What does Carmen Turner love about FP&A? “Being able to provide businesses the insights they need to make great business decisions.”
The Director of Financial Planning and Analysis at Carmen Consulting Group who has managed the FP&A business partnerships at top companies such as McGraw Hill, says: “I work to help the businesses manage their budgets to target and understand their financial story.”
But she started her career not in finance (or through a traditional route).
She began her career as an electrician.
But programming robots and wiring facilities saw her gain skills which have been used daily in her 14-year finance career – not least troubleshooting, problem solving, collaboration, communication and ability to educate others on complex (financial) wiring.
In this week’s podcast Carmen provides insights into how FP&A teams can give business the appropriate insights to deliver great decision-making.
This episode covers:
- Carmen’s definition of FP&A as a primary educator in the business
- How doing an MBA switched her on to FP&A as a passion
- How she built the first FP&A certification more than a decade ago and how it helped her understand how processes differ across industries and companies
- Putting her finance-first thinking to the test when starting her FP&A consulting business
- Her four step approach to mastering sales-FP&A business partnerships
- How to effectively build a sales compensation strategy that works
- Why she advocates for rolling forecasts
- The importance of adopting a risk and opportunities approach in budget and forecasting
- The importance of a buffer in place when it comes to budget deadlines
Watch the full show on YouTube
Read the full transcript and blog
Follow Carmen Turner on LinkedIn
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Paul Barnhurst:
Hello everyone. Welcome to FP&A Today. I am your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A Guy, and you are listening to FP&A Today. FPP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails, the financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users. Every week we welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis and discuss some of the biggest stories and challenges in the world of FP&A. We’ll provide you with actionable advice about financial planning and analysis. This is going to be your go-to resource for everything FP&A. I’m thrilled to welcome today’s guest on the show, Carmen Turner.
Carmen Turner:
Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you for joining us. I really appreciate it. So a little bit about Carmen. Carmen comes to us from the greater Chicago area. She recently launched her own FP&A a consulting practice called Carmen Consulting Group. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and her MBA from Wayne State University. She has also worked for multiple companies in both finance and FP&A roles. And so Carmen, maybe you could tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background.
Carmen Turner:
Sure, absolutely. So I’ve been in FP&A for 14 years. Like you said, Paul working for some various companies large and small organization and various industries such as financial services, learning science, education and healthcare technology. And basically what I’ve done is I’ve worked to help the businesses manage their budgets to target and understand their financial story. That last part right there, understanding their financial story is so key because if you don’t understand what’s going on with the numbers, it’s hard for you to make decisions on how to move your business forward.
Paul Barnhurst:
Totally agree. And I love that part about understanding the financial stories. So can you tell us, how did you get started in FP&A? Like what led to you being in FP&A?
Carmen Turner:
Yeah, <laugh>. Great question. Great question. I have sort of a unique entry into FP&A. I worked for another company years and years ago I was in another field and all of those things and the opportunity came for me to branch off and do something else. And so it was actually getting my MBA and learning finance. I just found it so intriguing and wanted to help. I had been on the other side where kind of the spending had taken place. And so companies others in the business understand that, how their decisions impacted the financial story. I think again, a lot of times people don’t know that what they do on a daily basis has some sort of impact and they don’t understand it and they continue to do things. So the more people understand things, then for me it’s better for the company and the overall business. So I guess that was a long way into saying coming from the other side. I started my journey, got my MBA and then landed a role at my first role was actually CME group. And so got started there and helping them with budgeting and things like that. And so that’s pretty much how it got started.
Paul Barnhurst:
So it was really out of MBA school. It sounds like that you kind of started on the FP&A journey, wanted to see the other side of things,
Carmen Turner:
Abs. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I had seen again that side where people weren’t so focused on the finances is what I’ll say it is.
Paul Barnhurst:
Are you saying? Not everybody has that financial discipline and that financial lens that’s needed to run a company
Carmen Turner:
A absolutely not. And it may not be on purpose, but it’s trying to get what they need to do done. And so they’re like, this is what I need, this is what I need to do. I’m not really concerned about how much it costs. You guys have lots of money. At least that’s what they think.
Paul Barnhurst:
I hear you. There’s a lot of times, well this is American Express or whatever big company, we have plenty of money. You’re telling me you can’t spend $10,000 here. Not that we can’t spend it, it’s not a wise use of our money. Let’s rethink how we’re going to deploy that capital, that kind of conversation. And usually when you put it in those terms and help them understand why and the return on it, they get it. Versus just saying no, which unfortunately has often been the reputation finance has built over the years is kind of the no department, right?
