Egor Lyasko is Head of FP&A, Northern Europe at The Kraft Heinz Company, encompassing some of the world’s most loved brands including Heinz ketchup, Lea & Perrins, Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Lunchables. After gaining a master’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Oxford, Egor started at Kraft Heinz as a trainee rising rapidly in six years to Head of FP&A, Northern Europe.
What we covered in this episode:
- His rapid career rise at Kraft Heinz attracted by the ketchup maker’s “culture of ownership.”
- The principles of finance transformation and the core lessons learnt
- How Kraft Heinz manages its annual budget cycle (and what he would do differently next time)
- The role of integrated business planning at the world’s fifth-largest food and beverage conglomerate
- The importance of being a “mini CFO’ in a sales finance partnership role
- FP&A as Guardians of the P&L
- Why he doesn’t have an ambition to become a CFO
- His perfect retirement dream
- His favorite Excel function
Watch the full show on YouTube
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Paul Barnhurst:
Hello everyone. Welcome to FP&A Today I am your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A Guy, and you are listening to FP&A Today. FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails, the financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users. Every week we 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 am thrilled to welcome today’s guest to the show, Egor Lyasko, welcome to the show.
Paul Egor Lyasko:
Hello. Hey Paul. Great to be here. Thanks.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, we’re excited to have you. So just a little bit about him and then I’ll give him an opportunity to introduce himself. He’s coming to us from London. He’s currently the head of FP&A for Northern Europe at the Kraft Heinz Company. He earned his master’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Oxford and he’s worked for the Kraft Heinz Company ever since grad school in several different roles. So again, welcome to the show. We’re excited to have you and talk a little bit of FP&A here with you today.
Paul Egor Lyasko:
Nah, amazing to be here. Very happy to talk about anything FP&A or anything else for that matter
Paul Barnhurst:
Actually. All right. Well we may take you up on that. There might be a surprise question you never know, but why don’t we start by having you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and how you ended up where you’re at.
Paul Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, look I think it’s point for a tale from the name. I’m not originally from London so I was born and raised actually in Russia originally where my family’s from. And I was very fortunate to be able to go to school in the UK in London. And I’ve been here based since age of 12. So I went to school here just south of London. Then Oxford University, studied biochemistry, which is probably quite a strange career choice after having done biochemistry for four years to move into FP&A specifically, or finance in general. And then I started at Kraft Heinz as a trainee. So that was well just under six years ago. I think I had seriously considered always a career in science, but I think the thing that attracted me to specifically Kraft Heinzand the industry of a role was this fast paced environment.
I think that’s something that probably attracted me and probably one thing I probably get too much in FP&A sometimes the fast pace environment, but that was the big decision for me. And look, I chose Kraft Heinz as a company because really the culture of ownership and the culture of role has really attracted me. And then, yeah, I started as a grad, but no, I don’t think, and I still don’t think I do. I’m not tied to an idea that I want to be in finance and FP&A for the rest of my life. I wanted to enter a world of business, a world of multifunctional, cross-functional business. And yeah, I started as a trainee. I actually did my project as part of the program. It’s a general management program. I did my project in marketing analyzing some of our launches and then have basically ended up in various roles in finance.
So I started in commercial finance as an analyst. I was my kind of first proper job working for back then what used to be now EMEA zone, so more for the zone team, not less hands-on, more I guess strategic. Then looked after ZBB, which is the way we managed fixed costs at Kraft Heinz, which is within the realm of FP&A for back then the newly created Northern Europe business. So it did that for just over a year and then ended a world of real commercial finance or commercial business partnering, having been a sales finance manager for just under two years for some of our big retailers here in the UK. And that was really fascinating. So having a really holistic experience from that perspective. And then the last year has really been a rollercoaster, to be honest, among other things going on. So I actually started the year looking, heading up our transformation team, which I think we’ll talk about probably later in a bit more detail. And then we had quite a few people changes here and I’ve been given this great opportunity heading up our FP&A team for Northern Europe, which I’ve now been doing for six months with doesn’t feel like six months, it feels like a lot longer. But I think a friend of mine, a very experienced friend of mine side in FP&A a year feel like double. So that sounds about right.
Paul Barnhurst:
No, I hear you. I worked for a company and they had a reputation for burning people out and one of the agencies, like hiring agencies said get, yeah, we consider anyone who’s worked there in finance kind of FP&A and we look at is they got about four years of work experience for every one year kind of year two for one. Yeah. Because it was just a pressure cooker, but learned a lot. But yeah, sometimes it can be a grind for sure. So as you were given your background, I noticed you have a really unique background. We don’t see a lot of biochemistry as you mentioned. We see that occasionally, but it’s not a common there. And then doing a marketing internship, you’ve run your own business, you’re now in finance. So maybe kind of walk through your thinking of how you ended up finance specifically. You mentioned you’re not looking at your whole career necessarily to do finance. There’s other things that interest you. So maybe a little more detail on that path and what you think the benefits of having that diverse background, how that’s helped you.
