“I transitioned into FP&A when I realized that it wasn’t just about crunching the numbers, it was more about telling a story and trying to influence the future. Working with Fortune 100 companies has given me the fantastic platform to leave transformative projects in finance, procurement, and supply chain. I saw firsthand how FP&A acts as the strategic backbone of any type of organization”
– Enrique Rodriguez, Finance Director, Walgreens Boots Alliance on FP&A Today.
Enrique Rodriguez is a multilingual finance director and business leader. With more than 15 years of experience in Fortune 100 companies, he has worked collaboratively with global functions directing FP&A, accounting and treasury teams. He’s headed finance departments overseeing $7 billion in annual spend and managing operational budgets of up to $750 million in billion dollar business units and is a passionate believer in Zero Based Budgeting revealing how he implemented this – despite challenges.
- My background in Guatemala
- When I realized it is not just about crunching the numbers
- FP&A as the backbone of the institution
- Main financial metrics bio biopharmaceutical companies, medical devices, and healthcare companies
- How FP&A departments are set up at the companies you worked for – and the philosophy and the outputs expected from FP&A
- producing outputs like dynamic scenario planning and specific KPI dashboards guiding decisions at the highest level.
- Zero based budgeting – the why and how of our experience
- Biggest challenges I have seen in budgeting in my career – managing budgets during a turnaround
- How finance business partnering has changed in my career
- The problem solving aspect of FP&A
- The opportunities and challenges of fast-growing technology
- Saving $8million on inventory write-off in a country on a health product
- Financial Executives International (Chicago)
- The power of a great mentor and books: Hit Refresh Satya Nadella (Microsoft) and Shoe Dog (Joe Knight)
- supporting a procurement organization in, in an early level of maturity – my toughest challenge
- Index Match – more flexible and scalable for complex analysis
Connect with Enrique Rodriguez on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/enrique-a-rodriguez/
Full blog post and transcript
Glenn Hopper:
Welcome to FP&A Today, I’m your host, Glenn Hopper. Today we have a special guest, Enrique Rodriguez. Enrique is a multilingual finance director and business leader. With over 15 years of experience in Fortune 100 companies, he has worked collaboratively with global functions directing FP&A, accounting and treasury teams. He’s headed finance departments overseeing 7 billion in annual spend and managing operational budgets of up to $750 million in billion dollar business units. A strategic leader, Enrique, has adapted quickly in diverse environments, implementing large scale financial systems and projects across multiple time zones. He served as a country CFO and regional finance director for six countries. Enrique is a growth mindset and servant leader who enjoys developing high performance teams. He’s a board member of the Financial Executives International Chicago Chapter and leads its leadership development committee. Enrique, welcome to the show.
Enrique Rodriguez:
Thank you very much, Glenn. Appreciate very much the invitation, and it’s an honor and pleasure to be here in front of you and all your listeners. Thank you.
Glenn Hopper:
Before the show, we were talking about some of your experience, and you’ve worked with some, um, big well-known companies that, uh, all of our listeners to be familiar with. Can you kind of take me through your career and, and, uh, te tell our audience how you got into FPNA and finance?
