Product led growth is a business strategy and philosophy that puts the product at the center and the key driver for customer acquisition, activation, adoption, and retention. Parth Kulkarni, Head of FP&A, Adobe Express, recounts his chance to reimagine FP&A using product-led growth. He explains the process leading the FP&A team powering Adobe Express – a major new AI-driven product at the software giant (Adobe is competing with companies such as Canva and Microsoft Designer).
Kulkarni says: “We optimized different parts of the customer journey by adopting product led growth. From an FP&A perspective it was a fantastic opportunity for me and my team to reimagine the way that we approached financial planning and, and supported the business.”
Describing the approach of FP&A underpinned by product-led growth, he says: “We tend to forecast based on historicals. But here we took a much more bottoms up approach in our modeling, starting with building forecasts and projections around every single critical upstream metric – whether it’s acquisitions, how customers are really engaging with the product, or what kind of conversion rates are we seeing in the product, or what kind of retention we are seeing. I got the opportunity to actually understand the customer journey, translate that into a financial model, and then build my financial planning around that.
Kulkarni, with training and a background in engineering, recounts his path to FP&A and why a background in data analytics is a perfect route to a top job.
In this episode:
- Kulkarni’s path from Data analytics to FP&A as Senior Manager of FP&A at eBay – business partnering with the Merchandising / Shipping & Logistics Business and Product Teams. Followed by his career at Adobe.
- Moving from analytics to FP&A and why it is a perfect route
- Four proven pillars to become a successful FP&A professional
- The tested formula to get a seat at the table in finance
- My framework for analyzing data to get the juiciest insights – SCQA framework explained
- My aha moment in FP&A automating ecommerce/holiday space reports
- Tabla playing and love of Indian classical music
- Steve Jobs and what we can learn about his relentless desire to understand the consumer
The SCQA framework explained by Parth
Follow Parth Kulkarni on LinkedIn
Catch the full episode on YouTube
Full Transcript below
Paul Barnhurst:
Hello everyone. Welcome to FP&A Today, I am your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A Guy. FP&A Today s brought to you by Data Rails financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users. Every week we welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis. Today we are delighted to be joined by Parth Kulkarni, welcome to the show.
Parth Kulkarni:
Yoit’s nice to be here, Paul.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, really excited to have you here with us. Lemme just give a little bit about his background. He’s coming to us from the Bay Area, San Jose, California. He’s currently a director of finance at Adobe, and he studied engineering for his undergrad and business analytics for his MBA. So we’re really excited to have him. Has a great background. Why don’t we start, we’re gonna start with a fun question, then we’ll ask you to tell our audience about the background. So what has been the most challenging budgeting forecast experience you’ve had in your career?
Parth Kulkarni:
Yeah, I think, I think that’s a, that’s a great, that’s a great question. Paul, I think when I think about the most challenging experience, I, I see it a little bit differently. And in the past decade or so, you know, every, every year in every role that I’ve been in I think has, you know, kind of thrown unique challenges my way. Sure. And frankly, that’s what I’ve really enjoyed. You know whether it was my time in the e-commerce, in the e-commerce space, in the merchandising and the shipping businesses, or in the ever-changing, you know and the technology space where, where, you know, I was playing, I was in the role of cloud finance or cloud finance or business finance. I think each one of them has its own, you know, tough spots. And it was, it was challenging or exciting from things like, you know, changes in the industry or, you know, macro trends or the uncertainties that were introduced by the recent pandemicor the technology disruptions that happens every now and then, or the competitive pressures that you start seeing from your competitors.
I think it’s all, all the shifts in how the customers behave, I think there is so much change that happens over a period of time, and you have to incorporate that into your planning and budgeting exercise, which I think makes it a super, super interesting. And I’ll just, you know, kind of maybe share one example, right? In one of the roles I was in previously you know, when I was in the shipping FP&A team team, I got to manage the P&L for a shipping labels business from a finance perspective, right? And if you, if you imagine this job was almost at like the intersection of a marketplace economycomplex supply chains, you know, which could be completely messed up by geopolitical disruptions. You know, working with, with all the, the logistics vendors out there and negotiating the contracts. And of course, you know, online shopping and e-commerce. And then of course, it, it also used to involve, you know, financial forecasting around all of these different parameters. So you can, you can imagine a job like that, which is at the intersection of so many different things. It, it was a challenge from a planning and budgeting perspective, but it was really, really, really exciting.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you. And it sounds like you’ve definitely had some different challenges, you know, complexity and different things for those budgeting experiences. So appreciate you sharing that. Yeah. Can you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? Just tell us a little bit more of how you ended up where you’re at and, you know, kind of that journey from engineering to FP&A.
Parth Kulkarni:
Yeah, absolutely. So I, I, as you mentioned, I did my undergrad in engineering. So I’m a bachelor of technology in in instrumentation and controls engineering. And, and, you know, while I was doing that, while I really benefited from the experience of, you know, having an undergrad in engineering you know, whether it was like the problem solving or the structured thinking or the analytical skill sets that I was able to kind of you know, develop during this time, I, I did feel that I wanted to kind of explore opportunities that aren’t really kind of, or necessarily related to core engineering, right? I was inclined more towards roles that are business facing, client facing, but related to technology. And I knew I was good. So I believed that I could make use of these skills you know, in, in, in such type of roles where it was like a combination of technology and business.