Carmen Turner:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And helping them again understand it versus just saying so they see numbers, they see stuff on the news, not that they may not even pay attention internally with the company about how much revenue the company is generating and how much they’re spending and things like that. But if they hear it externally say, oh, that’s a $10 billion company, I’m making up numbers here. They’re like, oh, well I can buy this or I can do that. There’s no problem. They’re not understanding really what’s going on. And for me, the education of it all is really what I enjoy about FP&A.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. When you said $10 billion company, it reminded me, I started my career with the government in procurement, so not FP&A at all. And there used to be a joke. Some people would say, sometimes new government, a billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon it adds up to real money and it’s like, cause you’re dealing with just such big numbers. Sometimes you’re talking trillions of dollars for the budget of the government. And that was just mind blowing for a kid coming out of college or somebody’ll kind of throw around a term like that. Like a billion here. A billion. Yeah. You mean my paycheck of
Carmen Turner:
My paycheck is just really, oh wow. We have that much money.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, exactly. So I totally know what you’re talking about. It’s, it’s a lot of its perspective in helping people understand it and what it means to the bottom line. So I know recently, and first just congratulations, you recently started your own business. Thanks. Can you talk a little bit about what that experience has been like? What led to you starting your own business and how’s it going?
Carmen Turner:
Sure. So the experience itself, it’s been great so far. I think a lot of times people think they can just jump right in and start a business with no plan no kind of direction, what they want. They see people starting businesses and people generating revenue. Well, yeah, okay, so you’re generating revenue and things like that. What do you do with it? So for me, it was more about being able to manage my time. And I say that loosely because generally when you start a business, you’re spending more time as you’re getting it up and running and you’re doing all of the things yourself when you’re first starting out. So before you may have had the marketing team, sales team, and all of those things, you become that person all wrapped up into one. And so for me, again, it was about managing time and helping small businesses be able to understand their finances and be able to continue to have longevity in their business because that’s really what they started for, is to make money, have longevity.
We hear these stories all the time about businesses going under because managing finances was not at the top of the priority list when they started. They just wanted to start to have money start coming in and not understanding that it’s really key to manage that money. So for me, that’s what it’s about. I focus on, again, budgeting, forecasting strategy, that managerial reporting that’s so important for the team to understand modeling and that one word education, educating them so that when they see something, they understand what’s going on, they know what types of questions to ask and they can continue to move forward.
Paul Barnhurst:
Lot of great advice there. I loved how you said, and when you start a business, so often people just, okay, if money’s coming in right, knowing how to manage the money, oh, you mean I have to pay taxes? I was talking to a friend who’s given a lot of advice. He used to be a consultant that would help a lot of small businesses and help him with strategy and things. And he’s like, I probably don’t need to tell you this. You’re like, you’re a little older and when return, a lot of people deal. But remember when you get that big paycheck, there’s taxes you have to pay. There’s this, there’s that. There’s all these things that when you were employed by somebody, you didn’t have to worry about. Remember, you have to worry about every single one of them.
Carmen Turner:
Absolutely do. Absolutely. And also help people with personal finances as well as part of the consulting group because it’s so important. You have to have a plan for your money, whether you’re an individual or a business. You can’t just be out there with money in the bank or wherever you keep in your money and you don’t have a plan for it to either grow to cover your expenses and things like that. And so to me, it’s important and that’s really my passion, is helping people to understand money because hey, guess what? It makes the world go round. We have to deal with it every single day. Right.
Paul Barnhurst:
Well that, that’s just it. I mean, whether you like money, hate money, you have to deal with money. This, it’s the society we live in and it’s a necessary thing that we all need to survive. So you have to understand it and you might as well make it work for you instead of against you.
Carmen Turner:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Paul Barnhurst:
All right. Well this is something I’ve kind of looked forward to asking you about. I know you have the FP&A certification, you, because you’re involved in that process of helping put it together. And so let’s start with, you know, were involved in helping create the original test for the FP&A certification. Can you talk a little bit about that process? Tell us a little bit about how you became involved.
