Christian Wattig is one of the world’s leading experts in FP&A having led teams at Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and Squarespace. Today Christian is FP&A Solution Architect, Datarails, and manages the top-rated FP&A Bootcamp explicitly designed for professionals who work full-time and want to ramp up their FP&A game.
In this wide-ranging interview Christian provides actionable advice for any FP&A professional:
➡How FP&A can help marketing attribution
➡The need for FP&A to embrace Gray Areas
➡The importance of curiosity
➡His FP&A Bootcamp teaching hundreds of FP&A leaders
➡Hard-won secrets for business partnering
➡The need to forecast ranges
➡How to cope with vast data
Paul Barnhurst
Hello, everyone. Welcome to FP&A Today I am your host, Paul Barnhurst AKA the FP&A Guy, and you are listening to FP&A Today. FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails, the financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users. Every week, we will welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis and discuss some of the biggest stories and challenges in the world of FP&A. We will provide you with actionable advice about financial planning and analysis. This is going to be your go to resource for everything FP&A. I am thrilled to welcome today’s guest on the show. Christian Wattig. Welcome to the show.
Christian Wattig
Thank you, Paul. Thanks so much for having me.
Paul Barnhurst
Yeah, no, we’re super excited to have you, so I’ll give a little bit about Christian and then I’ll allow him to introduce himself. So, I’ve known Christian, what’s been about six months, I think. We got to know each other through LinkedIn you know, Christian is a LinkedIn influencer. He has his own FP&A course the FP&A bootcamp. He currently works for Datarails, and you know, he has worked for companies concluding Unilever SquareSpace. He has spent the last 13 years in FP&A and he’s a real, he’s a real expert. I’m really impressed with all he knows. So, we’re lucky to have him on the show. And we’ll go ahead and get started, Christian, can you take us maybe a little bit of through your career and how did you get where you’re at today?
Christian Wattig
Sure. So, I started my career in Switzerland. Originally, I am from Germany, that’s where I grew up, but I never worked, not a single day in Germany. I immediately, after college, I started, in Zurich working for Procter & Gamble, partnered with the sales team there, which was great because the sales managers are experts in managing, you know, professional relationships. And so, I learned a lot from them about business partnering and, um, then I spent some time in the, in the headquarter for Europe, in Geneva, at, at Procter & Gamble. And then I moved to the States because my wife lives here, grew up here, she’s from Oregon originally. And so, I moved to New York City and transitioned to Unilever. So, Unilever is also a large multinational consumer goods company, like P&G. You know, you may know it from brands like Dove or, Magnum or Breyers.
Christian Wattig
And there I had the opportunity to do a number of different FP&A roles, partnering with lots of different teams. And I was also fortunate there after a few rotations to be promoted, to lead my own team. It was about six years ago. And so, I partnered closely with the marketing team with the logistics team. And then I, after spending about yeah, 10 years in consumer goods, I thought, okay, it’s time to try something different. And so, I joined Squarespace, which is a tech company they make a website builder software to lead the marketing and growth FP&A team there. And yeah, during that time, I also realized that I really enjoyed teaching. You know, I’ve been teaching, doing some teaching before at Unilever teaching some of my colleagues. And so, I thought, why not create a course that is, that helps people learn FP&A, you know, across the world, not just in the company that I work at. Yeah. And then one thing led to another, I joined Datarails, which is a company that makes FP&A software and yeah, that’s where I am now.
Paul Barnhurst
Great. Yeah, no, they are, uh, sponsor obviously, as you know, and so obviously big Datarails fans on the show. So, you know, how has it been, it’s been a few months now. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, how it is working for a planning tool that focuses on FP&A, the whole focus? Cause I know it’s a little bit different than your traditional FP&A role, you know, it’s still FP&A, and you’re working with FP&A people, but maybe talk a little bit of how it’s been to kind of be, I don’t wanna say on the other side, but in a different role.