Paul Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I get asked that probably a lot of why on earth are you not doing something actually life changing quite literally sometimes. Think about it quite a lot. But look, I think obviously as a student, I did a few different internships. I did an internship and consultancy and an internship in big pharma. And then throughout my time at university I ran my own business, which was a small kind of online clothing retailer. And I was always had a passion for having my own business in. Then when I came to kind, Hey, finish university, what am I going to do? The obvious one is you go into and do a PhD, right? You do a PhD, makes sense. You’re going to be a big time or small time scientist. I actually started some of the applications and then basically for that reason I was like, look, I had a great time for four years, but I don’t think I can do it for another four.
And I think the biggest thing for me was that I’ve had amazing professors and older friends who have done it and you could do the rest for your entire life. You can be top of your field, but actually in the end have kind of nothing to show for it because that’s kind of the world of science for you. And it was too slow paced for me. So then came kind of the decision of what industry do I go to? Probably my CV, funnily enough, is pretty standard one for working in the city. So a bigger ordered consult like bank, et cetera. It’s a good university, it’s a science degree, STEM degree quite common. Never attracted me. I’ve done an internship in consulting. It never attracted me as a starting point for my career to be honest. And then was, look, the few other industries were probably pharma would’ve been one. But then in pharma I was like, I don’t want to go to pharma and do, I don’t know, sales or whatnot.
And to do science there, you needed to have a PhD. So back we go. And then FMCG really kind of appealed to me a lot because the tangible aspect of it, you know, see it every day. It’s very tangible. I actually had an internship in FMCG as well and I really enjoyed it. And then narrowing it down, I think Kraft Heinz as a company, I chose more for its culture, for its culture of ownership and meritocracy. And there is no kind of, you do this two years, do this two years. It’s much more fast paced. And I mean I’ve been very fortunate in my career as well, but I’ve really valued that. And then in terms of how I ended up in finance, I think finance is a great place to start your career overall, regardless of whether there’s FP&A or not. Because normally as a finance business partner to whatever team, you get a much more holistic understanding of the business and then you get to FP&A.
And that is really holistic understanding of the business. And that’s what I think I value the most. You learn so much and that’s probably part of the challenge, but did I ever think I will be in finance for my entire basically career? Probably not . Do I want to be there for the rest of our career also? Probably not. But I really enjoy, I really do enjoy it and I really valued it as a starting point and having had very varied experience of finance, we have that kind of palette if you like. of choice, which I think is great. And I think naturally, I always like numbers, I like facts, I like numbers. So it’s probably not a good fit. Want to be salesperson probably, but they don’t let me go to customers.
Paul Barnhurst:
That everything you said there makes sense. I can see you’ve put a lot of thought into it, you planned it out. And I totally agree with your point that you get a great holistic view in finance. It’s one of the few cross-functional parts of a business that has to understand all the other parts. Some cross-functional really don’t need to understand what the other businesses are doing. A lot of IT, yeah, you got to understand a little bit of the data, the systems, but finance, you got to understand the economics, how things work, how to think about them so you can really be that partner. So it’s a great place to start. And in particular, FP&A is even more of an understanding because of that planning, the strategic thinking, the analysis. You really, to be good at your job, you have to deeply understand the business. And so I think like you mentioned, it’s a great place to start and it opens up all kinds of opportunities. You could go into operations, you could go, you see people go into other areas, you see people go into sales, there’s all type of places you can go from FP&A and finance. Oh that makes a lot of sense to me. I’d gone from FP&A to starting my own business. So I’m doing a little bit of everything now. Some marketing, some sales, some
Finance stuff. So I get it. I think it was about six months ago now you were got the head of FP&A position for Northern Europe. So maybe can you talk a little bit about that experience? What has it been like and what would you say has been the hardest part of the transition?
Paul Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, look, I think it’s definitely unexpected. I think we had, as I say, a few people changes. So the cuts fell the way they did. As I say, it’s been a very intense six months. Also started as we started planning for our annual budget cycle. And obviously budget sits in a way in the center of FP&A. Sometimes maybe it’s a bit too much, but I’ve always been in and around my FP&A team having been a finance, sales, finance managers etcetera. But I think the hardest thing is scope. I think that’s the hardest thing in that role because you go from in the morning talking about your performance of maybe not this week but this month to in the afternoon talking about the marketing budgets for next year to in the evening talking about the strap plan, the five year strap plan to then going back to get some analysis over to your zone team about something they need to use for something for the street even.