Carmen Turner:
Sure. So I got started because I was looking for a professional organization to join so that I could start expanding my network. We know how important your network is for you to either grow in your career, start a business, or whatever the case may be. And so I came across AFP and at the time I was looking, they were recruiting finance professionals to assist in this process of developing this FP&A certification. And so they reached out to me. That was back in 2012. And I participated and have been a SME for them ever since. It’s such a different process than you could ever imagine developing a exam for certification. You think, oh, it’s just easy. You just come up with some questions, put it together and pass it out. It, it’s so much more than that. The process has been a lot of work. It was a lot of collaboration with different finance professionals and different industries across different countries and things like that. So it’s not as simple as, well let everybody write 10 questions and we’ll put it all together and then <laugh> the certification. I don’t know if people understand that. I know we’ve all in the past taken standardized tests and you’re like, oh my gosh, you got to take this standardized test. And you think these people just sit around and come up with these different questions easily. But it’s really eye opening. It’s really been an eye opening experience.
Paul Barnhurst:
I bet it was. There were two thoughts that came to mind. One, I had a class my freshman year of college where we had different people come in the lecture every two weeks. It was a psychology course, and they each got to submit their own questions for the test and the instructor didn’t make sure they kind of all aligned. So you had totally different styles and types of questions. And it was one of the hardest tests I took because it was all over the place. There was just zero consistency. And so you need that in a test. My wife is so she’s an instructional designer, so she used to design college courses for University of Phoenix, worked at a library, has worked for some others. So she talks about those type of things. Whenever I do training or different stuff, she’s like, remember all the theory behind it. And so I can appreciate that a little bit. I haven’t developed a certification or been involved in that, but seeing her do some of those things, it is more involved than you think, for sure. What’s some of the key learnings from that experience? How did it help you become a better FP&A professional?
Carmen Turner:
Oh yeah, great question. So again, as I mentioned, collaborating with other finance professionals, as I’m sure you can appreciate, Paul, if you start out in one industry in one position, you’re kind of stuck in that position. And then that’s all that you do. That’s all that you know, don’t necessarily get to rotate into other departments or get different experiences. So working on this FP&A certification and collaborating with other professionals, I got to learn what other people were doing in other industries. My budgeting process may have been different than their budgeting process. And just again, learning about how companies handle things differently, some of the things they do to keep with their strategies and things like that. So for me it was a great learning experience. We all know FP&A, you go to college, you get your degrees, you understand the basics, but being able to apply it and adjust it as times and things change that that was all part of this learning that happened with helping develop this certification.
Paul Barnhurst:
That makes sense to me. I get what you’re saying. It sounds like it really helped with application and thinking about the different ways to do it. Cause I’m sure we all work for companies, but you only see a couple different ways to do FP&A. And I’d imagine being on those boards and seeing all those different approaches. Well, I referred to it as this, or that’s how I thought about budgeting and so I think we should ask this question. I was like, well no. Is that really best practice? And probably a lot of conversations like that, I’m guessing.
Carmen Turner:
Absolutely. A lot of conversations. And again, because it needed to be universal. So one country may use a term this way and in another country it means something totally different. So even just thinking about those things when you have to come up with an exam question I don’t want to say it was challenging, but it took some effort to get on the same page and make sure that it was a term that was understood across the board so that it was a level playing field for all that took the exam.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I mean, just a couple examples. Recently I’ve seen, I have a partner I do training with and we’re working on course and he was using the term contribution margin where I would typically use gross margin. Or gross profit, right? And it’s like, well, that’s how we always called it in the industry I came from. And another example I’m calling something flux is I’ve never used the term flux. Always use different terms and just little things like that that you don’t necessarily think of. And I’m sure we could come up with dozens of them. I mean, we all recognize, we all know revenue, net income, COGs, balance sheets. There’s those. There’s the universal language. Then there’s all the nuances. It’s like English, right? Yes. Your version of English in Chicago is slightly different than mine, which is going to be quite a bit different from someone in London to someone in Australia.
Carmen Turner:
Yeah. And it’s the acronyms as well. An acronym that you have at your company may be different than an acronym that I have at my company. And so again, just thinking about all those things and making sure that, again, it’s understood by all just the questions so they even have the opportunity to perhaps get the answer right.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. When you said acronym acronyms, you reminded me and I think you’ll get a laugh out of this and hope our audience does as well. So I did Toastmasters when I was at American Express, and one time I had told myself, and I never did it, but I was going to do a Toastmaster speech and I had put up the first part of it all on American Express acronyms because everybody in the club was American Express. So the whole speech would just be filled with nothing but acronyms. Oh wow. We had so many. And I just thought that’d be kind of fun because everybody could relate to it and be like, that’s pretty creative. So yeah, no question. The acronyms we have in a company, sometimes they’re just overwhelming when you first join and you’re like, Hey,
Carmen Turner:
Absolutely. It’s like you need a dictionary. It’s like, can you give me the acronym dictionary so that I can at least know what you guys are talking about in these first?