Christian Wattig
Sure, sure. No, it’s an exciting role because. So, what I liked most about my FP&A roles before was mainly two things. One was partnering with my cross functional business partners, you know, working with them on giving them better visibility of the numbers, helping them, you know, optimize profitability and so on. And then also process optimization. Going in and looking at ways to make my colleagues’ lives easier by automating things or by looking at how we can do things faster or, you know, more automated. And when I learned about Datarails and what they do and the roles they offer. Now my, my role, my title is FP&A Solution Architect is that I get to do those things that I like the most about my FP&A role all the time. So, what I do now is I help customers be successful with our software. So, I help CFOs VPs of finance, now directors of FP&A by analyzing the processes, you know, looking at where they’re at right now, how are they structuring their reporting process? How, how are they doing forecasting? How are they doing budgeting? And then I show them how they can improve the processes by using our software. And I walk them through, and I lead the implementation process. So, I get to do business partnering and process improvement all day, which is fantastic.
Paul Barnhurst
No, that’s great. Those are two of my favorite things in FP&A I love business partnering. And I agree when you, when you fix and streamline a process, it feels really good when you realize how much time you save somebody.
Christian Wattig
Yeah.
Paul Barnhurst
So that makes a lot of sense. So, I know you’ve talked about a little bit on LinkedIn about kind of marketing attribution and the importance of measuring, you know, marketing campaigns, understand how businesses is spending each dollar. I think you’ve supported in the past marketing leadership. And obviously that’s a big thing I’m sure with Squarespace, a lot of marketing campaigns and stuff. So, you can talk a little bit. How do you think about tracking the spend?
Christian Wattig
Yeah, that’s right. So, over the years I partnered with many different teams, HR logistics, factories, R&D, but I spend a lot of time working together with the marketing leadership team. And what I learned there is that tracking marketing spend and calculating return on marketing investment, it can be tricky because most companies, they run multiple marketing channels at the same time. You know, they may have a TV campaign, or they may advertise podcasts or radio, print Google search ads, etc. And they all run at the same time. And you’re trying to understand, okay, how well is our podcast campaign actually working. Right? And that can be tricky because you can’t just look at how did, how does our revenue growth look because then you’re taking into account all those different campaigns that happen at the same time. So, you need to do what’s called marketing mix modeling. That’s a way of using some statistical tools to kind of really look at, okay, how can we isolate a given campaign? But the challenge is even if you go out, you can buy marketing mix modeling from a third party, you can hire data science, data science teams to maintain it. But what’s interesting is even then you’ll never get perfect accuracy because the funny thing is you can ask someone who bought your product. Hey, you know, which of our marketing channels, why did you, why did you choose us? You know, was it a TV campaign? Was it radio? And often people, they can’t even tell. You know they don’t, they don’t know what really caused it. Why they made the decision. And that’s why it’s one of those areas in FP&A where it’s an art and a science, you know. You have to find the right balance between yes, you want to be data-driven and use, make your decisions based off of data and facts. But at the same time, you need to acknowledge that you’ll never get perfect accuracy through your data. So, you need to be okay with making some assumptions and finding the right balance there, which is what I find really interesting
Paul Barnhurst
Now that that makes a lot of sense. And I think it was about a month or two ago, I was reading an article that was talking about the friction between marketing and finance. And one of the advices they gave is basically the CMO and CFO need to align on how they’re going to measure things and recognize it’s not going to be perfect, but at least agree to what all the metrics will be. So, there’s not that constant argument of, oh no it was the podcast. No, well, that doesn’t look right, we’re looking at it this way and you’re looking at it that way, even if it’s not perfect, that alignment allows you to get over the friction and the argument of, well, no, that dollar doesn’t seem to be spent right because my data says this, well, your data says that,. You know I supported a marketing business.
We didn’t do much marketing, but we did marketing for automobiles. And so, we did a lot of attribution stuff for our customers. And I remember them talking about that and seeing models. My boss was like, well, no, you can’t assume that every dollar went, that that was all because of us. You know, you have got to recognize there’s other channels, like, like you talked about. So that, that makes a lot of sense. And you know, being willing to operate with assumptions and in the gray, it’s not, we like that when we’re analyzing something to be able to say, well, this is what caused it. You can’t sometimes.