So mm-hmm the scope. And I always compare it to even my role as a sales, like I said, finest business partner to a commercial team. You have a bit of a jack of all trades, could you do a bit of everything? But it’s like the scope is still a little bit that little bit small here. You can just dive to so many things, which just makes it hard to concentrate on one and sometimes hard to prioritize to be honest. But look, as I say, I really actually like that scope. It just makes it quite difficult. But that’s been the hardest in terms of I think adjusting. And also funnily enough, I moved from a transformation role, which is kind of the opposite in the way its project focused. You don’t look at your daily sales, you don’t look at what’s going on today. You try to look ahead, right? You’re try trying to solve people’s problems. So that was quite a big mind shift. I think I just switched to that one and I had to kind of unwind that again. But yeah, I think that that’s been the hardest one. But I think, yeah, I really like and then really enjoying it.
Paul Barnhurst:
Good. I could see the mindset change and just the fact that different things can come up and it can be so different from one moment to the next. What you’re talking about, like you mentioned, I remember the exact same things, all right, you’re figuring out marketing budget here and then next thing you know you’re doing some analysis on month end and then you’re, okay, well what’s the long term plan for this product? And you have to understand all those, be able to switch gears and talk to different people. And it could take a lot, you can be very tired sometimes by the end of the day just from the mental aspect of switching so much. Even if it doesn’t feel like a heavy workday in the sense of ton of work, it can still be draining just from that.
Egor Lyasko:
Exactly problem because you sometimes end the day, have I tangibly done something? I don’t know. Could be, I dunno, build a model, build, prepare a presentation, whatever it may be. You do. And I just spoken to loads of people about loads of things, which is great. Look, you get to, as I say, that’s the good part. You get to interact with all of these stakeholders from marketers and sales to operations to your kind of finance counterparts themselves. So it’s the real scope.
Paul Barnhurst:
I experienced the same thing a little different, but right. Doing it in my own business, sometimes I get the end of the day and it’s like, did I actually do anything I can bill today? So on top of switching all the time, it’s like that was all building today. It’s not, don’t even make any money. It’s just a totally different. And then there’s other days where you, you’re like, oh that was a good day. So I totally get it. Both from the FP&A and just now relating it to some of my experiences. So I know you mentioned your nearing the end of budget, this is your first full budget heading up FP&A. So what’s that experience been like? Maybe talk to some of the challenges, how you approached it, those type of things.
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, I think budget is kind of a scary word people sometimes do. And in a world of, I think relative stability over many years, now we are living in a world of double digit inflation everywhere in Europe, even more so maybe in means planning and scenario planning becomes way harder. I think look, budget, budget also always comes on top of your kind of normal routine. You always still have your month’s end and all of these things. So it’s been, in terms of the plan and everything, it’s been okay, look, it’s a lot of stakeholder management. There is a lot of targets, changes, et cetera. So that’s always challenging. No one is ever happy probably ever. But that’s ok, right? It’s a target. It’s always hard to set these targets and make them make sure they’re fair, right onto you to support the leadership team .
But I think there are a lot of things I think we should always aim to simplify. That’s my job in FP&A I think is to try and simplify and help the teams. But I think, yeah, look, overall I think it’s been an okay exercise. We’re still finalizing of course a few bits and pieces, what we call kind of the FP&A kitchen work is we’re in the process of doing that now and trying to close that just before Christmas here. But in terms of the plan I think we’re look at the, let’s say times have changed which made these processes somewhat different and think the focus areas somewhat different. I think the main one is your spread of what could happen, which is I guess scenario planning used to be much narrower than it’s today. Things could be very good or very bad and it throws a few curve balls.
Paul Barnhurst:
For sure the range of scenario planning and the ability to adjust and that need is you increased so much over the last couple years with COVID, with supply chain, with inflation, with all things you mentioned. The energy crisis and the list goes on global pandemic, it feels like the number of challenges are not slowing, that’s for sure.
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So as you look back at this first experience, let’s say it’s five months ago. When you’re starting over six months ago, whenever you started, what would you do differently this time? There’s some things you’d change a kind of, you know what?
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, I think we need, and we say that every year, to be honest, I’ve been part of the budget process. If you’re in finance don’t, it’s some capacity. You do budget, right? Of course now I’ve been in finance for five years. I haven’t kind of led the process, which is a very different experience. I think we need to simplify a lot more, a lot more the way we do it. There are definitely a few things on systems that I would’ve loved to have maybe tested more or changed a little bit. And to be honest, for us, I think the biggest one has been, I actually think we didn’t do it, we did it relatively well is been the integration with the way we do operations part. Cause normally in the times of less inflation, they used to be way more separated and they come together kind of in the end cause they get volatility is way smaller.