Enrique Rodriguez:
Yes, absolutely. So, ultimately, my career be began in economics and finance in my home country, Guatemala. Uh, and ultimately was driven by a curiosity about how numbers can actually guide decision making. Just the parentheses that I wanted to make. Uh, Guatemala is actually a beautiful country and is the cradle of the Mayan civilization is the largest economy in central America with an estimated GDP of about 104, $105 billion in, uh, uh, expecting in, or expecting in 2023. It has roughly a population of 19 million people. Just giving you a little bit of, of comparison, it’s very close to the population of the state of New York with roughly about 44,000 square miles. Similar to the state of, uh, of the size of the state of Pennsylvania. Uh, Guatemala is also, uh, the economy is dominated by the private sector, and what generates about, roughly about 85% of its GDP with industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, and services. So, going back to my career, I transitioned into FP&A when I realized that it wasn’t just about crunching the numbers, it was more about telling a story and trying to influence the future. Uh, working with Fortune 100 companies have given me the fantastic platform to leave transformative projects in finance, procurement, and supply chain. When I saw firsthand how can FP&A and a act as the strategic backbone of any type of organization,
Glenn Hopper:
I love that more and more people are saying now, I, I swear I feel like if I were doing this, uh, podcast even a decade ago, not as many people would talk about storytelling, but it is, it’s so crucial, the value that we add when we crunch numbers. It’s not just about, um, you know, gathering up all the data and putting together our charts and graphs. It’s about interpreting that data and making a story and having an objective with it, and using the data to, you know, to help people, to help show the other decision makers in the company what you know, what the data means, and, and give them an idea of what the data is telling us. So I love, I love the storytelling part that you focused on there. I also wanna talk about, because you have experience in Fortune 100, uh, bio biopharmaceutical companies, medical devices, and healthcare companies, and I know a lot of our listeners are, are from those industries. And, and for those who aren’t even, what are the essential things that finance people need to know about, uh, these companies and industries? I, I mean, like, what are your main KPIs that you’re looking at? The metrics that the CFO wants to know on a, on a daily basis in, in each of those industries,
Enrique Rodriguez:
Ultimately in this industries is very important to understand the long timelines and high stakes. And it’s absolutely critical. Just to give a little bit of sense of perspective, roughly within the pharma and biotech industries. The lead time in order to, from inception of a molecule or discovery of a molecule, all the way to having the, the finished product directly at your pharmacy, uh, is roughly between 10 to 12 years. So that’s a very long lead time. Um, so for example, in the biopharma R&D spend type to market, regulatory hurdles shape, actually all financial strategies. Going back to the metrics, Glen, key metrics include gross margin, byproduct, cash burn during development phases, and also, and ultimately working capital efficiencies. I would say CFOs can track profitability by segment, cash flow projections, and the progress of these strategic initiatives like new drug launches is absolutely paramount.
And last but not least, I would say that probably the complexity of these industries, the actually demands finance professionals who are, are able to balance the compliance side of it. Because we’re talking about heavily regulated industries across the board, and not only locally within the us but even in the companies that I have had the fortune and the privilege of being part of in a global scale, it’s very important to have that sense of understanding about the different regulations across the board and the different environments, uh, from one country to the next. Uh, going back to the complexity of this industry is definitely, innovation is key and strategic planning as well, coupled with the long timelines is absolutely, uh, critical.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And thinking about the amount of R&D and how you have to constantly be looking for the next, uh, the next new drug or, or innovation. And, but at the same time, you know, you know that you’re, that that is a, a heavy, um, expense that the company’s, uh, bearing, but then you’ve gotta also kind of see the life cycle and I guess on the, yeah, from drug release, you’ve got the days that you have patent on it, and then until the patent expires and that goes away. So you, it you have your, your sort of managing the cycle of the release drugs and then the R&D as well. It’s, it, it seems like it would be a lot to, to keep up with. How were the fp a departments set up at the companies you worked for? What was the kind of the philosophy and the outputs that, um, uh, that came outta your FP&A departments?
Enrique Rodriguez:
Yeah, that’s a very good question because I would say that specifically within the biopharma pharma medical devices and biotech companies, um, definitely, or absolutely, FP&A plays a dual role not only being a value driver, but ultimately becoming a strategic partner. I would say that probably different from other industries, the biopharma medical devices and, and, and, and, and biotech industry puts finance overall as a function in, in a very important role, as I said, becoming or being truthfully a strategic partner and being that value driver. Our focus within those industries has always been about agility, collaboration, ensuring insights that are not just accurate, but also actionable. We prioritize integrating FP&A with other functions as well, producing outputs like dynamic scenario planning, which is key and specific KPI dashboard that can also guide decisions at the highest level. Ultimately, this insures or has insured being proactive and navigating the rapidly evolving in healthcare and retail space as well in the retail pharma space.
Glenn Hopper:
So you recently presented an interesting webinar about how you implemented zero-based budgeting. This is a great debate, and I think that there’s, you know, there’s top down and, and zero based and then sort of where companies end up meeting in, in the middle. But I’d love to hear an overview of the why and how and what people should know about, uh, about zero-based budgeting.