Paul Barnhurst:
And American Express had one on a website, they had acronym Site.
Carmen Turner:
That’s great because most companies don’t. And you’re constantly asking, what is it? And I’m like, Hey, can we just put one together so that when new people start, they can hit the ground running at least with knowing what people are talking about.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. It was really nice that they had one because that’s the only company I’ve got to do where they’ve had that.
[Datarails ad]
So as I was looking at your history kind of preparing for this interview, one of the things I noticed, you spent quite a bit of time, I think you had three or four different roles, if I remember right, at McGraw Hill, including multiple finance roles. So maybe you can just start talking a little bit about that experience, what it was like supporting sales from a finance perspective.
Carmen Turner:
Sure, sure. So yeah, I did, I spent quite a bit of time at McGraw Hill and I supported the sales team and that included the reps, the managers, the VPs, and even the CSO. So as I started out in my first position at McGraw Hill, it was mostly supporting the reps and helping them to come up with a price that was optimal for both the company and I right? now, one thing, I don’t know Paul, if you’ve worked with a sales team before, but
Paul Barnhurst:
One Oh I have.
Carmen Turner:
Ok. One thing that is quickly evident that became clear to me that was my first time working with a sales team is that they’re always trying to sell. They were even trying to sell to me. And by that I mean cause obviously I helped them with their budgeting and things like that. Telling me and selling me on why they needed this much money to get this particular task done. So understanding that was was key in being able to work with them. So again, I worked with the sales team managing their budgets, reviewing their expenses with them. I also built a sales commission model and that was critical. So they always had lots of questions about that and how that works and things and things of that nature. And then their revenue proposals, again, the pricing to go to the market with. And so reviewing those with them coming up again with that optimal pricing. One thing that I will say was key in establishing a good relationship with the sales team was building that partnership. I think you mentioned it earlier, Paul, where finances known as the team of no. And so they automatically have that assumption built in that you’re just always going to say no. So they’re constantly trying to persuade you, I’ll call it persuasion. Persuade you to say yes to whatever it is that they want.
So for me that was a great learning experience in just making them feel like a partner versus you dictating to them what was going on. And I can tell you with working with the sales team, there’s never a dull moment. There was always something to be done, which is so part of it involved coming up with processes that quickly allowed me to get them an answer back so that they could move fast and not get beat up by the competition.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. Because I’m sure if you took a few days, they let you know they’re going to lose the sale whether they were or not if you to go, because we could lose the deal
Carmen Turner:
If you took five minutes to answer. I’m exaggerating here, but
Paul Barnhurst:
<laugh> not by much.
Carmen Turner:
But it was a great experience. It was great working with the whole sales organization itself. Sometimes people just work with the sales reps or the CS or the VP or whatever the case may be. I got to work with all of them in different capacities and that helped to build a lot of trust so that they would come to me when they had things where they wouldn’t just normally go and spend, they would first ask and say, Hey, this is what I want to do. And kind get some advice on how it could be done again. So it’s beneficial for everybody. So that was great. And that helped to learn the whole organization and what role everyone played and how to best communicate the information. Because I’m sure you can imagine Paul communicating information across all of those different levels. It is completely different.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, no, how you’re communicating to the chief sales or chief revenue officer is different than how you’re communicating to a BDR just because they’re at a different level. They would need different level of detail and information and all those types of things. They have different focuses, different incentives and understanding those can help you craft a communication to those different levels and everything in between.
Carmen Turner:
Yeah. So some of the things that I would say if someone was looking to work with sales in supporting sales or just getting started or thinking about it, there are five things that I kind of recommend. The first one is to listen and that’s to understand their needs. A lot of times we listen, but we’re not listening. We’re just listening till they stop talking. So then we can tell them what to do. And so
Paul Barnhurst:
Wait. Yeah, I know exactly you’re talking about to
Carmen Turner:
Understand their needs. The second thing is to learn to learn their sales process and their cycle because this helps you to make sure you’re incorporating revenue and expenses and things in the right periods. You have to understand that process. And the only way you can do that is to learn from them. And that may involve sometimes going on a sales call with them just to see how things go. I had lots of opportunities to participate in different sales calls, understand what the customer was thinking about what the customers’ needs were, which helped analyzing the situation and giving more better input. The third thing is I’ll say build. And by that I mean build a partnership so that they feel like they’re being heard. You’re addressing their needs and understood. Now are you going to say yes to everything that they asked for? Absolutely not.