Christian Wattig
Right, right, right. Yeah. Operating in those gray areas is also an important skill in FP&A you know. If you’re always trying to get perfect data, then you’re likely not going to take enough risks and make enough decisions. So, you’re really need to look at, okay, how much do I need to be comfortable? You know, what is my comfort level of risk that I’m willing to take? How much would it cost? You know, making sure that we are not, never bet the entire company, but then going for it, You know because we also need to be careful sometimes in finance and FP&A, we are seen as some, as the people who are always conservative and who are always saying no to taking chances. But if, if you’re in that corner, it’s, you are not really able to become the strategic advisor, you know, that we like to be. So yeah, it’s important to get comfortable around taking risks as well.
Paul Barnhurst
It, it really is. And there’s a little bit also, you’re not just taking risks, but you know, some people want the data to be perfect. And that last mile is too costly. It’s a little bit of a science and a little bit of an art, but when is the data good enough to make a decision? When do I feel that there’s enough confidence here? Like you mentioned risk that, you know, I’m in the right direction and it might not be perfect. Never will be. But you just got to get that comfort. And I agree with you. It’s really important that finance sometimes be willing to take a risk and help support the business in an idea when everything isn’t perfect. They just need to be calculated as I like to say. So, when it comes to supporting marketing, because I know you’ve done a lot of that. If our audience asked you for one piece of advice around supporting the marketing business. So, if you could give them one piece of advice, what would that be?
Christian Wattig
Yeah. Um, actually it, and, and that applies to business partnering in general, not just to working with the marketing team is go out and ask more questions, you know. Be curious, that’s really the, the best advice I can give you because the best finance business partners that I’ve seen spend more time meeting with the cross functional business partners, learning about the business than with the finance counterparts. And when I, when I talk about that with junior analysts, they, they say, oh well, but if I ask a lot of questions, I’m just wasting my business partner’s time. That doesn’t really make sense. But actually, you can add value and you can help someone, even if it’s just, if, even if you all you’re doing is asking questions because you know, what the best executive coaches do, that’s what they do. You know. They ask questions and they help, um, they help their, the, the people that they’re coaching to discover insight.
So, they haven’t thought about before, or think outside of the box just by asking the right questions at the right time. So that’s a super important skill that helps you in any FP&A role in any business partnering role and the best way to practice it is just go out and do it. And then as a side effect. You’re not just helping your business partners think differently. You also learn more and you build business acumen and that’s, that’s critical because the more you understand the business, the drivers, et cetera, the more you can, the more, you know, what the numbers are saying and the more you can make connections. And that is a very valuable skill because it allows you to make recommendations about what the numbers suggest, the leadership team should do.
Paul Barnhurst
Yeah, there there’s a lot to unpack there. A lot of great advice. And the first thing I am hearing you say is one, be curious, be willing to ask questions. I had a boss that at meetings often dominated the meeting. He asked so many questions and sometimes I was like, all right, why are there so many questions? But he always knew what was going on. He knew the business inside and out, and he provided really good advice. And this was someone at a senior level, right? This wasn’t a junior analyst who was asking questions all the time. So being curious is always important and then really getting to know the business. And that’s something I’ve tried to pride myself on throughout my career. So whatever role I have is being viewed as an expert and not just on the finances, but on the broader role of the business.
And I’ve had times where people have come to me and asked me how things work. And I’m like, wait, isn’t that supposed to be your job? Like, you know, that’s your function. And it makes you so much more valuable than just understanding the P& L and allows you to be part of those discussions instead of just sitting in the room and being the no guy or the conservative guy. Well, that’s too risky pointing out the negatives. And that, that, that is a great point. I really like that advice and, you know, kind of dovetails in what was going to be our next question, asking a little bit about business partnering. I think you kind of, you know, you covered that. So next question here is a little bit, you talked a little bit about launching your own course. Maybe can you talk just a little bit about how the, how the experience has gone? You know, what is it you like about teaching so much, and maybe what you’ve learned, that’s made you a better FP&A professional from teaching others?