Enrique Rodriguez:
Ultimately, zero based budgeting has been a game changer, at least personally for me. I think one of the critical points that I try to make in that, uh, uh, webinar where I had also the privilege of participating is that ZBB is so critical because instead of relying on historical budgets and trends, it’s absolutely about how do you rebuild or build your budget from the ground up, questioning every single dollar that gets spent. Um, I would say that implementation overall demands, or, or definitely implies a very strong support from senior leadership team because ultimately the level of scrutiny as to each and every one of the dollar that gets spent from a bottom up, it’s, uh, can be at the beginning time consuming. It can create a little bit of friction, but ultimately, when you get the buy-in for the business unit leaders, uh, they know that the goal is to actually drive transparency and specifically accountability.
One of the recent examples that I can mention is that we did identify about eliminated costly, about 15% reduction in operational costs, uh, eliminating redundant expenses that we would not have been able to actually find without going into this very thorough, time consuming at the beginning, very, very thorough and productive exercise of ZBB. Probably my final point here is that the success of a, of a good and, and effective ZBB implementation comes from aligning stakeholders early. Of course, breaking down silos and creating ultimately a culture of ownership over the budget is not a, this is a finance function overall. It’s ultimately me as a business unit leader, being the owner of a budget facilitated by the, the support and partnership of f fp and a or a finance professional across the board.
Glenn Hopper:
I’ve been a, a fan of zero-based budgeting since before I was in finance, well, before I was in finance, my first exposure to a budget, I was in the military, and it was coming up on the end of the year, um, on, on budget time. And this was in the, um, mid nineties. I’m dating myself a little bit here, but, uh, this was, uh, during a time of, uh, military cutbacks, and I remember my boss telling me, we have to spend this money by the end of the year, or they’ll take it out of our budget for next year. And that seemed like the most backwards, but I, you know, but I was played the game and I said, okay, well, we’re gonna buy, you know, extra office supplies and whatever was <laugh> we had to do to, to round out our budget. But then when I had my first finance role and my first budgets that I was responsible for, it seemed insane to me that we wouldn’t do zero based budgeting. But at every company where I was ever CFO, it was very difficult to get zero based budgeting put in place. And because of the size of the companies where I went to work, there was always a bit of a challenge because a lot of times I would be the first kind of real finance person to come to a company mm-hmm <affirmative>. Being in the, in the startup space. And
Enrique Rodriguez:
Yeah,
Glenn Hopper:
They, they always, the, the department heads always wanna know, well, what was my spend last year? And they can’t get, they can’t get <laugh> get past this idea of, um, you know, this, but then if, if you move in and a company hasn’t, you know, if expenses haven’t been properly allocated and maybe software wasn’t applied to or what, you know, they, they want to know what their baseline is. Um, but I’ve found that zero based budgeting actually, like actually works hand in hand. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. When you want the department heads to start taking ownership of this budget performance, because when they don’t just say, take the run rate at 2%, or, you know, take whatever forecast comes from the top down. Absolutely. Yeah. And then they own, they have ownership of it. And then when, uh, further when you tie their bonus to how they perform compared to budget, I mean, that they go, they go hand in hand. But it’s always, it’s, it’s always a difficult concept to roll out to people. And it, it is more difficult, I think, than just being able to go down and, um, you know, plug in well head count plus 10% and, you know, uh, shipping plus two point a half percent or, you know, run rate or what, whatever the, you know, other way of approaching it would be. So, uh, have you seen conflict or people pushing back when you tried to roll out zero based budgeting before?
