not very practical answer, but I would Go and every single time ask a question, who is my recipient? What is his problem and how with what I'm working on, I'm helping him, her to solve it.
Olga Rudakova
Indeed, indeed. And most of the metrics in the business are connected. So eventually that's building those links and net of drivers for understanding. Dominic, I have another question related to your presentation, and that is you probably present complex data a lot. So how do you maintain credibility while simplifying or summarizing data? So one hand being professional, on the other hand, make it simple and clear. How do you balance those?
Dominic Nguyen
That's a great question. It's always important to start at a high level. I think starting at the high level and giving people kind of a broad overview of the information is always helpful. So, for example, it could be a pretty dashboard that highlights a variance and allows you to kind of see it in a Maybe you highlight it in red, so it's very visual for them. And then you can start drilling down into some of the details as you need to. But I think the biggest common mistake is just starting overly complex and detailed. But gauge your audience, start high level, and go down to the details if you need to. Be prepared for that.
Olga Rudakova
Yes, thank you. Thank you. That truly helps not the other way around. Kavita, I have a question that addressed to you and we actually have many questions on similar topics. So I hope that in this one we kind of cover more. So that question relates to most favorite visual types. What visuals do you find best express your key messages in PowerPoint deck for senior leaders? So is it waterfall, bubble chart, or others to highlight trends, risk to strategy opportunities? So probably several good visuals you use often for different use cases.
Kavita Aggarwal
I mean, I definitely don't have a favorite. It all depends on which costs I'm talking about. So for example, waterfall, as Renetta mentioned previously, it's great to show, you know, sometimes you have a result. The total number may be a positive number, but there were so many negatives and whatnot, right? So the waterfall chart really, really shows and displays the bad numbers and the good guys and whatnot. So I find that very helpful for executives. And then I would say a simple line graph is very good when coming to comparing something like software spend and who are the vendors or the type of usage. Those are really great. So again, knowing your cost drivers, you can then pick the appropriate metric on how you want to show it.
Olga Rudakova
Great. Thank you so much. And thank you for such elaborate answer. There is indeed not a single visual we can recommend as a one solution to everything. We have so many questions. It's hard to choose. I have a question for you, Renata, and it starts with appraisal. Thank you for your excellent presentation. I really like the phrase, be the voice behind the numbers because it truly resonates with me. And now we are getting to the question. That's how I've always seen myself as a finance partner. However, in my experience, leadership has not always been aligned with the corrective actions I recommended. Even when the evidence and rationale were clear, how would you suggest handling a situation like this? So solution is logical, reasonable, based on numbers, but leadership still not accepting it. What can we do?
Renata Berbert
It happens often too. It happens a lot, right? We as FP&As, we try to be logical. We try to rely only in numbers, on numbers, right? Because numbers most of the time don't lie. It's simple, right? But there is something else, the strategy, the context again. It's all about the context. Sometimes it's what you represent and what you want to share. it would be good for the company, but it's not a priority. If it's a case of priority, I think it's good to have top-down sponsorship. That's what worked for me in my experience. And always try to align your insights and your work with the strategy of the company. That's the big thing as an FP&A. So if it comes from the top and it's not getting traction, in the lower management, I think that top-down sponsorship helps. And if it's the other way around, if it's a manager that wants to implement something and the CEO or C-level doesn't see the importance, then you partner with this person. You understand, you create a narrative together, as Kavita mentioned. You do something with the function that needs help, not for presenting to the CEO and the C-level. And then Probably you get the results you want.
Olga Rudakova
Amazing piece of advice. Create something with them, not just for someone. Amazing. Anna, I have a question for you. And probably it's connected to the type of personality you are because the question goes like this. What's the role of humor or lightness in finance storytelling?
Anna Zdanowska
I like the question, honestly. And what I would say, I mean, I don't see a major role of being, you know, joker and or humorous in in your daily life. But in some cases it really helps, right? I mean, if you have attention in the room, if there is a tough forecast period and sometimes there is literally elephant in the room and there is one person that can address it. It simply helps. But watch out. You need to know your audience again, right? I mean, there are people who will immediately reply to that and will catch it. And then the whole room is changing the vibe. But in other places, it will not work, right? So again, do your research. The storytelling is to a huge extent about influencing, right? It's part of the whole influencing skill. And you can do that in a very various ways, right? But also building a certain network, getting connection, understanding with whom you work, who is your business partner, and how to trigger certain behaviors, how to, you know, kind of which button you need to press right now. That's also a huge part of influencing and with that storytelling as simple as it is. So apply it if you can, if this is natural for you, Don't force it, but know with whom.
Olga Rudakova
Indeed. Thank you for your answer, Anna. I have a question for Dominic now, and that's related to your public speaking tips you shared with us. So what's your process for rehearsing a finance presentation, Dominic?