And, and back then, you know, I, I honestly kind of didn’t know about the FP&A function and it even existed. So I, I wasn’t aware about it all at all. And after I finished my, after I finished my engineering, it kind of happened just organically that I got campus placement in, in a decision sciences consulting firm which is, which is headquartered in Chicago and had offshore operations outta Bangalore, India. Right. so what I did, I did not fully kind of know at that time what decision sciences was. I really liked the pitch that this that this company made to the students, right? Which is about data driven decision making and helping new clients kind of drive the business based on the, on the insights you know, that, that you’re gonna provide. So I really liked that kind, kind of a pitch.
And I, I joined this company and I was there for about, you know, two years working at this, you know, in this company. And that, that was my introduction in the, in the space of you, business analytics, decision science, pure play analytics. So that, that’s how I kind of started my career. When I was at this company. You know, after two years or so, I, I, I decided I wanted to take it, you know, to the next level. I wanted to kind of pursue masters in, in business analytics. And that’s when I really moved to the us you know, back in, in 2013, 20 4. And, you know, fast forward after I completed my masters, I joined eBay and I actually interned with them as well, you know, during the summer. And then I was fortunate enough to kind of get a return offer in, in, in, at eBay.
And I was there for about four years. I did a variety of different roles, was always a part of the, a part of the finance and analytics organization. And that’s where I was really introduced to you know, FP&A, right? Just so did a bunch of variety of different roles in FP&A whether it be, you know, from a product and technology perspective, or from a business FP&A standpoint, or from a strategic finance perspective you know, investments and new business opportunity assessments. So a lot of the FP&A kind of work started happening really when I was at and in 2019, you know, then I, I, I moved to to Adobe and have been here since then. Have really enjoyed my time working with a great set of folks that I get to work with and have worked, have been able to work on some really cool stuff here as well. So, I, I, I’ve been a part of the consolidations FP&A team, have been a part of the core team, cloud finance.And currently I’m playing more like the strategic finance and the business FP&A role. So to, to, to get back to the question that you asked Paul, I think it’s, my journey has been a dynamic one, which early on included, like a shift from engineering to, to finance and then kind of gradual progression from, you know, analytics to FP&A. But, but it, it’s been an exciting one.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you. I appreciate you sharing a little bit about that background. And, you know, because I have a follow up question here for you. You know, you hinted at it a little bit, but you earned your undergrad in engineering, but never worked in engineering, right? You started your career in analytics. So help me understand a little bit about the thought process. Because from our conversations we had, you never really, at least toward the end of schooling, never planned on working in engineering, right? So why kind of finish a degree and what was the, what was the thinking there?
Parth Kulkarni:
Yeah. absolutely. So as I, as I kind of, you know mentioned earlier in the, you know, in, in the prior, in the prior segment one of the primary motivations behind why I decided to pursue an undergrad in engineering was because I’ve always kind of had a liking towards maths and science, right? And, and that was the reason, and when I say I had a liking for science, it was, it was just a different, you know, kind of, you know, the, the fundamental branches of science like physics, chem, or biology. And not just, not just the fundamental branches, but actually the scientific method of thinking that goes behind engineering, right? Which is basically like a very, you know, engineering trains you to think in a very structured and hypothesis driven way of trying to solve a problem at hand, right?
Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, and that’s what really into the, into the engineering space to begin with. But while I was going through my coursework, you know, what, what I was quickly realizing is I was gravitating towards courses that involved analyzing data, or economics, or decision making. So, you know, I started taking elective courses in economics and statistics, and I really started to like what I was learning, right? So I, I could see myself applying this knowledge in, in, in the real world, right? So during my fourth and final year of undergrad, when I, when I started applying for jobs, I was, I was keeping the lookout for jobs at a more business and management or economics related. And that’s when I stumbled upon you know, analytics or decision sciences, right? And as a field, and I really liked it. So I think I, I could see the connection between my current skillset and its application to the real world coming through you know, via, via, via the field that I’m in right now, which is analytics and finance.
And that’s why I decided to pursue that. So I would say the transition from engineering to analytics was based on the same foundation that I joined engineering with, which is leveraging quant leveraging problem solving skills that you learn in engineering, but applying them to a field that gives you a lot more exposure, you know, to, to business and technology, which is what I, I like to, so that’s why, that’s what, that’s how I would kind of think about why engineering and why the transition to, to finance and analytics made, made sense in my mind.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you. I appreciate you walking through that, and that makes a lot of sense. Which kinda leads me to our next question. So, you know, you spent several years as a data analyst decision support you earned your MBA in analytics. So talk a little bit more about how having that background helps you as an FP&A professional. You’ve kind of made that shift a little bit more to FP&A.