Enrique Rodriguez:
Yes, all the time. All the time. Because precisely every business unit or most of the business unit leaders and so on, are so used to what you just mentioned. I mean, baseline plus minus three, five, 10%, and that’s what the definition of budget was. But, but ultimately, one of the points that I wanted to emphasize one more time, Glenn, is, is the fact that it’s important in any type of, uh, ZBB implementation to spend the, the right amount of time in the initial setup, because that is so critical in order to, to guarantee, or at least to facilitate or enable the success of that ZVB implementation. The definition of the, the, the specific categories were, are going to be the categories that are considered ZBB, uh, based or not, ZBB based, and ultimately making sure that all the, the enterprise that is gonna be under these new, uh, new way of budgeting is fully aware about what is, or the key definitions and what are gonna be the guiding principles of it all. And last, but not least, ensuring that the submission gets done on a timely matter, because more often than none in any type of, and probably most of the FPNA professionals have been doing this throughout their career timeliness of, of deadline submission is, is, is very key. And ultimately, those are the, the components of a successful ZBB implementation, in my opinion.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, it’s interesting, looking at the size of companies that you’ve worked at are much bigger than mine, but I imagine a lot of the issues around it are still the same, same, where you have to be sure that if you are allocating software expense, if you’ve told them that they have to budget for it, that you’re making sure that you’re tracking the expense back to the place where they said it would be. And that’s, uh, but it, it, it, both those together foster more discipline and, and gives a more accurate report. So I agree with the approach and, and commend you for doing that. Well, what would you say is the, um, most challenging budget experience you’ve, you’ve faced? So in your career to date, I mean, is was that around implementing zero-based budgeting or what other, uh, challenges have you seen in, in budgeting
Enrique Rodriguez:
<laugh>, there has been many, uh, countless experiences in, or difficult experiences, but ultimately, I think for me, the tough work experience has been, I would say managing budgets during a turnaround because, uh, I mean, under heavy cost containment measures, I would say that has been ultimately the tough experience so far. It’s easier to manage budgets when the business is thriving or is in a growth mode or, or has a fantastic growth trajectory overall in addition to being in a favorable economic environment. However, when the business is in the middle of a turnaround on their constant cost containment measures, your ability as a leader to prioritize and establish consensus maybe would be with, with the respect to business leaders on determining exactly what are the real priorities and what are those expenses that are the, keep the lights on type of expenses is definitely more challenging or has been more challenging, ultimately managing those expected or unexpected costs. But by focusing on share priorities and leveraging the details scenario analysis, um, it’s key to build that unified budget and support the combined, uh, company’s goals.
Glenn Hopper:
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thinking about turnarounds, and that’s, you, you’re, you’re kind of giving me flashbacks to my own career. My first CFO role, this wasn’t a turnaround, but it was a, a, a startup company that was a, a, a retail car wash company.
And I started as CFO, the first CFO at the company in 2007. We were pretty heavily leveraged. These, you know, each of these units were 7 million, several million dollars to build. They had a handful of units. Um, so I started in oh seven, then we had the financial crisis of oh 8, 0 9 mm-hmm <affirmative>. When this company was heavily leveraged a lot of new sites under construction. And, and all of a sudden you had to get the, uh, you know, the, the budget in line because we had all these covenants with the banks and, um, you know, just trying to keep our head above water when, uh, in all the economic turmoil. But I will say it’s, it’s, uh, I don’t know what is that saying of steel sharpened steel or whatever, because we got through, we survived oh eight and oh nine, and we kept all these controls that we had in place in the financial crisis until we ended up selling the business several years down the road.
But, um, the tight budgeting and the fact that we had these, in our case, it was the car wash managers were high school educated. These certainly were not finance people, but we held them accountable for their budgets. And I swear, after a couple of months of managing ’em to it, you would think you were talking to, uh, you know, McKinsey <laugh> analyst come in and review the budget with you, but they got, you know, that was how, but what we learned in that hard time through oh eight and oh nine carried over, and it made them, it made us fiscally a much tighter company as it was kind of interesting, you know, what could have taken us under, under that kind of pressure, the fact that we survived it and maintained that attitude was a huge benefit in that case.
Enrique Rodriguez:
Yes.
Glenn Hopper:
So we were talking a little bit, uh, before the show and, and you mentioned the storytelling part of it, um, uh, very early on in, in one of the questions, but we were talking about business partnering as well and how, um, finance does better when it kind of gets out of that ivory tower of just sitting over here isolated and, and, oh, I’m just the finance person. This is what I do <laugh>. Um, tell me about your approach to business partnering and how you’ve seen, uh, that, that change, uh, the relationship between finance and accounting and the rest of the business, and kind of what your, your best secret for, for, um, business partnering has been.