So you get each team to focus on their bits. Here we’ve, the first year we’ve been trying to run together fully together. That’s been a real, it has been a challenge in a good way I think. Did we get everything right? Probably not. But we’ve partnered with the team a lot more and I wish there were a lot of things we probably agreed at the start then on the end because it would’ve simplified our life. I think they’re the main ones. But always the thing that you always think is there’s always underwater stones. I would always get really annoyed, how did we not test it? You always find something until you actually do it. Can I ask people to test things so many times? And it’s nature that you don’t test it fully or you don’t do it. You only find these things when you are doing the actual process, not preparing to do it.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yep. Yeah. You have a template that you think is going to work perfectly and then it comes back. It’s not filled out, whatever it might be. The list can go on and on where you’re like, but I thought we planned this, what did we do wrong? And then you mark that down for next year and then there’s always something else it it’s never ending. Yeah, so that is a good point there. One thing you mentioned that I’d like to ask a little bit about, you talked about this the first year where it kind of sounds like you did financial and operational together, really try to make sure that was integrated versus kind of rolling it up at the end. What have you seen as the benefits of doing it that way? What was the thinking behind that?
Egor Lyasko:
I think as a lot of businesses, I think do it and a kind of changing at the moment as you operate on standard cost, everyone still does it. And then you have operations. So you made commercial focus and commercial operations focus on operations, which worked perfectly in a world where we had no inflation or we had stable inflation plus or minus couple percent. In a world where you need to react quickly, you need to give visibility to your commercial teams that they need to know that hey guys, we have 20% inflation, 10%, you know, need that agility. So having that together, I mean I’ve learned a lot over the last six months because I come from a commercial background, I come from commercial FP&A, I’ve learned a lot about things like, I don’t know, deferrals and whatnot which ordinarily we wouldn’t look at on the commercial side.
So yes, it’s been quite tricky because process a bit different, but the real value add is one process. It’s one number one process. There’s no need to realign, yada, yada, yada. And actually that’s the big thing we’re doing as a business now. One of the big projects we are running now is integrated business planning, which probably on paper sounds like, oh isn’t that obvious? But making people, behaviors, processes all link and do is a lot harder. Which is the biggest learning to be honest over the last year for me. But it unlocks so many things. We operate at one unit.
Paul Barnhurst:
It does. And I’m a big fan of integrated business planning and trying to make sure it all holistically hangs together. Cause I hate when you’re in a meeting and it’s like, well I didn’t sign off on that plan I don’t know where finance came up with this number. Here’s what we have. And it’s like, all right, so now we’re going to spend the rest of the meeting arguing over what’s the right number instead of actually supporting the business. So there’s a lot of benefit. The better you can align it, especially in this environment, like you mentioned with a constantly changing environment, you almost have to do that.
Egor Lyasko:
Totally.
Paul Barnhurst:
Absolutely makes a lot of sense. And it is, like you said, it’s harder than you think. On the surface it seems easier, easy. It’s like okay, you’re just aligning it all the way through. Isn’t that how it’s always supposed to be done? It’s not always that simple.
Egor Lyasko:
And look, we’re not a, we’re 150 year old business the way things quite often are built. No, probably if I rebuilt everything from scratch like Lego, I might build it a little bit differently. You have the, I still the main thing we need to focus on a behavior and process, but some of them have been hindered by some system limitations. And then what we try and change as we’re going through now, we’re like, ah, okay. But even that, I think it’s right, at least we’ve set up what we need to do. Yes, it doesn’t deliver exactly like we wanted to just yet, but at least now we have a roadmap to build. It’s like this is how we want to operate and now we need, I don’t know, need system X or a fix of this or whatever. And it’s much, much better because I think so many companies from the sharing we’ve done from different companies and probably ourselves partly is the immediate reaction is always make a tool for this, make a system for this doesn’t always work because yeah, you need the process on the people first and then you give them the tool to make sure it works smoothly.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great point there about needing the people in process first. I’ve always said technology is an enabler. So many people think it solves the problem, it doesn’t solve the problem. You have the right people, the right processes that enables you to be more efficient to automate things. But if you don’t lay the groundwork, have the clean data and do all the things as we’ll, talk more about that, that have to be done. You know, end up with a tool that nobody’s using or that isn’t working the way you want.
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, I think there is a great phrase that someone said to me before it’s a quote from someone, it’s new technology and old behaviors is expensive old behaviors.
Paul Barnhurst:
I hadn’t heard that, but I am going to remember that one.
Egor Lyasko:
I’m going to give it a Google later. But I think that’s the phrase and it’s so true. It’s so true. We’ve seen it as well.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I like that. Basically new technology, old behaviors is expensive. Old behaviors.
Egor Lyasko:
Exactly.
Paul Barnhurst:
Now that makes a lot of sense. I’ll probably quote you on that at some point. All righty. One other question here and then I want to move into a little bit of transformation in your last role, but how do you think about, we talked about budget, we talked about planning. How do you think about forecasting? How do you like to do that? Do you do a rolling forecast, monthly, quarterly, kind of what’s your thoughts? How far out? Just some thoughts around how you think about forecasting.