Parth Kulkarni:
Yeah, absolutely. And and I think for, you know to, to start with the A in FP&A is analysis, right? So it’s, it’s related to Sure. To, to analytics. So, you know, exploring a career in FP&A after having worked in analytics and decision sciences for a few years, was, was, I think in my mind a great option or is a great option for all the analytics professionals, all the data scientists out there. And, and one which I, I, I, I, I believe, you know, felt extremely seamless, at least for me, right? Than, than what I originally imagined. Because when I was making this transition, I, I had this going in the back of my mind on, Hey, I’m not from core finance, you know, I’m, I’ve not, I’ve not earned my accounting degree, you know, how am I really gonna fit within the finance space?
And this was a couple of years back, right? But, but when I moved into the fp a space, like I almost felt at home, right? Because it’s a lot. It, it, it’s, it’s basically what you’re doing is you are kind of doing pure pay analytics, but you’re doing it for a different, in a different kind of a construct where in your, you’re in the, you know, you, you’re leading kind of the budgeting and planning processes. You’re doing a lot of you know, strategic finance, which, which has a huge component of analytics involved, right? So while there are challenges, of course, when you, when you make a career transition from one field to the other that is slightly different in its scope, I think it, it, it can definitely, you know, be achieved. But to be honest, you know, I had to spend a lot of time building my core finance skills as well, because that definitely was something that I had to kind of you know, build and develop because I didn’t originally come from that space, right?
So I took online courses you know, whether it be in basic accounting fundamentals of corporate finance. And I continued to do that even today, to be honest, to, to kind of continue to expand my knowledge and in understanding of the domain. But on the other hand, I think what helped me was having this really strong foundation in data analysis and problem solving. So I could see the two kind of coming together and helping, helping me kind of become a, a decently successful FP&A professional, right? And I, I believe that there are five pillars to kind of become a successful FP&A professional. Like that’s what I’ve kind of learned over the last decade or so. I think the first one is having the strong business acumen. The second one is having a good intuition about the data that you’re looking at, right?
The third one is, I think being able to tell a great story. The fourth, of course, is, you know, having the right skill sets, whether from a finance or from a technology perspective. And then the last one I think is, is business partnering. If someone has spent, you know, a reasonable amount of time in the field of analytics and decision science, it’s more likely than not that you would have great exposure to at least four out of these five pillars, maybe except for the core finance skills, right? So given this huge overlap between what makes a successful FP&A professional, and what makes a successful analytics professional, I think it is a very natural, or it’s a very organic transition that one can have going from pure play analytics into, into FP&A and hence, I, you know, I think that that’s how I think about my transition, and hopefully that kind of sheds some light on the question that you asked as well.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, no, that’s very helpful. And it makes sense to me. There is a lot of overlap between the two. Yeah. Like you mentioned, FP&A, you’ll see more and more many CFOs put analytics under finance in companies, right? It’s rolling up to the CFO. At a minimum, they should be working closely together. And there are definitely areas where the roles intertwined and overlap, like you mentioned storytelling, huge one. Exactly. You know? Yep. Visualizing data. All those things are really needed. There’s a reason they’re both analyst type roles.
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What I wanna ask you next is, prior to the episode, you and I have had the opportunity to chat, and I remember specifically you mentioning that in your view, finance has a more solid seat at the table from kind of your experiences and things you’ve seen. Why is that Talk, talk about that, that perspective.
Parth Kulkarni:
Absolutely. And I think the way that I would answer that question, Paul, is, is kind of reflecting back on the thought process I had playing in my mind when I went through the transition myself, right? If we start by just, you know, understanding the two functions, finance or, you know, or FP&A and analytics, while there are a lot of, I would say, you know, commonalities between the two, like the ones we discussed previously, I think there are some differences and some really critical differences between the roles between the role of these functions, you know, in, in any organization. And, you know, of course there are, there are caveats and and exceptions to what I’m gonna, to what I, you know, to the, to the opinion that I’m gonna share. But generally speaking, I think finance is more what I think of as a core business function. Don’t worry, we’ll
Paul Barnhurst:
Put a label on the episode that says this is Parth’s opinion subject to dispute
Parth Kulkarni:
<Laugh>. Exactly. Exactly. Thank you. But, but what I think is finance is more what I think of as a, as a core business function, right? Meaning every organization, whether a startup or or an established organization would’ve some form of finance function existing within the organization, right? Even for startups, you know, as soon as they have had some sort of a product market fit, and they have witnessed a good, you know, kind of a reception amongst their customer base, they begin to march towards, you know, growth and expansion. And they almost, and that almost naturally kind of requires starting to build out a finance function. You know, it might just be an accounting function at the start, but you do see a finance team taking shape, right? Analytics as a standalone function, I do feel is still a kind of a luxury that some companies do and some companies don’t seem to be able to afford.
I think that’s the number one key difference. The second one, I think, is the more I see these fields are evolving data analysis and data-driven decision making you know, skills and scope, which were, you know, kind of historically something that only the pure analyst or the pure play analytics or analytics professionals used to have these skillset, and they used to be tasked with, with that as their primary, primary role within the organization, right? But the more I see that it’s now becoming like a core skillset across all the functions, and particularly even in the finance function, right? So that’s, I think, the second reason why I think that finance now that it, it has this core skillset of, you know, analytics and data-driven decision making. It’s almost doing the job to a certain extent of what a business analytics function would do, right?