Enrique Rodriguez:
Oh, that’s a, a very interesting approach to it. I don’t know if it’s gonna be my secret though, but at least my approach to it all has been highly emphatic and being able to speak the language, it is critical to understand your stakeholder’s gold ultimately, whether it’s sales, marketing, supply chain, procurement now, uh, and, and being able to frame those insights around their own priorities. So for example, instead of presenting raw calls data to marketing, I would say I’d like to translate it into potentially ROI metrics that actually resonate a little bit with them or better with them. The other thing is, uh, I would say the, the additional point there would be building make, making or having the ability to build trust and showing that you’ve invested, you are really invested in their success is absolutely critical. So, as I said, not really, uh, the secret, but just my approach, uh, throughout all these years has been precisely that, uh, uh, coupled with a lot of emotional intelligence, making sure that you’re meeting your stakeholders where they are.
And I would say last but not least, uh, doing on a regular basis the start, stop and continuing type of discussions and, uh, and meetings with stakeholders. It has saved me countless challenges with the business by simply having those really down to earth conversations and understanding exactly what has been working well, what is not working at all, and what are the things that we, they would have expected us to work on. I think ultimately, definition of excellence and value can be different depending on the stage of your business relationship is, but ultimately it’s about putting all the cars on the table and having that, uh, frank and direct conversation.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Well said. Well said. And I, you know, so we’ve, we’ve talked about, um, two things that early in my career, you know, between storytelling and business partnering, those weren’t really defined, but now, you know, they are just part of what, uh, we used to just say, you know, I work in corporate finance, but they’re, yeah, they’ve all rolled up to be what is part of FP&A financial planning and analysis. Yes. And I’m wondering, you know, my background, I came up through FP&A, I didn’t come up through the CPA and and audit side, but I’ve always, you know, I, I could still, if you told me I could spend half a day lost in a spreadsheet, building a model, I would say, great. That’s perfect. <laugh>, that’s, yeah.
Enrique Rodriguez:
I, I fully agree with you. Yes.
Glenn Hopper:
So what do you, I mean, what would you say, what do you like, uh, the most about, uh, about fp NA?
Enrique Rodriguez:
Ultimately, I, I, I do love the problem solving aspect, uh, and, and, and also the strategic impact that you can actually achieve as a, as an FP& professional, as you know, and as probably all listeners may, may know, fp NA is like being the GPS for a business in a, in a sense, you’re guiding decisions with data, you’re guiding decisions with strategy, and you’re, you’re trying to establish and have certain level of future vision, right? Of foresight. So someone unfamiliar, probably I’d like to describe FP and A as the team that actually connect the dots between the numbers and business strategy, ensuring the organization actually stays on track towards its goals. So those are the factors, or those are, those are the things that actually I love about fp and a.
Glenn Hopper:
I end up talking so much about, um, technology. I just, you know, I’m, I’m always looking for ways to get more efficient and automate, but I, you know, I, I do think there may is fear out there around, is AI gonna come, uh, take our jobs? And for me, I, I, I haven’t seen yet that, you know, there’s, there’s not gonna be a human in the loop. But what I do see with technology and automation is opportunity to sort of the mindless data entry, the lower level parts mm-hmm. Of our job being automated, but opening us up to be, uh, more strateg, um, strategically focused because we don’t have to spend all of our time building those models or, you know, or crunching the numbers, because if we can find an automated way to do that. So I’m, my focus has been there, but I’m also, I can get sort of granular and, and singular and where I’m looking. So I’m wondering from your perspective and, and, uh, from someone else out in the industry, what would you say are the biggest, uh, challenges for fp and a right now, and then, and opportunities out there?
Enrique Rodriguez:
I would like to start with the opportunities actually, because for me, that, uh, overarching cloud, and it’s not a cloud, it’s something that is present. I think, uh, I was reading a piece or an interview, very recent interview when they were asking Bezos about, uh, about ai, and they said that it’s, it’s a complete vertical. So it said, where we’re now, and, and this is just the beginning. So for me, that’s the biggest opportunity, leveraging AI and analytics to transform forecasting, all planning processes, becoming a more proactive driver of business decisions, and ultimately influencing long-term strategy at the executive level. I think ultimately those are the biggest opportunities that I see.