Christian Wattig
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s a great question. So, I started teaching before I launched my own course. I taught at Unilever. So, we had a finance learning team where I created courses for my colleagues, you know, about Excel, about how to be more efficient with Excel and also how to manage budgets and forecast better. And what I realized is a lot of fun is first of all, figuring out how to design the course, to give people an option to practice, you know. Because I realized myself that the best way to learn something is to, to practice it. So, with that lots of little exercises and all that, and it also makes it more fun for people if they don’t just sit there and listen all the time and they can practice something. And then the other thing that, that really motivates me and keeps me going about teaching is to see that eyes light up moment.
Christian Wattig
You know, when you, when you, when you explain something abstract or complicated. At the beginning, you don’t really get it, but then at some point it just clicks, and you see it in the eyes that, that they’re putting things together. And that they’re thinking about how can I implement that? And I really, I really enjoy it. I found that very, very rewarding, you know, because you can have a big impact that way. And yeah. And so, I tried to put all of this, into my course as well. You know, it’s an interactive course that is done live via zoom. It’s four different workshops, uh, focusing on different FP&A topics like financial storytelling, business partnering as well, financial modeling, forecasting planning. And you you’ll never hear me lecture for more than, I don’t know, maybe 20 minutes at a time.
There’s lots of breakout room discussions and, uh, exercises, even a few role plays where I wrote, uh, scripts for people to step into the shoes of a finance manager, maybe a marketing manager or sales manager, and give them a chance to practice the techniques that we are talking about the frameworks in a safe space, right? Because practicing things is sometimes hard when you’re in your job, because you know you feel pressure that you need to always be at your best and stepping out of your comfort zone and trying something new can sometimes be challenging. And so, I created this, this environment in my FP&A bootcamp where people can do that and also where they can learn from each other as well.
Paul Barnhurst
No, that’s great. And I love how you talk about it being interactive and how you enjoy seeing that moment when the eyes light up. Right. We’ve all seen that. And that’s something I love. I’ve always loved teaching as well. And you know, I’ve done some of it at work. Most of my experience, I worked with Scouts and youth for years. And when you see that kid get something, it was always, you know, kind of the highlight of the day when they’re like, all right, they’re actually getting this they’re understanding. Versus those moments when you’re like, have they heard a word? I said, that’s another story. So, all right.
[Ad for Datarails]
Paul Barnhurst
Well, no, that’s great. So, in October, you’re speaking at the association for finance professionals. Can you maybe provide our audience a little bit of a sneak peek, a little bit of what you’re speaking about, what the subject is?
Christian Wattig
Yeah. I mean, you’re, you’re acting like you don’t know about it. I’m actually, uh, going to be speaking there with you, which, uh,
Paul Barnhurst
Oh, wait, am I speaking?
Christian Wattig
Yeah, no. So, um, sure. I’m happy to talk a bit more about that. So, the, for those of you who don’t know, AFP association for finance professionals, it’s one of the largest networks for treasury finance and FP&A professionals. They offer, they offer certifications, and they have this annual convention where they bring a number of high-profile speakers. And so, I was thrilled when I was selected to speak there, uh, at AFP this October in Philadelphia. And terms of what, what we will be, we are talking about as finance business partners, you know, we hope to be strategic advisors to the business and drive profitability, sustainable growth, but to get there, we need our cross-functional business partners to be willing to give us a seat at the table, right. They need to let us in, they give us the information we need.
We need that seat the table where the decisions are made. And in this talk, at AFP, I’ll talk about how to create an environment of trust because that trust and professional relationship, that’s really the foundation of successful business partnering. And we’ll go over the findings that Google had with a project that they led to look at, what makes the most successful teams, what differentiates them, you know, what makes the most successful teams successful. And then we talk about concrete and actionable ways for finance professionals to build trust with their business partners. You know, and we’ll, we’ll cover our framework, how you can audit your existing professional relationships to see whether cost question is necessary, and we’ll end with hopefully concrete advice you can apply right away on how to improve your existing professional relationships. So, I’m really looking forward to it.