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, look, I mean it’s exactly what we are re-looking at now with this integrated business planning project is I think we’re very much not alone in this as a business. We are trying to split appropriately, horizon focus much more longer term. So we can really start our scenario planning. I think historically we’ve had an annual budget cycle, we have a strategic plan cycle and then you kind of end up most of the detailed planning from the commercial teams happens really in two short terms. We’re trying to split that out and extend in terms of, I mean it will be more rolling forecast moving forward, but I think we’re aiming to look further out e. Especially and look, especially with the disruption we’ve seen on supply chain, et cetera. I think any forecast is a forecast. It’s a plan we know will change and assumption will change, et cetera. We should be very clear on what they are. And that’s the thing we’re changing a lot at the moment to have that integrated plan, have that one number and we probably do have one number, no doubt about it. But having one number the entire cycle, et cetera. And yeah, that’s been a bit of a challenge for us as a business because I think Covid has thrown everyone off guard a little bit. It probably exposed some things that weren’t working as well before, but also during covid no one knew what to do, right?
Paul Barnhurst:
<laugh>
Egor Lyasko:
Like, like yeah we had plus minus 5% or standard deviation or whatever. Now I’m like, we have panic buying. Things are going up down and it’s kind of been ever since a recurrence. But I think we’re doing a lot on that trade. So we have some technology helping us, but naturally we have the sales team focusing on the shorter term and we need to act much more in finance as business partners than the people who do the forecast, which I think we’ve been, who’ve ended up being guilty of because finance has been, something looks wrong, we’ll grab it and redo. Which is, I don’t think it’s right to be honest which we’re changing a few bits there.
Paul Barnhurst:
No, I appreciate what you’re saying there and that makes a lot of sense. Be able think a little more long term. I particularly like your point of during COVID, none of us knew what to do. I mean I can’t remember how many forecasts I built. Oh think maybe 20% down, maybe 25 and then, oh this one’s 15, this is here. Oh we need to cut expenses. Okay, well we could do this or that. Just every day it was just scrambling to figure something out. I had a friend who was working for a consumer good company that made toilet paper and paper towels and they finished their plan and he goes Day One of Covid the entire year was just completely blown up. All of a sudden they were, they’re out of supply and just trying to figure it all out. And it was a real lesson of being more agile. I was like, we just spent five months planning to blow it all up in one day.
Paul Barnhurst:
I think we’ve all been through a little bit of that. It was amazing how quick everything changed when that happened. So let’s talk a little bit more about transformations. I know prior to being head of FP&A, you were leading the finance transformation for Northern Europe. So can you talk a little bit about what that involved? What was the transformation? I think you’ve hinted at it probably a little bit aligning the operational and the financial and systems and maybe talk a little bit more about that.
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, I think so as a business we’ve actively taken a decision. So historically within FP&A, you probably had a lot of the tool builders which always ended up being FP&A is very intense, right? Kind of the cog in the middle of this business that you’re constantly running the today that you can’t focus too much on the long term and improving some of the, I think originally like reporting. So we, we’ve taken that actually two years out of FP&A within Northern Europe and created the finance transformation kind of team which I was part of was with two guys there. I think the focus of the team is very simple. It’s two things. We need to help the business with one: what are you doing today? I think we started in finance, but kind of more wider business that takes you loads of time.
That’s manual, that’s tedious, ends up being inaccurate. What can we do with technology to automate it? Be it through simple solutions, be it through data visualization, things like Tableau, be it through things like alter, Alteryx, be it through snowflake SQL those kind of things. And then question two is what are the things that we would love to be able to see consistently and all the time be it new data visibility or be it something else that we don’t do today because we don’t have the capacity or the data available or we don’t have the report. So the classic examples are we to should have this manual process where we create, when we did the forecast, when you financialize a forecast, it used to be a day for someone to do it every month. Now it happens in 30 minutes. That’s an example of a tedious manual process had mistakes.
And another one of some of the market pricing. We used to have, everyone tracks it on their own way. We now have a central thing on Tableau, it’s beautiful, we get sent out once a week here are the prices you can see for the commercial teams. And we run quite a few projects to be honest. And one of them was integrated business planning. So more focusing on process. But I think that’s the biggest learning for me has been is the IBP project is that change is difficult I think. And I’m the same. I used to be, I remember myself as a sales finance manager and I used to go to my head of FP&A being like, oh man, you need to do this better. We need to improve. This doesn’t work. And now I was sitting there being like, ah God, oh no.
But I think change is difficult and we all want new things and to improve things, but then when it comes around, oh actually quite the way I did it before. And we look and I do that quite a lot, I think I’m quite anxious on things. I want things done quickly, straight away, etc. I just think my team will probably reflect on but you always think, oh we’re not doing enough. We can do more, etc. But then I think you’ve also got to put it in hindsight is where’s the business used to be fully Excel based. Five, four years ago, everything would be in Excel, right? And of course, Excel is good for a lot of things. I like Excel, don’t get me wrong, but for standardized reporting and making sure, yeah, big data sets doesn’t handle. So if you’re a team with a relatively like a Excel, yeah, it can handle it. Big data sets doesn’t handle now we are, I mean there are definitely things we could improve on speed and other things, but we’ve partnered with Tableau at the moment as a wider business and we have least our kind of master P&L data, all of it. And our master sell out data all on Tableau available at a click of a bottom, which to be, if you look at it as a journey we of a longer term. Yeah, I think we’ve progressed for sure. Could we do more? No doubt.