And going back to challenges, I think the challenge is actually keeping up with, with everything that is, uh, that this rapidly evolving technology. Uh, it’s, it’s the, I mean, deciding or trying to sift through the multiple, uh, sources of information that you get staying relevant as a strategic partner in this fast changing or, uh, uh, markets.
I think those, for me, that is basically the, the challenge and making sure that you’re able to keep up sifting through the noise, because something that I have started to see more and more during the last, uh, months is, is, is diff very difficult to actually try to, to understand what should be your source as an fp and a professional, uh, for using in ai ai. I mean, is it going to be the most current one? Is it the new, the new kid on the block as they said? Uh, I mean, ultimately I think my recommendation would be just use, try them all and use what actually best works best for you. There’s multiple out there, uh, without naming any, but, uh, just best, what, what works better for you, try them all. It’s a trial and narrow type of thing. And those, for me, going back to the question is, is that the challenge is keeping the, with that rapidly evolving technology.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. You know, and it’s, I I talk to people all the time about AI and its impact on finance and well, obviously not just finance, but on, on all of our, our jobs. And I’ll, I’ll have people say to me, especially people who’ve been doing their finance job for a while, you know, they’ll say, I am a domain expert in finance, I mm-hmm <affirmative>. You know, you’re saying, now I have to go become a machine learning engineer. Like, you know, where <laugh>, where does it end? And I, whether you like it or not, if you don’t want to be, you know, carried away in the wave of this technology, then you need to understand how to use it. Yeah. So I, I think that it is, I mean, that is the challenges, um, not just which tool to use, but understanding sort of the basics of how it, how it works and all that. And I do think that our, our role, um, in fp and a will be shifting in coming years as more does get automated, but then the expectations of what we output will, will just be higher because the, the lower end stuff will be automated.
Enrique Rodriguez:
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yes. Absolutely.
Glenn Hopper:
Well, one question we always like to ask our guests is, this is an opportunity to brag on yourself. And I, I know that a lot of people <laugh> don’t like to do it, but we, we do like to, you know, we, we talk about the challenges that we all face in fp and a, but we also talk about, um, our successes. So what would you say is the best achievement of yours? Something a forecast, an analysis, or something that you did that you would give as an example, uh, in a job interview. This could be like, uh, an analysis or strategic piece of advice that drove action and led to better customer outcomes with a tangible benefit. Basically,
Enrique Rodriguez:
I would say one of my proudest achievements has been being the CFO for country. Were, with the support of my team and with the support of the leadership team, uh, working hand in hand with me as the, as the CFO, we were able to actually minimize about and, and save the company close to 8 billion, a million dollars on inventory write off, uh, for a product that in a blink of an eye, the Ministry of Health at that particular country decided that that drug or that vaccine was something that they did not believe in, or we were not able to have proof or prove them that it was effective enough to, to minimize the exposure for the population that we were targeting. Um, long nights, uh, I would say to say the list, but, uh, in a country where in, in the middle of a very highly political charge environment, um, exchange control regime, difficult access to currency, and ultimately, uh, this operation was an operation that we were not able or was, has not done in the past.
We were able to minimize that inventory write-off by re-exporting something that we had been inventory that we were currently holding in our country, re-exported back to other places around the world. And probably for the professionals out there, it seems to be very straightforward, but when you’re in the middle of an exchange control regime for very tight importing permits and so on, uh, asking a central bank that we no longer needed those dollars that they granted us, and because we needed to keep them back in order to re-export the product out of the country, that was a, I would say, a very tough and long process in order to have those high level, high stakes discussions with, uh, central Bank, the central bank president, um, governmental authorities, trade compliance authorities, and so on. And ultimately having the success of, of, of minimizing that write-off.
Glenn Hopper:
Wow. And that’s, that is significant. And that’s one where having that data and being able to show, you know, the data-driven decision making and being able to tell that story, I’m sure was a, a huge part of that. So, Enrique, what’s, what’s top of mind for you for your career at the moment? Is there anything you’re trying to new that you’re trying to learn or master at this point?