As a standalone function. The third reason why I feel that, you know, finance is a core seat at the table is, again, you know, particularly the fp a and the strategic finance unit, they play a very active role in, you know, being the drivers and the influencers of any strategic decision making that happens in the organization, right?
So whether it be P&L management, you know, operating plans, rolling plans, financial planning, you know, investment planning, new business, you know, opportunity assessments, you name it, you know trying to balance, you know, growth and profit profitability for the organization. Finance usually takes the driver’s seat across these work streams, right? And analytics, on the other hand, are critical parts of that, of that puzzle, but they usually have a more contained role and scope of how they get involved in those work streams. And I think the primary reason for this is the, is the, is the stakeholder exposure and management that finance gets as part of their role is very different than what analytics functions get as part of their role.
Right? and lastly, you know, you, you spoke about how, how the teams kind of roll up within the CFO’s organization. So all the chain of leadership in the report structure, you know, reporting structure shouldn’t really matter in any organization. The reality is that finance has a C-suite representation right across every organization. And, and as you can imagine, having the C-suite representation brings a lot of credibility, a lot of expertise in business and finance operations and decision making process. While on the other hand, you know, the analytics function sometimes reports in the product team, sometimes in the business team, sometimes in the technology team, and sometimes even in the finance team, depending on the scope and mandate, you know, that they’re, so, some of these, and a, and a lot more reasons is why I believe. I think both features are great, by the way, I came from analytics. So I love that function, but I think that’s, that’s some of the reasons which I shared, is what makes, you know, finance have a little more a solid seat at the table than, than just a pure play analytics function. Would
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you. I appreciate that thorough explanation there, and I think what you said makes sense. I can see what you’re saying, which kinda leads to my next question, right? It’s clear in your career you felt like you’ve had a seat at the table in different roles, but what would be the advice you’d offer to an FP&A professional that, you know, feels like they don’t have a seat at the table, like they need to earn it? Any, any advice you’d offer them around maybe things they should be doing, or how to go about making sure they get that seat at the table?
Parth Kulkarni:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a, that’s a great question. And I think as I, you know, as I, as I mentioned before, I think the role of FP&A in today’s context is something we need to kind of better understand to be able to answer that question, right? If we take a step back and just, you know, think through some of the macro trends that we’re living in, I think there is, there are some distinct trends that we see developing, right? One, from a macro perspective, you know, we do see the business landscape kind of changing quite significantly, right? So businesses are becoming more globalized, they’re becoming more digitally connected. And you see these advancements in market disruptions happening at a, at a, at an extremely rapid pace that we, we haven’t seen before, right? So there is a, there’s an increased sense of competition that industries are facing.
So every organization is now trying to kinda drive strategic growth, but also trying to be really operationally efficient at the same time, right? There is a rapid pace, you know, of, you know, technology innovation in a Chat GPT, and, you know, conversational AI, you know, you can hear these kind of technology disruptions happening all the time, right? So there is an abundance of this data that is being created and stored which is, which, you know, if we think about it, is leading all companies to be wanting to make, wanting to become better at data-driven and agile decision making. You know, so now that we’ve kind of spoken about like the context of the macro environment, let’s understand what this means for fna, right? Because companies are looking for FP&A professionals who I think possess a combination of three skills. One, analytical because, you know, that’s, that’s core part of the job, second technical because right.
You know, given the, the increased amount of data that exists in companies and you know, one just has to be technologically, I think, proficient to be able to be successful in this kind of role. And the third one, of course, is the finance skills, right? So every organization is looking for an FP&A professional who can play like a strategic role instead of just an operational role, you know and the silos that that, that probably, you know, existed before you know are, are, are kind of, are, you know, are, are collapsing, right? And including finance functions. Every function is now needing to be more collaborative, you know, and the kind of ex output that is being expected outta the FP&A team is more predictive in nature than, you know, just being descriptive or, you know, kind of look back, kind of, kind of output, right?
So there’s a greater than ever, ever, you know, before stress on FP&A delivering the impact and insights versus, versus just important, right? So coming back, professional needs to do to earn a seat one is to maybe reflect on how they are supporting the vision missionyou know, of, of the company that, that, that they’re in, and where the company is heading towards, and how can they help the organization through their work, right? I believe that FP&A does have a seat at the table, but it’s just that the FP&A professionals need to own the outcome of the contributions that they’re making to the organization as well.
Paul Barnhurst:
I really like the last part there that you said that really stuck with me as listen to that is, you’re right, owning the outcome, we have a responsibility there. And you know, that that’s really important to look at and to do that self-assessment and figure out why it’s not happening and what you need to change. Because the role if done properly, and I’d say in some companies, it’s still viewed a little bit more of as a reporting role, but if the role structured properly by, by the nature of the role, you should have a seat at the table. So you need to ask yourself, why don’t I have that? Is it the company isn’t structured Right? Right. And if it’s not gonna change and you want a seat at the table, then you probably need to go find another job. And if it is structured in such a way that you have the function has a seat at the table, then what do you need to change? You are not doing so you don’t have a seat at the table.