Paul Barnhurst
All right. Well, you know, it sounds really exciting. The conference, you know. The Association for Finance professionals, as you may know, we had Bryan Lapidus on the show a few weeks ago, and I’d highly recommend anyone who wants to learn more about all the resources they have, listen to that podcast. He had mentioned that we’d be speaking at that, that event together. And I think it’ll be really fun to talk about trust and how important that is. Because that’s a huge topic that seat at the table. If you don’t have the seat at the table, you can’t be the FP&A professional that FP&A needs and the business needs. Frankly, not FP&A But the business. Because we really should be trusted advisors. So that’s a great topic. And like I said, I’m looking forward to speaking with you. I’m sure. Well, at least half of it will be great. I’m sure your part mine, I’m still figuring out, but we’ll get there. As you look over your career. We’re going to shift gears here a little bit. Sure. You look back over the last 12 years of FP and a, what is the one accomplishment you are most proud of from your career? An answer you’d given a job interview. What would that What did you tell Datarails?
Christian Wattig
Yeah, no, it’s really tough to look back at the, at a career and say, okay, that’s the one thing that I’m most proud about? There are a few things, but the one thing where I definitely, I learned the most, you know, which I think is always a big success was when I had the chance to lead the complete revamp of the budget process for Unilever North America. So, Unilever north America is an $8 billion a year business. You know, the marketing team spends several hundred millions of dollars for, you know, TV commercials and all sorts of other marketing spend. And when I started my role as the head of the marketing, finance, and analytics team, I was surprised to see that the budget was managed completely in Excel, you know, without any, any other tools.
And it was done by sending Excel files to 15 different marketing teams, they put in the numbers and then they send it back to the finance team and then they have to consolidate everything and roll up everything. And when I saw that I was a bit concerned because how do you make sure that there’s no mistakes? How do you make sure that there’s no version control issues when they send you multiple files for the same files for the same month And so I asked if we can, you know, look into getting a software, getting a tool to do this? And at first, you know, the IT team said they don’t have budget for that. I have to go and ask the CFO if I can get a special budget for this. So, I went to the CFO and initially and I told them, look, you know, we’re going to save so much time for the team.
We don’t have to consolidate all these Excel reports anymore. And , you know, it will all be a lot easier to manage and people get their numbers faster and the leadership team get their numbers faster, but he wasn’t really convinced, you know, he wasn’t, he wasn’t sure if the investment was worth it. And so, I went back to the drawing board, and I thought about, okay, what does he really care about the most? And what he cares about the CFO was, that the numbers are right. And that there’s no issues from a financial controls point of view. You know and so I went back, and I said, well, you know, if we get the system, there’s an audit trail. You can go back, you can check the numbers, you can make sure that everything aligns and it’s, you know, simple to do, and you can do everything in the software, and that convinced them.
And so, we got the funding, and I went out to look for who might be the best vendor to do this for us and interviewed the vendors. And then we started the implementation. And when we were, you know, right in the middle of the implementation, I ran into some issues. And that was really interesting challenge because the marketing team, uh, I got some pushback, you know, they didn’t want to use the new software. They wanted to keep using Excel because that’s what they know what they’re used to. It’s faster. They said they don’t want to invest their time in learning. They don’t have the time to learn a new system they’re too busy. And, so what I ended up doing is I found the two marketing managers who were the most critical of the system and that brought them into the project management team.
And that made a huge difference because they were in the meetings and I asked them, Hey, what would make this successful for you? You know, how would you like this software to work? To really take work off the plate of your people, of your teams, of your direct reports and of yourself. And that completely changed the dynamic. You know, all of a sudden, they were working with us instead of against us, there were, we were brainstorming together. And in the end, you know, there were, they became some of the biggest supporters of the tool and them going out to the rest of the marketing team, you know, it’s about 30 people and talking to them about, you know, the benefits and how it works and how their concerns were addressed. That made all the difference. And in the end, you know, we got brought buy in and, implementing the software was big success. So, um, and it didn’t only save my team, the finance team, the FP&A team, a lot of time and effort, but also the marketing team in the end. So yeah, that was one of the things I’m, I’m most proud of.
