FP&A Educational Sessions

Finance & Financial Processes

Bringing EBITDA and Cash: Connecting All of Finance
Earnings and cash plans often evolve on parallel tracks until a gap becomes urgent. In this case study, Shutterfly will show how FP&A and Treasury can connect operating assumptions to liquidity outcomes through shared drivers, planning cadence, and clear ownership. Attendees will see how an EBITDA-to-cash bridge can reveal the timing differences, working-capital movements, capital decisions, and financing impacts that shape cash reality. The session will provide a practical framework for reducing surprises, strengthening cross-functional accountability, and giving leadership a clearer view of both performance and financial flexibility.

Russell Selman, Director, Treasury and Risk Management, Shutterfly
Ralph Shields, VP, Performance Management, Donyati

How I Budgeted Faster — and More Accurately — Using AI
Most finance teams are under pressure to "use AI," yet few practitioners have seen a real-world example of how AI can make budgeting, forecasting, and management reporting faster and more accurate. In this hands-on session, learn how one practitioner transformed a complex budgeting process spanning 31 business segments, using AI not as a magic solution, but as a well-trained analyst guided by detailed instructions, business rules, and organizational context. Attendees will learn why the true value of AI lies in the instruction-and-context layer, why many ERP-based AI implementations fall short, and how to build a practical, vendor-neutral approach they can apply immediately. Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop and a real budget file as the session includes a live demonstration of creating AI instructions for FP&A workflows, with time for individualized guidance and discussion.

Carole Ann Enciso, Director of Finance, Ormat Technologies, Inc.

Less Is More: Retiring Reports That Don't Drive Decisions
Finance reporting often expands over time, with new metrics, pages and reports added while few are ever removed. The result is longer reporting packages, more production effort, and less clarity for decision-makers. This interactive session introduces a simple four-question test for evaluating reporting content: Does it support a decision? Reach the right audience? Justify the effort required to produce it? Use the right format? Participants apply the test to determine what to keep, redesign or retire, while considering stakeholder expectations and the challenges of removing established reports. The session also examines ways to introduce shorter formats and preserve trust when reducing reporting volume.

Sharrin Fuller, Accounting Firm Scaling Strategist, Glass Wallet Ventures, LLC

Personal & Team Effectiveness

Think Like a Consultant: FP&A Skills to Advise, Influence, and Drive Superior Business Results
FP&A creates its greatest value when it moves beyond reporting on what happened to helping the business understand what is driving performance and where to act. An internal consulting mindset brings greater structure to that role—framing the right problem, identifying the underlying business drivers, testing assumptions, and connecting analysis to decisions. Drawing on proven approaches from external consulting, this session examines how FP&A teams apply these methods to real business challenges and strengthen their influence as strategic partners. The focus is on moving from data and analysis to clear insights, thoughtful options, and recommendations that help leaders make better decisions. Designed for mid-level FP&A professionals, the session combines proven consulting approaches with opportunities to reflect on how they can strengthen the way FP&A engages with the business.

Philip Peck, President, FP&A Transformation & Advisory Services, Peck Strategic Services LLC
Rosemary Linden, President, Momentum CFO

The Business Partner's Playbook: Difficult Conversations When the Numbers Say No
Delivering difficult financial messages—whether budget cuts, rejected investment cases, or missed forecast targets—can put FP&A professionals in challenging conversations with business leaders. Without the right approach, these interactions can strain cross-functional relationships and reinforce the perception of finance as the “department of no.” This session provides communication techniques for navigating high-stakes pushback and maintaining productive dialogue. It focuses on applying narrative storytelling and behavioral techniques to de-escalate tension, communicate financial constraints clearly, and shift conversations from a definitive “no” toward a collaborative “how.” These skills help FP&A practitioners strengthen their role as trusted strategic partners, even when financial realities are challenging.