Paul Barnhurst:
Not, but at least.
Carmen Turner:
But at if you’re building that partnership, they feel like you’ve worked on it together and we’ve come to a great resolution for both parties within the bounds of our financials. The fourth thing is communicate. As we just discussed communicating to all those different levels is very different, but no matter what level it’s on, you want to make sure it’s in an understandable and actionable format. Something that they can do something with. Just giving them a sheet of numbers and expecting them to come back and say, Hey, yeah, well we can cut this or that doesn’t work. You have to actually give them information in an understandable way where you say, look, you need to make a decision on this. Which way do you want to operate? And then that last one is educate when needed. Yes, there are some people that have financial knowledge in these roles and then there are some who just, I don’t want to know about finances, tell me what I need to do. But educating them so that they understand again what they’re doing and how they do it impacts the bottom line. So those are five things that I would recommend if you’re working to support sales team.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you. So if I can just resummarize that there are five things that I heard there, listen.
Carmen Turner:
Mm-hmm.
Paul Barnhurst:
Learn their processes, build relationships, really communicate. It’s not enough to just listen, there needs to be that two way communication. And then the fifth one was educate.
Carmen Turner:
That’s correct. That’s correct. No,
Paul Barnhurst:
That makes a lot of sense. And I think that’s something we could use in a lot of areas of the business. Definitely with sales. So another question I have, and something you said made me think about this. So this wasn’t a direct question I had during our that I sent to you before, but one question that made me think of is sales commissions. Did you get involved in helping with developing the plans, the incentives? What role did you play? Is the first question, was it just kind of calculating them? And then the second question is, do you think that belongs in finance or where do you think is a natural place for calculation of sales commissions to sit? And I’m just kind of curious cause there’s a lot of different opinions on that.
Carmen Turner:
Yeah, sure. So for me it was more about the calculations and building the model based on plans that had been established prior, right. Got modeling that and then also providing feedback and what would be the best approach. So that was it. Building the sales model making sure that everything was included and that we could see at any point in time what that payout was going to look like at the end of the year as they worked towards goal. And adjusting that again as things change with the business. Now as far as, who should that sit with that? That’s a great question. Because it’s a lot of the dollars in a business, it’s a lot of the dollars. You definitely want to reward your sales team for the hard work that they put in. And bringing the business in I mean to be honest. If they’re not bringing sales in, then how is the business operating?
So you definitely want to reward them. I personally think that it should be an effort between sales and finance so that there are checks and balances, meaning that sales and finance should work together to develop that. And I know you asked me where should it sit, but again, I think it should be that both parties should be involved in helping establish that finance and saying, Hey, if we did it this way, this is how much we’re going to pay out. What are we paying here or there? And sales in saying that, well this is the effort that it takes or things like that in helping to get their message across as to why they feel like things need to happen. So for me, I think it needs to sit with both parties.
Paul Barnhurst:
I would agree with you, I don’t think there’s one necessarily right answer. I think there needs to be those checks and balances. There’s some controls ultimately whoever’s calculating it needs to be signed off by finance. It’s a big expense. Need to make sure that you don’t have any issues just from an agent kind of relationship agent principal relationship in that if it sales, it’s getting paid and they’re calculating. You don’t want somebody who’s earning their money, you’d be the one putting it all together without the proper checks and balances to make sure that there’s no issues down the road.
Carmen Turner:
Absolutely. And that could also be an audit red flag if that were to happen. Yeah,
Paul Barnhurst:
Exactly. Could you open an audit? Right. Mean it’s a huge, huge dollar expense. One of the biggest for many businesses, commissions, you want to incentivize your salespeople. You want them to have the opportunity to earn, well they do a hard job and you want to reward them, but you got to also just make sure you do it properly and all the incentives are aligned. So it’s always an interesting discussion for me because actually I did sales commissions for a couple years to the point where at one point they had me developing most of the plans working with the salesperson. I actually wrote them.
Carmen Turner:
Oh
Paul Barnhurst:
Wow. So that was really, I’d never done that before in any job. I’m like, wait, you want me to write the sales plan
Learned a ton. It’s not how I would’ve done it if I was in charge, but it was a really good learning experience. I mean put a ton of time into sales commissions and learned a lot.