Parth Kulkarni:
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Absolutely. That, that’s, that’s, that’s exactly, that’s exactly right, Paul.
Paul Barnhurst:
No, it make makes sense to me. And so it really comes, you gotta figure out what, what company are you in? Are you in company A or company B? And then from there, you gotta figure out what’s the role I wanna have, and how does that fit and make your decision? Because there are, I’ve been in some companies where there wasn’t an appetite to make that change to really give FP&A a seat at the table, and Right. I’ve seen some roles where that’s the case, right? And it’s like, all right, well, I, I could be doing great analysis and pushing and making a difference in some ways, but if they don’t want me there, I’m limited. Right? There’s only so much you can do as an individual.
Parth Kulkarni:
And that’s absolutely right, Paul, because I, I have seen those kind of, those kind of examples as well, right? Like I have seen, it all depends on what is the role of the FP&A team in the organization? Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, right? Are we just talking about an FP&A team, but which is not really FP&A, but which is like a reporting function. But we really talking about an FP&A team that has a more strategic role in the organization, right? And not just an operational role. I think if you’re working in an organization which has, which has an FP&A team that has that has this strategic role, and the organization acknowledges the value that, you know, FP&A team can drive through the insights that it can deliver, I think that you’re at a great place, right? And you can do, you know, you can, you can contribute a lot to the, to the, to the growth of the company through your work.
Unfortunately, as you mentioned, there are a lot of companies out there, which, which still look at finance as purely a reporting function, right? You know, they’re just looking for the quarter close reports or the month end reports. So they’re looking only for that kind support from their finance teams. There, I definitely do feel that it’s gonna be a lot more kind of limiting to how much value you can add to your work. I mean, of course all of the things that I mentioned about quarter flows and month, you know, month reporting is absolutely critical to what we do as a finance team, right? But there is something that goes beyond that operational you know, kind of responsibilities to playing like the strategic to, to being able to add strategic value to the business. And if you’re if the company that you’re in is ready to embrace that, you’re in a great place.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. Totally agree. And one way I really like to think of about is, I’ll say, if you’re in the first one where the focus is reporting and they don’t want strategic, you’re doing FP&R – financial planning and reporting.
Parth Kulkarni:
That’s
Paul Barnhurst:
Right. If you wanna do FP&A go find a different organization, because the analysis are, at least for me, and for many people, that’s where the strategy takes place. That’s absolutely where a lot of the rewarding parts of the job take place. Not to say they can’t come in the planning phase, and obviously they should, or even reporting, there could be some rewarding and great things from that, but it’s not the holistic role if you’re missing that.
Parth Kulkarni:
That’s right. And it also goes back to what you enjoy, right? I mean, there are some people who have met in my career on who really just, you know, enjoy the reporting part, like, you know building great dashboards and reporting you know, reporting on the business performance. And that’s fantastic because if that’s, if that’s what you really like and that’s what you wanna be able to kind of you know, contribute to in terms of, you know, your contribution to the company, I think then that’s, that’s a fantastic place to be in. But when I think about what I, you know, kind of as we spoke about earlier I wanna be able to kind of contribute to the growth of the business through my ideas, through my you know, to my, to, you know, through the hypothesis that I have around the different, you know, business problems that exist out there, right? So there, you need that strategic, you know, the company to embrace that strategic inputs from the FP&A team. Absolutely.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. And like you said, there are definitely different roles, and as there’s a reason I’ve always been business unit FP&A as much as I can in my career versus corporate fp a ’cause I wanna be out there making the decisions with the business versus rolling up all the financials. Nothing wrong with rolling ’em up, it needs to be done. It could be a great job. Just not the best fit for my personality. And so I’m completely, you have to understand those things. So I think that’s been a great conversation. Let’s shift gears here a little bit. I want, you know, you’ve held several different roles in FP&A at Adobe. Today You are leading a finance team supporting the first product-led growth-based product at Adobe. So tell us a little bit about that and kind of that experience, because I’m sure that’s quite a journey for Adobe to be launching a product like that.
Parth Kulkarni:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think before we get into, into the details of of this I would love to maybe just, you know, make you know, share a little bit to, to our listeners, the acronym PLG is. It stands for product-led growth, right which is a type of a go-to-market strategy that has picked up over the last, I would say, five to six year years-ish. You know, I won’t go into the depth of what, what that is, but I would highly encourage, you know, every, every single FP&A and finance and and finance professionals listening into this podcast to, to, to read up on this if, if they don’t, if they don’t know about this already. So coming back to the question that you askedcurrently do lead a teamleading an FP&A team for Adobe Express, which is you know, an offering that Adobe launched at the start of 2022 and continues to build on in a significant way, right?