Enrique Rodriguez:
At, I would say keeping up with all the latest developments, technological developments that have that direct impact in, in, in the epi a practice. I’m definitely focused on learning, uh, which is, again, impossible to master, but I’m learning AI driven finance tools and, and trying to understand how can they elevate the fp and a function overall. I’m also investing in leadership skills, as always, to better empower teams. It’s all about those tools that can enable you to be more effective, not only as a finance and fp and a professional, but also as a leader. Those are the things that I’m, I’m continuing focusing on, on learning.
Glenn Hopper:
And you’ve been working with FEI. Can you, uh, tell us a little bit about, uh, about that organization and what you’re doing with them?
Enrique Rodriguez:
Oh, yes. Thank you. FEI is the Financial Executives International Organization, and I’m part of the board of directors of the Chicago chapter. Our goal is providing precisely, uh, senior executives for high quality of content with high quality of speakers, and also providing a, I would say, a network of, um, professionals like-minded professional in order to continue to learn and develop themselves.
Glenn Hopper:
And who would you say has had the greatest influence on your finance career? This could be a, a mentor or a training program, or a book or some other source that you’ve, um, found very inspirational in your career.
Enrique Rodriguez:
Yes, I’ve been very fortunate to have had in my career several mentors, but, uh, I would say a mentor very early in my career taught me the value of storytelling with data that is something that I’m nev never gonna be able to forget, and that’s why I wanted to, to mention that right off the bat. Um, he definitely emphasized that the numbers were not the end, but just the beginning. It’s also, obviously how you interpret the numbers and present them that actually drives that impact from a book standpoint, I would say Glen, uh, two books come to my mind. First is the Hit Refresh book by Satya Nadella, as you know, the current CEO of Microsoft, where he shares his personal journey, including his childhood in India, his experiences at Microsoft before actually becoming the CEO and his vision for transforming the company’s culture and, uh, and ultimately the future. So that’s the first book. And the other book that I like to mention is the book called Shoe Dog, which is a memoir by the creator of Nike, Phil Knight, where he actually shares the inside story of Nike’s early days as a startup and it’s evolution into one of the world’s most iconic and profitable brands. Nike is the middle of a transformation as well, but ultimately when you go back into the inception, it’s just a fascinating story and highly recommend both books to, to your audience.
Glenn Hopper:
That’s great. It’s, it’s always amazing to think about these massive companies like, like Nike is today, that think of thinking of them as at one point being that startup and just what it takes to go from that to the scale where they are. It’s, uh, yeah. So, so couple of great book recommendations there. You know, we, we already talked a little bit about budget challenges, we talked about your achievements, but, um, one thing as we wind down, uh, budget season here, and hopefully by the time this airs, everybody’s just about got the final version of the, uh, 2025 budget <laugh> put to bed, but, uh, <laugh>. So what would you say is the worst or most challenging fp and a experience you’ve had in your entire career? Or it could be the biggest mistake you’ve made, um, and, and what did you ultimately learn from it?
Enrique Rodriguez:
Yes, multiple mistakes across the board, but I would say the toughest has been during a very tough environment leading a finance team, uh, where I was supporting a procurement organization in, in an early level of maturity. I think my mistake was ultimately underestimating the need for early stakeholder aligning, and it sounds simple and trivial, but in specifically in, I would say mid-size or large size companies where you as a professional are working in a matrix, lack of environment, early stakeholder, alignment can never be disregarded, uh, if you do, which happened to me specifically led to delays, frustration across teams, miscommunication, and ultimately, I mean, impacted the success of the project that we were trying to implement. Ultimately, what I learned was that, uh, how important clear communication is, as I mentioned early, having a very definite early buy-in and, and making sure that you anticipate resistance. Those are the, the, the critical lesson learned from that, uh, difficult experience.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, great, great advice there. So that we don’t end on, on the challenge part, we do have a couple of fun questions that we always, uh, like to close on. Okay. And, uh, the first is, uh, what is something that not many people know about you? Maybe something that we can’t find, uh, by, you know, Googling you real quick?