Carmen Turner:
Yeah, you definitely have to make sure you’re incentivizing the right behavior because you could be incentivizing people to bring new business in, but it’s not long-term business. It’s just, yeah, oh, they just did it for this cycle, then that revenue’s going to fall off next cycle because they’ve moved somewhere else because you’re incentivizing the sales rep in the wrong way. So those are some things that definitely need to be considered. And I’m not sure necessarily all the time the sales team looks at it in that way is are they incentivizing the right behavior?
Paul Barnhurst:
And fortunately the head of sales worked really closely with me and reviewed them all. It’s not like I was doing it in a vacuum by any means in HR and everybody else. And so it’s a really good learning experience. And I agree with you about getting the incentives right. It’s why you see any really large organizations typically have their own compensation team that coordinates with everybody. Cause if you get big enough, it’s such a huge expense and it’s unique enough that you really want people that are experts in understanding incentives and behavior. And FP&A can play a role in review them and ask questions. And I definitely think we should. I think those plans should be reviewed by finance for the financials to see if they make sense and anywhere else that we think we can add value from understanding the business.
Carmen Turner:
Absolutely.
Paul Barnhurst:
So what is it that gets you excited every day about working in FP&A? What’s kind of, what is it that gets you up in the morning?
Carmen Turner:
It’s really simple. Being able to provide businesses the insights they need to make great business decisions. A lot of time businesses are making decisions without, I don’t want to say, a lot of times. Businesses sometimes are making decisions without insight. They’re going on a gut feel, they’re going on, oh well yeah, five years ago we did this in a work. Let’s try it again. Well Paul, as you know, the market has been uncertain. The environment has just been uncertain in the last few years. And so for me it’s providing them that insight that’s needed so that they can make a great business decision. And that requires analysis and all of those types of things. And again, providing it to ‘them in a way that is understandable so that they know what they’re looking at, understand it, and can make the right business decision. So for me that’s what it’s providing businesses, the insight they need to make good business decisions.
Paul Barnhurst:
Love the answer there and I’m happy to hear that because I’ll tell any FP&A person giving insights to the business to make the right decisions is the most important thing you can do. It’s more important than the budget you put together. It’s more important than the forecast. If you’re not helping the business make right decisions, then you’re doing something wrong in your job. That’s really key to FP&A and a, so I really appreciate you saying that. Cause I think so often it’s forgotten or it’s not realized that that’s really what it’s all about. It’s helping ensure the capital deployed is done in such a way that it maximizes the return, the value for the shareholders, whatever that may be. That may not always be profit. You work for not profits, you have a lot of different things. Absolutely maximizing that investment, using it the best way you can for your business. I appreciate that answer. So next question here, do you have a favorite forecasting method that you like? Are you rolling forecast monthly, quarterly, just do budget and forget that whole forecasting thing R and Os you’re laughing cause you’re like, some days that would be my favorite.
Carmen Turner:
Well Paul, I know you can appreciate this. Well, as soon as you finalize the budget, it’s expired because something has changed with the business. And so if you were to just strictly operate on the budget, it doesn’t quite give you the insight that you need to see where you’re going to land at the end of the year because you’re trying to stick to something that is no longer relevant. So for me it’s about a rolling forecast. It’s about looking at what’s happened in the past, what’s coming down the pipeline. Is that still relevant? Is that still going to happen? Cause again, when you do a budget, you do it a year ahead of time. And so again the next day you’re like, oh well we just got, we’re not going to have that deal anymore. So now we got to find something else. So we’re not going to have this million dollars in revenue that we thought we were going to have.
So now you got to figure out, okay, well either we got to cut expenses or you got to fill that revenue gap. And so rolling forecast for me is the way to go. And I would say as often as possible. For some that may seem a bit much, but again, things are changing all the time nowadays. And so it’s really important to stay on top of it because if you wait and do it six months in, or something like that, then you don’t have time to adjust to make sure you can still hit that financial target that you’re going for at the end of the year.
Paul Barnhurst:
I’m a big fan of rolling forecast and in particular I like R&O rolling forecasts where you just list risks and opportunities, don’t everything, but really focus on those key drivers and so the business can understand cause how long it can take if you let a forecast take control of your life, which can do when they want to, every little detail and line item and it’s like this is immaterial. Focus on these eighties that are going to drive the business where it needs to go versus worrying about $500 here or there.