And, and the way that we decided to kind of continue to optimize different parts of the customer journey that, you know, for this particular product is by adopting product led growth as a GTM strategy, right? And what it means from an FP&A perspective is I think it was a fantastic opportunity for us to, for me and my team to kind of reimagine the way that we approached financial planning and, and supported the business, right? So, you know, when we think about financial planning, FP&A usually has a model that forecasts you know, top line and expenses. And, and that’s, that’s, that’s usually what, you know, becomes the core or the significant component of the financial planning exercise, right? And while there are always, you know, these caveats there would always be caveats. I think FP&A models tend to focus mostly on financial metrics, right?
Which, which we tend to forecast based on, based on historicals. In this case I think the reason I like this opportunity so much is we actually had the opportunity to adopt a completely different approach to planning and model building, right? So we took a much more, I would say, like a bottoms up approach in our modeling, starting withbuilding forecasts and projections around every single critical upstream metric. Whether it’s, whether it be, you know, acquisitions related or whether it be from an engagement perspective that the customer, like, how are customers really engaging with the product, or what kind of conversion rates are we seeing in, in the product itself? Or what kind of retention, you know, is, are we seeing for this particular product? So it was a completely, I would say, instead of purely being based on historicals and purely being based on just the trends that we see from a top line standpoint this, this is, this is a place where I got the opportunity to actually understand the customer journey, translate that into a financial model, and then build my financial planning around that.
And it required a lot of cross-functional teams. You know, we first, you know, kind of partnered with multiple different teams to define the KPIs or the key performance indicators you know, that we believed would be critical to monitor, measure, optimize to be able to drive like a superior, you know, customer experience. And since then, you know, we’ve tried to kind of establish a relationship between the upstream metrics all the way down to how does it translate into revenue and ARR right? Or even expense for that matter. So now all of a sudden, you know, the FP&A team is now closely, you know, kind of monitoring the customer success metrics as part of the core financial model and sub and, you know, subsequently trying to kind of forecast financials versus having it solely rely on historical data, having the financial so solely reliant historical data to predict, you know, the future scenarios. So, so that’s, that’s, that’s been, that’s been my experience, you know, kind of supporting a you know, led producthere at Adobe.
Paul Barnhurst:
Got it. Thank you for sharing that. Appreciate it. And you know, what I wanna ask about next is just insights. I know from our conversations you love deriving insights outta data, but how do you think about that? How do you go about analyzing data to find those insights? Do you have a framework Yeah. Or an approach that you use to helps you find insights from data? Because I think it’s a challenge many of us face.
Parth Kulkarni:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, absolutely. I I, I, I think some of it goes back to, you know, what we, what we discussed earlier as well, right? I think there are four pillars to kind of becoming an effective you know, FP&A professional, right? You know, one is the business acumen that is the intuition or the analytical skills that is the data sources, and, you knowthe technology aspect in that role, and that is the storytelling, right? And if I were to think of this through the lens of, you know, a framework as you, as you, as you kind of asked, there is, there is a framework that I had, you know, kind of I have used at the very start of my, of my career, you know, when I was working at the decision sciences you know, organization it’s what, it’s what is, is referred to as the SCQA framework, right?
So the situation the, the, the, the complications, the questions, and, you know, the answer framework which was you know, developed by, I forget the name of that person now, but it was basically a, a, a management consultant who was, I think if I, if I’m, if I’m not mistaken, working with McKinsey who developed this framework, right? Which I believe can come really handy in being able to have a structure or a structured problem solving approach, right? And I won’t go into, you know, too many details about what the framework is. But it provides, I would say, a logical structure for deriving insights and being able to present information, making it super easy for the audience to understand and engage with that context, right? So if we were to briefly touch on this framework or any other framework or approach like this, I think it is imperative for an analyst or FP&A professional to, to kind of really understand what is the business problem at hand that they’re trying to solve in the context of the current state of the business. And then gaining clarity on the complications, which might have led to that problem, and what questions that need to be answered through the data, you know, through analyzing the data that can help solve this problem. So, if one were to think about every business problem and every analytical problem in this form of a structured manner and then leverage their analytical and technology skills to kind of parse trends and patterns from the data, I think it definitely could help in deriving the right insights that can enable you know effective decision making.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you. And just one more time, just for audience, so we make sure you get it. Can you give us the, the acronym again? It was, was it s it
Parth Kulkarni:
Was SCQA. So it is situation complication, question and answer. It’s called the SCQA framework. I love that. I, I’ve, I’ve used it quite a bit in know, in, in the, in the in, in a lot of different business problems that I’ve worked on.
Paul Barnhurst:
I haven’t heard that one before, so I like that. So just, I’m gonna say it one more time for audience, just real clear, so everybody gets it. Situation complication, question, answer. And so it’s a great framework you can use. There’s others out there. I’ve seen others as well. Yep. But it always helps to have a framework to help guide you, because I think we’ve all been there. I know have, it’s very easy to get lost in the data and go down those rabbit holes.
Parth Kulkarni:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Something to guide us back to, what are we trying, you know, if there is a time tested framework that exists out there, I think it’s worth exploding. It’s worth, I’ve, it is what I’ve learned in, in, in my career, so definitely this is one of the ones which, which has helped me a lot for sure.