Paul Barnhurst:
I think that’s the tagline of anything. Could we do more? And the answer is always yes. Right? And it’ll take everything you can give it. But there’s a few things you mentioned there I just want to drill into is first you talked about how change is hard for transformations. Why do you think that is? Change is the kind of that hard part for people?
Egor Lyasko:
I mean there is that curve, I can’t remember what the name of it, it’s a change curve or something, but it’s the curve of despair and getting used to there
Very grief, despair, acceptance or whatever.
Exactly. There are different curves I think to honest. I think it’s very human, it’s very good at routines and we are actually very adaptable as humans. We like doing it. And also importantly, change is hard. And I think I always reflected on it when I hand it over to someone else. My job when I moved roles, I open let’s say my little Excel model, I looked at like, oh look, this is how you do this, this is how you do this. And as I did it, I was like, why did I do this? I could have spent 30 minutes once and automated it to not spend this five minutes every time, every week or every month, whatever. But I never did. And then I said, I kind of felt embarrassed like, oh yeah, okay, let’s do it now. And I kind of did it there and then I was like, this is terrible, I should have really done that.
I just think that to be honest, I really do think it’s human. And the one thing that I think to make transformation successful, you really have to be so close to the business . I think it really helps if you’ve done the job. So you know the real pain points and it’s hard to find people’s time because people are delivering the today they’re making sure we sell, we produce and all this. So it’s hard to get people to say, okay, hang on, spend one hour with me now and in six months hopefully I’ll be able to save you a day. But you really need to. I think the best project, the project that’ve been the most effective that we’ve done is really partnered with the business properly. And some of the worst ones I’ve seen the ones that been less successful accidentally has just been done. And it was only way too late that the business was engaged with it. Which then it’s hard to change when you’ve already invested time and effort and money probably. So it’s a bit more difficult.
Paul Barnhurst:
So two things stand out to me from listening to that answer. And so the first is just the importance of partnering closely with the business, right? Communicating and working with them, involving them in every step versus I know enough I could put the new process in place and then going and rolling it out to somebody and they’re like, I don’t want to do that. Why would you think that’s the process? So sounds like there’s a key part there of the closer you collaborate with the business, the easier it’s going to be. Not easy, but the easier it is going to be to implement change. And the second thing, which I love is just your point of human nature. How many of us, I’ve done it so many times I transfer something to the new person and I’m like, I’m sorry I never cleaned this up. Yeah, I should have fixed this. You’re just critiquing your process the whole way through and thinking why didn’t I spend another day and save the three hours or the five minutes or whatever it might be. But we just get so busy and we’re just comfortable, as you said, kind of creatures of habit and it just becomes natural to us and the next person is inside probably just thinking, what’s this guy doing is you’re transferring?
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, yeah. Sometimes. Oh for sure. No doubt
Egor Lyasko:
Then you get stuck in it.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, exactly. You
Egor Lyasko:
Do it in increments, you always have to do it in increments. I think that’s the bit that I’ve landed. Like you’re never going to get it all in one because yeah, it’s impossible
Paul Barnhurst:
Rolling out any big change. Don’t expect to do it all at once. Well I mean go ahead and try that, but it will fail, right? It’s an incremental process.
Egor Lyasko:
Absolutely.
Paul Barnhurst:
All right, so next question, I’m going to kind of switch here again. You’ve had quite a few different roles. So you know, spent two years in a sales finance role. So maybe can you talk a little bit about that experience, what it was like supporting sales and what maybe as you see the key things you need to do to support a sales org?
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, no, for sure. I think that was one valuable bits of experience because <laugh>, as I say, I kind of want to be salesperson. But I think it’s a cross-functional team. You’re a part of a cross-functional and the big difference to any team that inside the business you could be part of your brand team, category team or whatever is you’re externally facing. Well actually you are not or very much less but all your team are. So they have a very different type of pressure and of course we all have a common goal but they have someone else pulling them all the time. Being in sales can be quite difficult. So I act as always kind of the balance to that, but also hopefully trying to help the teams. Of course I’m the guardian of Kraft Heinz P&L but ultimately really trying to help them. I think any commercial finance role is a business partner is a bit of a jack of all trades.