Carmen Turner:
And that’s exactly it. Paul, in one of my previous roles, that’s exactly what we did. We talked about the risk and the opportunities and then we talked about how to solve those. Because again, you didn’t want to spend a lot of time, okay, well let’s do every single line item and reforecast. Oh okay, this line is going to change by $20. Again, you want to spend your time in the places that are going to make a difference. And so it’s talking about the risk and opportunities talking about that percentage of risk. Is this a high risk? Is this a low risk? Is this medium risk? What can we do about it? How can we start working on it now? And so again, to me, starting that right at the beginning of the process is very important. Instead of waiting till you’re six months in and now you don’t have enough runway to get the job done that you said that you were going to do at the beginning of the year.
Paul Barnhurst:
I agree with you. I think we’re on the same page there. So moving on, there’s a couple questions we’d like to ask everybody. These are some of our more standard questions as are coming up near the end of our time. First one is, can you tell me about an accomplishment you’re most proud of from your career? If you’re in a job interview and I asked you that question, what would be your answer?
It may a little different than most people. Again, for me it’s educating people on the finances and what they do impacts it. So for me it’s seeing the light bulb go off to someone who didn’t understand finance before and now they understand it and they’re able to provide you more information that is useful for you to include. And as we just talked about, forecasting or something like that to help us get closer to what we think is going to happen for the year. So for me it’s educating people. In fact, in one of my roles we held a class that would say, Hey, non-financial people, do you want to learn about finance? And we would teach people about the different terms and terminology and things like that so they could understand and understand how the business operated. So for me it’s seeing the light bulb go off when they finally get it.
Appreciate that answer, love the passion. And it is always rewarding when you see the light bulb go off.
Sure. All right, so next question. We talked accomplishment, now we’re going to talk the opposite side of that. Can you tell about a time where you experienced a failure at work and what did you learn from the failure from the experience? Maybe an analysis gone wrong or a change when you tried you to implement something and it failed a budget where you forgot a big expense. I’ve done that one. That’s why I mentioned that one unfortunately, I had that problem. But just something where obviously didn’t go as planned and what did you learn from it?
Carmen Turner:
Sure. I mean, I hate to say it Paul, but that that’s example I was going use about the budget. Know the budget, you’re moving a million miles per hour. If you don’t have a solid process in place to collect the information for the budget, sometimes things can slip through the cracks, right? And sometimes those things are pretty hefty. And so that, that’s exactly the experience I had is that you’re getting all this information from different places and a pretty large item slipped through the crack. So how I handle it is first you definitely go and tell your management, Hey look here, this is what we have. This is what I’m working on to solve that problem. So then it comes, okay, this is what we have to do. These are some of the things now that we may have to cut back in order to accommodate for this expense that was not given.
But then after that, it’s again putting that process in place and not deviating from it. Because again I’ll use the sales team as an example. They may came, come late in the game and say, oh oops, I forgot to tell you we have this vendor contract that’s $50,000 and I forgot to tell you about it, but we’ve already signed a contract. And so that will definitely be this year. So again, having the process in place, having deadlines set, and this is kind of how I do it, Paul,. When it’s a deadline where you have to turn in your budget to the powers, I’ll call them the powers that be, I always move the deadline up for whoever I’m getting information from because
Paul Barnhurst:
Always give a buffer. If there’s one piece of advice you take away from this episode, always give a buffer. Always. That would be number one.
Carmen Turner:
Always give a buffer because something is going to happen to where if you give them date, then you are going to be up all night trying to get something done and then you’re going to be rushing it. And that’s just not a good feeling.
Paul Barnhurst:
Aren’t you still doing that? Even with the buffer?
Carmen Turner:
I mean budget is always such a crunch time. No matter how early you start, you always feel like it’s down to the wire when you’re trying to finalize things.
Paul Barnhurst:
Exactly. No, it’s funny. We can definitely relate. It’s fun how you can see that no matter what company you worked at. There’s a lot of similar things.
Carmen Turner:
Absolutely.
So the next question here is we always like to ask is what is something unique that you can share about yourself with our audience?
Ok, sure. So as I mentioned earlier, I got started later in the FP&A world,. Well prior to that I was an electrician, so I was out there programming robots, wiring buildings. I worked for one of the big three. And that was an experience in and of itself. But it definitely taught me some things that I still use today. Communication problem solving for sure. Because I’m sure you can imagine, hey, when something goes out, you got to figure out why it’s out and how to work that. And the most interesting part for me was definitely programming robots and learning about all the different accesses and making them move. And it was an experience I learned a lot. I don’t think many people know that. Yeah, prior to FP&A, I was an electrician.