Paul Barnhurst
Oh, thank you for sharing that. And what I really liked and what resonated to me, and I think should resonate with the audience is when you have those detractors, bring them into the process. Because if you can get them on board and address their issues, it’s much easier to get everybody else on board. Cause there’s usually always one or two that are vocal, whether they’re in your own department or somebody else’s department. So I think that was a brilliant move on your end, you know, on both ends first figuring out what does the CFO want in value and how can I make sure he’s seeing the tangible benefit and then doing that same type of thing, figuring out how can I get marketing on board and addressing both those head on versus well, just, this is what we need to do and trying to push it down people’s throats.
See it my way. Right? Because that rarely ends up in a good implementation if ever those some really good advice, but there’s one other thing you mentioned, you know, the project was trying to improve the budget and forecasting process and obviously having good tools is huge for the budgeting and forecasting process, but maybe share some of your thoughts around just best practices in general, around budget and forecast. Like, are you a big fan of rolling forecasts? You know, some things you think about the budgeting process, maybe what are some of your best practice tips for companies that are thinking of revamping their budgeting and forecasting process?
Christian Wattig
Sure, sure. So, for me budgeting and also applies to forecasting, it’s really not just about the number that you get on a piece of paper, right? Or the P&L that you get because as soon as you lock down the forecast or the budget, the numbers probably are already wrong because in the end, you know, business environment is very dynamic and things will come, will be different than you forecasted. So, when it comes to annual planning, you’ll actually get much more value from the process itself. You know, there’s this quote that says, I think it was Eisenhower who this quote is attributed to. It says, plans are nothing, but planning is everything right? So, you wanna make sure that you give them through the planning process. You give the team an opportunity to take a step back, get out of the day to day of the business and really think about, do our strategies still work? You know, how to strategies turn into action plans and how do we measure those action plans and determine whether we are on track or not, You know, and that process is what adds a lot of value because it drives conversations you wouldn’t have, otherwise it gives you an opportunity to identify risks, early, identify opportunities early. And, um, another tip I have, uh, for specifically, you know, for that is try to forecast ranges. Don’t just get a point estimate, but get a range because when you have a range, you can look at the worst case scenario and the worst case scenario and think about ahead of time what will, what will we do as a company If the worst case scenario happens, how will we capitalize on the fact that accelerate the business even more when the worst, when the best case scenario happens. And if you do that upfront during the forecasting or planning process, you have the chance to respond much faster. You are not only faster, you also make better decisions because you don’t make the decision on the spot when you’re in the middle of it. You think about it up front and you plan it.
Paul Barnhurst
The that’s great advice. I mean, I really like the point about scenario versus just a point estimate so that, you know, when you’re in that situation, you’ve already decided what you’re going to do. When It’s widely different than maybe your base case, whether it’s bad or good, because both of those require different decisions to be made. A lot of good advice there. And the second, it’s not about the numbers, it’s about the process. That, that is so important. I mean, so many people think that it’s about the numbers and, you know, I always like to joke if I could forecast accurately, I wouldn’t be working in F&A I’d be sitting on a beach somewhere because I would’ve made a fortune already.
Christian Wattig
Right.
Paul Barnhurst
You know, because none of us can really truly forecast accurately. It’s about making good assumptions that allow us to get the general direction of where something’s going. Next question here, what would you say is the biggest challenge in FP&A today?
Christian Wattig
Oh yeah. That’s a good one. So, you know, what really is different today than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago is we have more and more data. Right? We have more data companies are investing into the quality of data as well. So, a lot of the data that maybe we had before now it’s useful and we can actually make something off of it. And to me that’s one of the biggest challenges. But also, the biggest opportunity because FP&A teams have to process and analyze all that data. And ideally, they’re not just focusing on financial information. They also look at data that’s produced, you know, that can be leading indicators like traffic to your website or inventory data, headcount, data, ideally FP&A look at all of that. And that’s a challenge because it’s a lot of data to deal with and you can’t really continue with the same way in the same way you’ve done it in the past.