Dominic Nguyen
Yeah, so what's my process for handling the presentation? I always take a step back and kind of strategize on who am I presenting to. Getting to know who the audience is obviously is very important. And I think the question prior is also important, whether to bring some lighthearted jokes into it. It's a very 50/50 thing where it might go off wrong or it could be really good. So I think just a lot of research is the best approach. And I said earlier, I mentioned planning ahead, do a lot of research, and reiterating practice, practice, practice, because you can never practice enough, in my opinion. So all those are great tips.
Olga Rudakova
Thank you.
Anna Zdanowska
And I will-- Can I add one point here?
Olga Rudakova
Oh, definitely. Go ahead.
Anna Zdanowska
Sorry. What I observe quite frequently, typically how we prepare ourselves to presentations, we put a presentation and then we make a story. It should be the opposite. You have a story, you put it in your hat, you draft it somewhere on the paper, then you make a presentation. So that's a very practical learning that I've done a while ago. Don't start from making slides. It will not make it easier.
Olga Rudakova
Thank you for stepping in. I actually have a question for Kavita and then we'll go to one general question to all of you. So Kavita, how do you ensure consistency when multiple teams are preparing the presentation? Let it be slides deck or joint stories. So how do you ensure consistency when many people work on it?
Kavita Aggarwal
I mean, that's definitely in your planning sessions. You definitely have to have a few planning sessions to just make sure everyone's aligned and we're not repeating the same story, trying to figure out who's handling the headline, who's going into the details, who's going to help drive the decision. So we really do meet, plan ahead and then assign it and then get all that information together, one more shot, make sure there's consistency on all slides and whatnot. And in this way, we're not confusing our audience, we go in with a plan and an order of events. So this way it's actually effective at the end, right?
Olga Rudakova
Great, great tip. And basically that approach works to make, uh, anything consistent, not just your data, uh, presentation. And now I have a general question because I really would like to get tips from all of you how to solve this problem. Imagine that your audience seems disengaged mid presentation. How do you recover? And I'll start with you Rina. So what to do you are presenting and somewhere in the middle you notice no one is listening.
Renata Berbert
That's a great question. I'm a humorous person too. So I think I try to do analogies or bring real world examples to the presentation so they get connected when they listen to something they are more familiar with. with some humor, adding some humor too, it brings their attention, caught their attention.
Olga Rudakova
Indeed, humor helps, always helps to recover. Great tip from Renata. Let me move on to you, Anna. What do you think? What we can do if audience somewhere in the middle stops listening?
Anna Zdanowska
Okay, it might not always apply and it's not It's not necessarily a good idea in every single case, but typically I'm very honest with an audience, meaning and transparent. Guys, I see that you are not buying it. Something is not clicking. Tell me what's happening. So if this is even for the groups of like 20, 30 people, right? Sometimes it works and somehow you get through this Boundary this kind of a thin line that is between you and an audience, right? So it's breaking it And I saw it helped several times. So that's the practical but not always applicable Advice that I would have.
Olga Rudakova
Great piece of advice. Indeed, start working on the solution together again, not for someone, but together. A great piece of advice here. Dominic, what do you think? How we can recover if we lose audience attention in the middle of presentation?
Dominic Nguyen
Good question. There's a lot of tools or ideas to potentially pivot, like if you're just presenting a bunch of slides and people get disengaged. I mean, if you're on Zoom, it might be like a poll question that you have where it kind of stops the flow and gets people engaged. Or if you're on site, it might be, hey, I'm going to get on the whiteboard and maybe start engaging with them that way. So it kind of breaks up the monotony of just presenting slides after slides after slides. And people tend to navigate thought and maneuver to that if you kind of pivot and do something different than just your traditional presentation.
Olga Rudakova
Great, great change of activity is always engaging. If someone was lost, whatever in the phone now starting being active with whiteboard can definitely help. And the last answer from Kavita, what is your piece of advice? How we can engage the audience in the middle?
Kavita Aggarwal
Yeah, so I would, I would think to myself, what was the message that I was presenting that may have sparked that disinterest, right? Could it have been like, you know, more cuts are coming or what not, right? So now I have to switch my tone to be a little bit more empathetic. So it's either humor or empathy. And then, you know, hopefully that helps, right? Bring some of my personal stories of whatever we're discussing. And then afterwards, I would probably send out a survey, you know, or something like that, a follow up just so I can understand what actually happened.
Olga Rudakova
Thank you so much for all pieces of advice. I'm pretty sure that it was valuable. Many more questions have arrived in between. Don't worry, we'll try to answer most of these questions in writing. So don't be... desperate if your question was not answered right now. Today, I would like to thank our sponsor CCH Tagetik by Wolters Kluwer for making this event possible. Thank you. Thank you for that. And more than that, I would like to let you know what are the channels to connect to us to become a part of the FP&A trend global community. You can obviously get to our website and subscribe to FP&A Digest link is here in this presentation. You can connect to our LinkedIn group or follow Larysa Melnychuk, our founder here on LinkedIn. YouTube channel is also for you and X platform as well. I would like to thank all of you who have joined us live today who send questions to our panelists. I would like to thank our panel for sharing your wisdom. for sharing your practical cases with us. Thank you for that and I hope to see you all again soon. Have a good day, everyone.