You do kind of a bit of revenue management, a bit of analysis, a bit of FP&A because you run the business cycle and the process for the team a bit of control because you need to make sure all your deals and allowances in control and stuff like that. So that that’s quite good. We always like to call you your mini mini CFO, you like little every little team has their own mini CFO and I think the best sales finance managers will be that to their account lead the person in charge of the sales team. But I think the formula is easy. I think number one, your bread and butter is your rituals and routines. You are the guardian of business sale. You need to make sure we understand the past, understand the future, the present, and make the right decisions for the future. I think second part on the sales team is you act as a connection to the internal business proper connection because you don’t spend time externally really.
So you make sure you help your sales team and protect them from various pressures internally and help them land those things externally and validate them in a way. I spend a lot of time just chatting to my sales guys saying like a sounding board, can we do this? Can we do that? Et cetera. But then also helping them with the numbers so they don’t get lost while also having sure we have the right credibility with the business. And then the third one is the fun stuff begins, is there real analytics? If you can do the first two analytics, joint business agreements, investment plans, what makes money, what doesn’t make money, how do we negotiate strategies longer term, all of these. But yeah, it was a very interesting role and I think I always recommend it because it has, it’s so you learn a lot of how a business runs because you are a little business in and of itself.
Paul Barnhurst:
I would second that as well, supporting sales. Everybody in finance should have the opportunity. I mean my experience was invaluable. You brought up a lot of great things there and one I really liked is the importance of just chatting and talking with them. Hey, can we do this? Can we do that? I remember it got to the point where sales guys would call me and hey look, can we do this on this deal? Does this make sense? In some cases the answer would be no, but here’s what we can do. And we had a good enough relationship that I could say no, but it wasn’t no, in the sense of sometimes finances viewed, it’s like no go away. It was no, but let’s figure out an alternative. How can we make it happen? Cause just financially that I can’t get that approved for you or whatever the case may be. I totally agree that communication is just invaluable. They need you as a sounding board because they’re not numbers guys. Most of them. Yeah, some are, but for the most part, they’re not analytical numbers guys, but they’re great at relationships. They’re often very good at selling. And when you get a great support for that sales team, you can help them achieve more.
Egor Lyasko:
Yes, no, totally. And then it’s always fun. You need to have a good relationship with the guys because unfortunately my role was like they might still think I like saying no to things, but unfortunately my role is to be that kind of control board, right? Yep. I’m the guardian of the P&L, and having that really good relationship has been very important. And the best sales guys I’ve worked with, we’ve had that amazing relationship as well. And then we are able to help each other.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, and like you said, at the end of the day, we have to protect the P&L. So there’s times we say no, there’s times that may be disappointed, but if you’ve built the relationship and you have the trust, they’re going to understand, still may be disappointed, but you can continue to work together and you may get the next deal. That’s great. Right?
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, exactly.
Paul Barnhurst:
So next question here I wanted to ask you is just kind of switching a little bit to key metrics. You’ve been in the consumer package goods industry for a while now with Kraft. What do you find are some of the most valuable metrics that you like to look at that really kind of help you understand the business?
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, I think obviously internal P&L is important. I think we try and combine internal and external a lot more. I think all the obvious ones. I guess look, I look down to Ebida of course. I think margin is becoming more and more important in the world of inflation. Not just absolute numbers. The margin. I think we’re moving as a business, as we connect way closer with ops at the gross profit gross profit margin, which we’ve probably historically just looked at commercial margin. Now we look at total margin, which I think has been very important. So I think that has become very a big one. Look, anything in the PBM price, PBM price. So the proper price, not just sales over volume. I think all very important. And then look, I think we’re historically in finance, we would maybe look a little bit less in volume and look much more kind of net sales and a sweep a ton of price and some form of margin and margin percentage be gross profit EBIDA.
We’re actually looking a lot more at volume now. You kind of know volume as a function of net sales and NSP for ton on net sales per ton. But we’re looking a lot more because we’re looking a lot more as consumer penetration and those external metrics because in high inflationary times, I think every business is pushing through significant pricing plans. I mean I’ve seen my weekly shop go up quite a bit. That’s very important for us. I think as a brand in the UK, we’re one of the biggest brands in the uk. Heinz is the number two brand in the UK and our biggest competitor is probably private label that’s way bigger in the UK than it is in the US. double the size. And of course in inflationary pressure, that’s been our biggest one. And I think looking at penetration and value and value and volume market share some more external metrics has been really important. And that kind of price index versus our competitors I named probably quite a few there. I think these are the most important ones.
Paul Barnhurst:
That’s helpful. I really like how you mentioned in inflationary environment those private labels and understanding the index, understanding how they’re pricing and so yeah, there’s the internal of understanding your own P&L and your own numbers. But I like how you brought in also understanding the external environment and being able to look at those metrics and see how those impact what you do and the decisions you make, especially in this ever-changing environment we’re in.