Christian Wattig
You know, in the past you would just throw, download everything, put it in an Excel sheet, run a pivot table and that’s it. Right. But if you’re talking about large, big data, that’s not enough. You need to look at do I need to do I have to write software to handle the data? You know, what’s the right tool. Do I want to stay in Excel? Do I want to get out of Excel? So that’s challenge number one. And the other one is also about democratization of data. So, because the thing is information is power. And sometimes especially in large companies’ departments are a bit siloed and they, they don’t, they’re not, they’re sometimes hesitant to share all the data, all the information they have broadly with the finance team or with the rest of the company. Now they do that because they think, well, you know, we know best how to make those decisions.
Christian Wattig
If we share the data, then they’re trying to tell me what I should do. And if anything, it’s just going to slow things down. But the thing is FP&A really can add more value. The more data they have access to. So, it’s really important that FP&A operates in an environment of trust that we build that environment of trust. You know, that’s why I’m I chose to talk about that at AFP and to show that if you give us more, if you share more with us, we’ll also be able to really not just say no to things hopefully and say, no, you can’t have the budget or, you know, but to say to help them get the company to say yes to more things because if we have more data, we may, we might be able to take risks that we wouldn’t have taken otherwise because now we have the assurance that it’s backed up, you know by facts. And yeah, that for me handling that big data is the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity for FP
Paul Barnhurst
A and I would agree with that and kind of an interesting point to that is I read something the other day that said the average job application or job application, job posting for FP&A, since the beginning of the pandemic, the number of skills they asked the average person to have has increased by 23%.
Christian Wattig
Oh wow. That’s interesting
Paul Barnhurst
And if you look at that and I haven’t done the analysis, but I’m pretty sure most of those around data , as I heard someone say the other day, George Mount great follow on LinkedIn, he was listening to somebody talk about data. He said, it’s actually going to become more complex, not easier in the future. And the argument was yes, we’re going to get more low code, no code tools, but because it’s so easy to get data, we’re going to have so much more data that it’s going to become more complex for us to handle and to find those connections. And I thought that was interesting because we keep thinking, oh, the tools are getting better. It’s going to make data easier. And this guy who was a professional was saying actually it’s going to get harder for most of us.
Then why aren’t we, you know, implementing all these tools and obviously we need them, but it may get harder in some ways, but it opens up all those opportunities you talked about because it can, you, we can you really dig into the data and understand something that maybe people don’t realize or they have the total opposite view of and bring that to the business that can generate thousands and millions of dollars. You know, it can be big, big business. So that’s a great, I agree. It’s a great opportunity and definitely a challenge as well. So now we’re going to get a little more personal here with this next question. So, what’s something that not many people know about you, something we wouldn’t find online.
Christian Wattig
Yeah. So, what many people don’t know is I’m a trained judo instructor. So, I don’t coach anymore right now, but I did it for over 10 years when I was younger. And I actually started teaching judo to kids when I was 16 years old. And it was what motivated me to study business in the end and aspire to become a manager because it was really eye opening for me to see, you know, when I had, when I had the kids around me and was teaching is how the right words at the right time can have a huge impact on how motivated someone feels, you know, and how, how willing they are, you know, to, to go the extra mile and to work just a little bit harder to be successful at the sport in that case. But the same applies to business as well. So yeah, I’m, I’m really happy that I did that, and I learned a lot from being a judo instructor as well.
Paul Barnhurst
Well, great. Actually, that’s one I didn’t know about you. So that’s, that’s a great one to share and I could see where that’d be a lot of learning and, you know, working with kids and helping you realize you had a passion for instructing others. Regardless of whether it’s FP&A or judo or Excel or whatever it might be. Yeah. Speaking of Excel leads to our next question. What is your favorite Excel function and why?