Paul Barnhurst:
Nice. My dad was an electrician, so I understand that. One next question, this is one we ask everybody. One of our favorite questions, as you may know, Datarails who is our sponsor, they’re big fans of Excel having built an FP&A platform in Excel. So what’s your favorite Excel formula function feature? Favorite thing about Excel?
Carmen Turner:
So my favorite thing about Excel is definitely the shortcuts. When I first started using Excel, I didn’t know many shortcuts. And so it would take a long time to sometimes get things done, just basic stuff done. So for me, learning shortcuts helps you become efficient so that you can move around quickly, even if you don’t have a mouse, even if you can just move around, move it across sales or whatever copy and paste, all of those things. I’m not going to sit here and talk about all the shortcuts, but for me, the shortcuts are key to me for being efficient in Excel.
Paul Barnhurst:
Do you have a favorite shortcut? One you use, maybe use the most often or that you couldn’t live without?
Carmen Turner:
I mean, I guess really mean. It’s really basic. It’s like the copy paste functions, the insert roll and all of those things is, I mean, I can’t pick one farm. No, you want me to pick one, but
Paul Barnhurst:
I had to try.
Carmen Turner:
It’s all of the things that help you get to. Cause what you’re trying to get to ultimately is some type of analysis, some type of formulas and things like that. And I’m sure you can appreciate this. You sometimes forget to add a copy, you need to insert a column in between columns and things like that. So learning how to do that quickly is key versus manually going through and doing that
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. And things in my head are going control C, control V F two, alt, H i C,
Yes. Control plus. Control minus. Yes, yes. I can relate. I’m laughing is they’re all running through my head as you’re talking,
So absolutely.
Carmen Turner:
That’s when you’ve spent too much time in Excel.
That’s when you’ve been in Excel way too long. Exactly. Cause I’ll do stuff and they’re like, what doing? I’m like, Hey shortcut, you don’t need to go up here and click on edit and do this or click on insert. Use teh keys. You’ll get there much faster.
Paul Barnhurst:
So last question we have here, and then we’ll give you an opportunity just to let our audience know how they can reach out to you or best way to connect with you if they ever have any questions. But the question is, what advice would you offer for someone starting their career today in FP&A?
Carmen Turner:
Sure. So getting started, I would say definitely consider the FPA certification. That’s going to help you again to understand where you are. Do you have that foundation needed to continue to progress in the career? Next, be curious. Always be curious about what is going on. Ask questions research things, learn stuff, be curious. Think partnerships instead of telling people what to do. Work with people, partnerships, meaning businesses you work with, business units, things like that. Even across if you’re, again, in finance and marketing, build partnerships, you never know when you may need to reach out to them for something. Uplevel your skills. Often it’s no longer a game of being stagnant and staying in the same place. Cause things change daily. And so working on up-leveling your skills is really critical. Join professional groups that helps you to expand your network to see what else is going out on there in the world in finance.
And so it’s really key to join professional groups and just to have some people to bounce ideas off of. That’s what I find is really helpful when you’re thinking about things is to have some other people to talk through it with. And then the last thing I’ll say is to diversify your experiences. I think I mentioned it earlier, a lot of times when you start in a career, you’re in one place and you do the same thing over and over. Now for some that may be what they want to do, but if your plan is to continue to grow in your career and do other things, then diversifying your experiences. And I’ll say something like a rotational program or something where you’re hitting different parts of the business so you can see what’s going on in different aspects of the business and you can get that extra understanding of finance.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great, great advice there. I liked everything you said and kind of sum a little bit of that up. It’s really continue to learn, continue to build networks, diversify yourself and always be learning and challenging yourself it sounds like, is a lot of what that advice is focused on. And I would agree, that’s all great advice for someone starting their career. So we’ve finished up the formal interview, but last question, if someone wants to learn more about you or get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to reach out?
Carmen Turner:
Sure. For Carmen Consulting Group, I have a website, carmen consulting group.com. And then you can also find me on LinkedIn and reach out to me directly there as well. I’m more than happy to answer any questions and have conversations.
Paul Barnhurst:
Well, thank you Carmen. We appreciated your time today. I’ve enjoyed having you on the show and you have a great day. Again, thank you so much for taking time to share your experiences with our audience.
Carmen Turner:
Thanks Paul. I really appreciated being here and thanks for having me.