Paul Barnhurst:
No, I agree. If it’s been around a long time where a lot of people are using it, there’s usually a reason they should at least look at it. Exactly. You may go in a different direction, but Exactly. It’s good to know about it. Exactly. Next question here, can you tell me about a time in your career when you experienced what I call a strategic moment, an aha moment? Yeah. Where a, a strategic insight later empowered you to drive changes within the organization or to drive a change?
Parth Kulkarni:
One of the things which I have kind of, it’s been, it’s been core to, to the way that I’ve operated as an FP&A professional, is to really believe in the power of, you know, processes and standardization, right? Sure. So I think my example of that aha moment would be, you know, when I was working a couple, couple of years back, actually, when I was in the e-commerce space, I was part of this you know, pretty lean kind of a team that was responsible for driving you know, financial planning, reporting analysis for the holiday season, right? For the, for this e-commerce company that was working in. So when I say holiday season, you can think about a time period, which is around mid of October, let’s say Christmas, right? Which is like the peak season for any eCommerce company, right? Because that’s the shopping season of course. Yeah.
Paul Barnhurst:
Of course
Parth Kulkarni:
Like in, in exactly, exactly. You know, and it was like, so this team, it, it, it was, when I was part of this team, it was an intense work stream because, you know, we used to have executive reviews, and when I say executive reviews, like it was the GMs and the VPs and the SVPs that we had to present to almost three times a day, right? During that, during that timeframe for about 45 days wherein we used to walk, you know, the execs through the business performance, both from a top line as well as from a variable expenses standpoint. And, you know, we had to come up with the forecast for the next couple of days or weeks, right? To be able to kind of give direction in, in terms of where are we heading towards, right? You know, from a, from a quarterly performance standpoint.
And the, the, the insights you know, from that, that my team used to work on the, like, I could see how they’re being used to kind of make decisions, right? Whether it be around marketing strategy, whether it be around deals and promos, whether it’s around product sourcing or, you know, where do we place the product on the website. So it was pretty critical to having like a, you know, the insights from my team, from my team were pretty critical to having a successful holiday season. Now, it might sound surprising, but you know, for some of the days, like especially around, you know, those, those those those peak shopping days like Thanksgiving and Black Friday, I remember, you know, we used to have an exec standup as early as 6.30 in the morning, right? And so when this entire process started, what I’m, what I’m going with this is for the first two or three days, you know, we really struggled to get the insights on time, you know, in a, in a format that is extremely exec friendly, but also something that delivered the insights to be able to make business decisions, right?
And we tried a couple of things, but I think what really stuck and worked well for us for the remainder of the holiday season was aligning on a standard set of KPIs and reporting modules that looked at the difference, you know, cuts of the business that, you know, the execs wanted to look at and we thought would provide value from. And we used that on a consistent basis to assess the business performance, right? So we almost automated that. And how that helped us is that it freed up a lot of time for us, for us to actually work on ad hoc deep dive analysis on specific areas that needed that, that double click, right? Which we weren’t able to get to because we were just like so consumed with creating these set of reports to be able to present to the, you know, to the exec team twice a day, right?
So once we kind of had this standardized framework, it provided a consistent framework to measure the performance on a continual basis. So one, we got the time to actually work on ad analysis. Second, we got a consistent framework to kind of measure the performance on a continual basis. And it also led to, you know, effective and fast, you know, kind of decisions being made in the organization, right? So from, so my learning, which I think was a strategic learning for me, was based on that experience, is if you establish a process and if you’re able to drive standardization, it really works. And it’s probably the most effective tool to drive effective decision making in an organization. And it’s especially important, I think, for FP&A professionals, since we’re at the core of that planning and budgeting exercise, right? So I, so you, since then, I’ve always encouraged my teams to, you know, stay agile. I think that’s really important as an FP&A team, but yet, you know, drive processes and standardization where needed so that we are able to drive efficiency. So I think that’s how I think about that. That’s my strategic aha moment.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you. I appreciate that. And there’s a lot to be said for driving standardization and efficiency to free up time and hos you realized it, focusing on just those key metrics and really being diligent on those can allow you to dig in and find other trends. I appreciate that answer. Sounds like a great experience and you’ve carried that with you throughout your career. So we’re coming up toward the end of our time, so we’re gonna do the get to know you section. It’s a little bit of a, kind of a lightning round, so to speak. I have actually five questions here for you. One’s gonna be a little bit of a surprise, so we’ll put you on the spot for a second, but you get no more than 30 seconds to answer each of these. Okay. So we’ll go ahead and get started here. What is something interesting about you? Not many people know something we would generally not find online about yet.
Parth Kulkarni:
Okay. I, I, I think it would be my interest in liking for the Indian classical music. So, you know, from a, from a, from a young age I’ve been practicing tabla. Tabla is like the, the Indian version of the drums, basically.