Christian Wattig
Sure. So, my favorite Excel function is index match. And I like to tell people that they should please stop using V LOOKUP, you know, because VLOOKUP is a static formula and Index Match is dynamic. What does that mean? It means that if your source table changes, so where you’re getting your, your numbers from, you know, if a column gets added or things could moved around, your VLOOKUP will be wrong, but your INDEX MATCH will still work. You know, and that’s not, that’s not the only thing. The worst thing to me about VLOOK UP and the best thing about INDEX MATCH is it’s transparent in terms of what’s going on. You know, if you press F2 in Excel and look to look at the formula and what the formula does VLOOKUP, doesn’t tell you much, right? Because you need to know, you know, how many columns you go over to the right. But with INDEX MATCH, it highlights which row and which column, you know, you’re, you’re referencing. And that makes it really easy to see if there is a mistake and really easy to audit your formulas. And yeah, that’s why INDEX MATCH is my favorite formula. And I recommend everyone learns it. It’s actually not that difficult to learn. It’s going to take you maybe 10, 15 minutes and you’ll and you’ll get it.
Paul Barnhurst
Yeah, no, I’m, I’m not surprised you said INDEX MATCH. I know you’ve posted on that one on LinkedIn a few times and you know, for anyone who’s interested, you can go find the post. I put a comment voting for XLookUP, but we won’t get into that full discussion today, but INDEXMATCH is a great one and there’s, you know, different definitely learning how to do lookups is really important. Yes. And understanding the strengths and weaknesses to get the job done, which regardless of which one you use, or if you use Power Query, but understanding and unlocking how relationships work is so valuable in Excel. Because without it, you’ll really limit what you can do, and Index Match is a great formula. So, I’ve definitely you know, a lot of people that’s a favorite. So well, actually, we’ve got two more questions. So not last question, but second to last question here, if you’re going to offer advice to somebody starting a career in FP&A today, what would be the one piece of advice you’d give them?
Christian Wattig
Yeah. If you’re just starting out, the most important thing is that you look for ways to step out of your comfort zone. You know when, when you are new in any role, but especially also in FP&A is you need to make sure that your learning curve doesn’t flatten, you know, there’s so much, you need to learn in FP&A that the technical aspects of financial modeling, Excel forecasting, and then all the interpersonal skills, you know, of influencing people, business partnering, you know, um, budget management, which has a big interpersonal component as well. The only way to learn that is if you put yourself into situations where you’re maybe a little bit concerned about it, you’ve never done it before, but if you take a step out of your comfort zone, the magical thing is that your comfort zone will grow.
Christian Wattig
You know? And so that things that a few weeks ago were, were kind of scary now seem a lot easier. So do things like asking if you can present the financials to the CFO or the CEO, you know, instead of your boss doing that or ask to speak at the company town hall or manage a process improvement project end to end, you know, all those are things that help you grow your comfort zone, help make sure that you keep learning. And then as a result of that, you’ll build the capacity to succeed in bigger and more rewarding roles.
Paul Barnhurst
Great advice, getting outside your comfort zone. We had Gemma Davie on the show from the UK and she mentioned, her dad always told her the magic happens when you get outside your comfort zone. And I’ve actually been trying to get my daughter on a few things. She’s been scared to do to understand that concept. I’ve shared that with her. And she’s like, well, what about fear? And I’m like, well, you’ll, you’ll be okay. You know, trying to help her understand. And it’s funny how that applies when we’re five and when we’re 50 or 70. It applies throughout our whole life, get yourself out, get outside that comfort zone. That’s great advice. So, we’ll go ahead and, you know, kind of finish there and just wrap up with, if people wanna learn more about you about your course, where do you recommend they go?
Christian Wattig
Yeah, they can go to my website at fpaprep.com. So FPA like an FPA prep.com. Um, and if they wanna learn specifically about the course, the best way to learn about it is to go to FPA prep.com/course.
Paul Barnhurst
All right. Well, perfect. Well, we’ll go ahead and end there, but just saying thank you for being on the show. We really appreciate it. And you know, I’m sure our audience will really enjoy this as much as I did. So, thanks again, Christian. Appreciate your time.
Christian Wattig
Thanks so much for having me, Paul. It was great.