Aalok Rathod, Senior FP&A Partner, Nielsen Media Research

Beyond the Numbers: Pivoting from Top FP&A Performer to Exemplary Leader
Moving from an exceptional FP&A contributor to an effective leader requires more than technical expertise and analytical excellence. The role shifts from producing answers to developing people, influencing decisions, building relationships, communicating insights, and creating an environment where others can succeed. Building on the experiences of leaders who build and mentor high-performing FP&A teams, this session focuses on the mindset shifts and leadership practices that help new managers navigate this transition. It addresses common pitfalls and provides techniques for building credibility, delegating effectively, coaching team members, influencing executives, and leading through change.

Rosemary Linden, President, Momentum CFO
Philip Peck, President, FP&A Transformation & Advisory Services, Peck Strategic Services LLC
Jeff Altman, Former Verizon Senior Director, Executive Operations - VCG GRO
Gaileon Thompson, CTP, FPAC, CFO, Branch Systems & Transformation, Wells Fargo

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Technology & Data

Laptop Lab
Finance Agent Hackathon
Put your AI skills to work during a fast-paced, hands-on hackathon. Working alongside fellow finance and FP&A professionals, you’ll use AI-assisted tools to build agents, connect agents into a workflow, and develop governance rules to ensure the agents stay effective. Attendees will deploy these skills on one of three processes: account reconciliations, activity analysis, or board reporting. We will use a live case study featuring a city of New Orleans non-profit that brings together organizations, ideas, and resources to tackle regional challenges.

Mike Dion, Founder, Mike’s F9 Finance

NOTE: This is a “laptop lab” session. To actively participate, bring a laptop, browser access, and access to an LLM of your choice. No coding experience, software installation, or paid subscription is required.

Laptop Lab
Prompt to Forecast: Build a Driver-Based Model with AIs
FP&A teams are increasingly expected to use AI, yet many professionals have not been shown how to turn prompting into a repeatable forecasting workflow. In this hands-on case study, participants will work through a realistic FP&A scenario and use an AI coding assistant to build a driver-based forecast. They will prompt the AI to identify business drivers, prepare, and structure data, generate and run code, perform variance analysis, and interpret the results. Leave the session with a completed forecasting notebook and a reusable prompt sequence you can apply immediately to your own planning, analysis, and stakeholder conversations.

Kavin Soni, Senior Data Scientist, Google Inc.
Cassie Wang, CFO, Sussex Strategy Group

NOTE: This is a “laptop lab” session. To actively participate, bring a laptop, browser access, and access to an LLM of your choice. No coding experience, software installation, or paid subscription is required.

Reimagining Finance Workflows through the Lens of AI
AI agents are transforming FP&A from a function centered on tools and spreadsheets into one where agents work alongside finance professionals, taking direction and executing analytical work. This panel of FP&A leaders shares how they are integrating AI agents into day-to-day workflows, including budget-to-actual variance analysis, top- and bottom-line forecasting, and scenario modeling. They highlight how AI agents are reducing processes that once required days of manual spreadsheet work to hours of AI-assisted analysis, while also creating opportunities to rethink how the work gets done. Rather than simply automating existing steps, these leaders are redesigning workflows around what AI agents can do. The conversation provides workflow-specific examples of where AI agents can have the greatest impact, along with a framework finance leaders can use to identify and prioritize opportunities within their own teams.

Matthieu Hafemeister, Co-Founder & CEO, Concourse Technologies, Inc
(CFO panel to be announced)

From Messy Data to Smarter Dashboards with AI
Recurring reporting often requires finance teams to spend significant time cleaning data, maintaining transformations, refreshing reports, and resolving issues that arise along the way. This case study examines how one finance team uses AI coding agents to streamline these processes and build a BI dashboard from vendor billing data. The session shows the artifacts behind the work, including before-and-after workflows, dashboard examples, data model diagrams, and annotated AI-assisted fixes. It highlights what works, where challenges arise, and why different agent approaches are needed across data sets and business owners. Participants leave with an approach they can apply to recurring reporting and a clearer understanding of the emerging role of the finance engineer.

Khan Roach, Sr. Financial Analyst, Dayforce
Kulraj Kohli, Principal Financial Analyst, Dayforce