Enrique Rodriguez:
Uh, yeah, that’s, that’s definitely a fun question. Um, I, I would say the first thing is, is I’m a, I’m a big movie buff, and not only that, the second fun fact is that I’m, I I, I’m a big Star Wars fan. Those two are things that probably you are not gonna be able to find online. But, uh, one fun fact that I would like to mention as well, going back to my beloved home country Guatemala, um, one of the original episode four scenes of, in Star Wars was actually filmed in, in Tikal, which is considered to be the cradle of the Mayan civilization. And it’s, uh, for those of you who are Star Wars fan is where when, uh, Luke Skywalker and the rest of the crew actually are going to fight off the first, uh, DeathStart whatsoever, they’re just departing, uh, um, the planet of, of Yavin, uh, it’s a moon, I believe. Uh, and that’s, uh, one of the, the things that I would like to highlight based on that you’re not gonna be able to find, uh, online. Yes, that fact, yes, about Guatemala, but not about me being a, a very passionate star wars
Glenn Hopper:
<laugh>. That’s great. That’s great. Well, you’re in good company. I’m, I’m right there with you. So <laugh> Okay.
Enrique Rodriguez:
Yes. Fantastic. Yes, I remember.
Glenn Hopper:
Alright. And our last one that we ask everyone, um, what is your favorite Excel function and why
Enrique Rodriguez:
A double cross Excel? Uh, I would say more powerful than vlookup, it’s index match. I would say it’s more flexible, more scalable, maybe, especially for dynamic data sets. It’s been definitely a live, uh, saver for me in large complex analysis. I think for me, that’s, that has been the ultimate tool for problem solving in Excel Index match.
Glenn Hopper:
And I love hearing you say that as a CFO because I was talking to another CFO, um, the other day and we, uh, we were joking about, uh, or I said something about vlookup and he said, well, you just dated yourself. And I said, what do you mean? He is like, yeah, when 25 years ago when you were in Excel, people were doing vlookup. He said, now, you know, it’s all index match and everything <laugh>. So if you ever say V lookup, people are gonna know that you’re an an old school, uh, Excel user. Yeah. But I’m glad to see you’ve made the transitions
Enrique Rodriguez:
<laugh>. Yeah, no, absolutely. I had to and, and ultimately one of the things that I highly recommend US professionals on fp and a from, uh, SFAs to, to CFOs is, is just leveraging AI that is now built to into either Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. It’s just amazing to see how now in a very simple exchange, you can just have the power of Excel or Google data sheets to actually do the analysis for you rather than mixing and matching and having to make sure that your, your, your variables in the formal are, are, are accurate and you’re expected the result that you have. So, leverage AI also when, when dealing with and doing those, uh, complex analysis in, in dealing with the dynamic data sets as well.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. I’m gonna, I’m gonna be super, uh, interested to see where copilot ends up in the next 12, 18, 24 months when they, because you know, Microsoft isn’t, you know, they invested whatever, 13 billion in open AI and then whatever other investments they have in and competitors, they’re, they’re gonna get their money’s worth from that. And I, what I do see is, uh, maybe a clippy from the nineties will make a proper comeback and <laugh> this time be a, a true helper <laugh>
Enrique Rodriguez:
Yes. This time. Yes. Hopefully, hopefully that’s the case. That would be very funny if bring it back.
Glenn Hopper:
<laugh>, Enrique, finally, how, um, how could our listeners, uh, get in touch with you to, to learn more and that, I know you’ve been doing some webinars and stuff too, so just if, if people wanted to, uh, follow you and, and continue an engagement with you.
Enrique Rodriguez:
Oh, thank you very much for the offer, Glen. Um, I think through my LinkedIn profile, uh, hopefully we’re gonna be able to actually link it, uh,
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, within
Enrique Rodriguez:
The, the sites and, uh, that would be the most effective way to reach me, to be honest.
Glenn Hopper:
Great, great. So, okay, well this is a, uh, this a lot, a lot of fun doing this episode and really appreciate you coming on and we’re, uh, looking forward to wrapping up the year here. And thanks again for coming on.
Enrique Rodriguez:
Thank you very much, Glenn. It was a pleasure and an honor to be part of this audience and, uh, be part of your show. Thank you. All the best.