Paul Barnhurst:
I will take your word for it,
Parth Kulkarni:
<Laugh> and, and you know, post covid, you know, when we, when we started kind of having this hybrid work, work from home, work, work in person kind of a kind of hybrid environment you know, I actually started spending a lot of time getting back to Indian classical music not just as a, as a blr player or the Indian version of drums player, but actually starting to learn singing Indian, classical music, singing. So, and I’ll confess, I’m, I’m a beginner, so I don’t, I don’t definitely wanna be seen singing just as yet in, in your public audience, <laugh>. But it’s a lot. It’s a, it’s a lot of fun you know, doing that outside of my work. And it’s something, you know, almost nobody outside of my wife and my daughter know, know about, or my parents. Yeah.
Paul Barnhurst:
I appreciate, sure. And I was just gonna play you on the spot and ask you to sing a song <laugh>, but we’ll wait until your next time on FP&A Today So keep practicing. When we have you back on FA today, I expect a song <laugh>. So Exactly. If you could meet one person in the world, dead or alive, who are you gonna meet?
Parth Kulkarni:
Oh, it has to be, it has to be Steve Jobs. I mean, he, he, he’s an, he’s an inspiration for countless folks, you know around the world, including, including myself. And, you know beyond just being like a, a profound, you know, technologist or an innovator, I, I think what I kind of draw inspiration from him is his passion to, you know, I’ve seen bunch of his videos on YouTube, right? And what you can see in that person is relentless passion to understand consumer behavior and purpose. There is a great sense of understanding, and there is a great sense of purpose behind every product that Apple created or Steve Jobs created, right? And it was based on his understanding of consumer behavior, consumer psychology. So his products were, you know, not just like functional, but they were amazingly intuitive, right? To, to the cons to the customers. So, you know, that he, he’s an inspiration for me. So I would say definitely go with Steve Jobs on that question.
Paul Barnhurst:
Alright, thank you. So next question, what is the last thing you Googled looked up on YouTube are used generative AI to answer about finance kind of FP&A or Excel?
Parth Kulkarni:
You know, it’s funny you asked that because yesterday evening I was trying to kind of try learn something more about this one methodology using which you can do comparative analysis on a questionnaire based data. I was like, how do I even begin to figure out what are the statistical techniques to, to use for this, right? And that’s what I used you know, conversational or generative AI for, because I was like, and the, the best part about it is you can just ask him a random question saying, Hey, I’m trying to do this. Tell me, you know, like a statistical approach to, to be able to figure this out. And that’s, that’s the last thing which I did. I, it’s not funny, but it’s the latest of what I, what I used Gen Gen ai or conversational AI for not gen ai, but conversational AI for. So that’s, that’s, that would be, that would be it.
Paul Barnhurst:
Appreciate it. What’s your favorite Excel function or feature?
Parth Kulkarni:
It has to be index match alright.
Paul Barnhurst:
I guess I’ll give you that one. I’m just kidding. <Laugh>,
Parth Kulkarni:
You know, it’s index match. I, I, I think I’ve used it so much you know, power to user at Excel. So I, I really, I, I, I’ve, I’ve seen the power that index match has in a lot of what I’ve done, or a lot of dashboards, Excel-based dashboards that I’ve, that I’ve created in the past. So sure, that would be, that would be the one.
Paul Barnhurst:
All right. And so here’s the bonus question. Since you’re at Adobe, what’s your favorite Adobe product?
Parth Kulkarni:
Adobe Express, the one that I currently support, that, that’s an easy one.
Paul Barnhurst:
Good answer.
Parth Kulkarni:
That’s an easy one. Yeah.
Paul Barnhurst:
I was get, I thought you might say something elses, but we’ll, we’ll give you that one. All right?
Parth Kulkarni:
Yeah, yeah.
Paul Barnhurst:
So here’s, we wrap up. We just have two questions left for you. So this question is, what do you see as the most critical skill for FP&A professionals today? What’s the most important thing they need to have?
Parth Kulkarni:
I think four, four skills, which we’ve, you know, kind of talked about before. It’s business acumen skill, the technology you know, being, being able to be analytically strong, and then strong business partnering skills. So it’s, I think those four, if they have, I think I think they’ll, they, they’re set up and they have a strong foundation to being the successful FP&Aa professional.
Paul Barnhurst:
Alright. Thank you. I appreciate that. I know we talked a little bit about that before, so appreciate the four there. So, last question. If someone wants to reach out to you or get ahold of you after they listen to this episode, what’s the best way to do that?
Parth Kulkarni:
It would be, you know, hitting me up on LinkedIn because I’m fairly active on my LinkedIn. And you know, you’ll be, you’ll easily be able to find me with my first and last name on LinkedIn. So if anyone wants to connect with me, that would be the best place to do that.
Paul Barnhurst:
Well, I really appreciate you carving out some time today. I know you’re very busy. I know you have a, you have a family and a job and all those things, so thank you for taking, you know, 45 minutes to chat here with us, and I look forward to releasing this here in the near future to our audience. So thanks for being on the show.
Parth Kulkarni:
Perfect. It, it’s been a, it’s, it’s been a great conversation Paul, so thank you so much for the opportunity and being able to kind of share my thoughts with your, with your listeners. So thank you. Really appreciate it.