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, and I think that’s exactly what I think often in finance you get kind of not stuck, but you look at only your finance metrics. I think it’s super important for, yeah, I’m going to always be biased through my probably EBIDA margin, right on my delivery versus budget on my profit for the business. But you need to see the bigger picture and that’s how you think you could become the best business partner. In fact, not FP&A, you’re probably your, you’re the biggest business partner to the leadership team or of your business in any sell that’s, you understand the holistic picture and how these things interact, right? I think that’s very important.
Paul Barnhurst:
Agree. So now we’re going to move on to some more standard questions. Some things we like to ask all of our guests, and I’m going to start with one that’s a little more personal. Can you tell me something unique about yourself? Something we wouldn’t not find online, something you can share with our audience
Egor Lyasko:
Going to be unique? No, that’s really good question. Actually. I think as the head of FP&A what is quite unique as I don’t want to be a CFO.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah
Egor Lyasko:
I mean wherever my career takes me, I don’t mind. But definitely don’t want to be a cfo. I think October was probably well relatively unique where I end up and retires, have a vineyard somewhere New Zealand and drive a tractor and taste my wine. I think that would be my perfect retirement.
Paul Barnhurst:
Well when you hit that, I want a picture.
Egor Lyasko:
Ah, I’ll send you a bottle of my finest wine. Hopefully if I make it.
Paul Barnhurst:
There we go. Sounds fun. And I would say most of guests we have on a lot of them do want to be a C F O. So that is a little unique as well for a finance audience.
Egor Lyasko:
Wouldn’t say no, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think I have, if you asked me whether I want to be in 10 years’ time, I don’t think I would say probably safer
Paul Barnhurst:
It, it’s not your primary goal or aspiration. If it happens, great, but it’s not what you’re planning for. So speak.
Egor Lyasko:
Yes,
Paul Barnhurst:
Exactly. Makes sense. All right, so this next one we ask everybody, this is a fun one. Datarails is our sponsor. So they’re big fans of Excel. They have a platform build around Excel. So what’s your favorite could be Excel, formula, function, feature. What’s your favorite thing in Excel?
Egor Lyasko:
I’m going to go for probably, well, I hope it’s relatively unique. I’m going to go for an if or ifs. And I mean there’s so many formulas, there’s so many great things. But I think having done a lot of things in things like ultrax and Tableau, which sometimes you leverage some of the learnings you’ve done in Excel, right? But I think the power of an if is just, is just huge. Have all the VLookups, ups, Hlookups, all the index matches. They’re all fantastic and direct. But I think I’m going to go for an IF.
Paul Barnhurst:
No good if statement ifs. I mean I learned sql, I remember writing case statements, which are basically an if statement or switch statements. Exactly. Just that logic. And there’s so many different ways you can do it , but just the idea of being able to write a good if statement that works. There’s such a great feeling, especially when you have a long complex one. I can remember some very long case statements and getting all done and going. Does the number look like it makes sense? It does. Thank you.
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, those when you, I just sit there, almost separate them into three separate formulas and check and then combine them. You’re like, yes, it’s there.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yes. Oh, so many times where you do it, you’re going through step by step. It worked, it worked it. The number looks right. Or sometimes it’s Oh crud that’s nowhere close to right.
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, yeah. And then you can never unpick it. It’s like, I don’t know, it’s like four lines of it and you were like, oh my god. And then you probably go for a beer, just give up.
Yeah, no, I saw a shirt that said Roses are red, violets are blue. You have a left bracket on line 42.
Oh, very good.
Paul Barnhurst:
And I’ve been joking I need to buy that shirt because I’ve definitely experienced that more than once
Paul Barnhurst:
So very good. We got two more questions here for you before we let you go. So one we like to ask people because we feel like I’ve always been a believer that failure leads to success. The failures are really just learning experiences. So maybe can you talk about a career failure you had and what you learned from that analysis gone wrong, A budget that got messed up, whatever it might be, and what was your learning from that experience?
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, I think the biggest ones should have been loads of little ones, but as we’ve been integrating a few new processes this year I think we’ve delayed a lot versus where not a lot maybe to be honest. I reflected on it and I spoke to a few people and they’re like, this is so normal. But I think the biggest, I was like, oh, well I’m not that happy that it is normal, but we’ll live with it. But I think look, driving big change takes time or maybe it’s not necessarily a failure. But I think even this year we’ve delayed, we had to delay things. And you have to kind of take time out to invest in the future. I think that’s been a real, how do you deal with that? I think it’s been quite difficult. But look, you learn, right? I think especially in my role now, how of communication, managing multiple stakeholders, importantly both up and down because and parallel, but it’s in all directions. It’s not just one way. I think that’s become so much more important. You really underestimate it. And I think I underestimated it actually.
Paul Barnhurst:
I think you’re human. I think first probably everybody underestimates us some and you adjust for the next time. So it’s a great lesson to learn. That’s all we can do is try to learn and implement it so we don’t end up with a expensive old behaviors, as you said earlier.
Paul Barnhurst:
So what advice would you offer to someone starting their career today in FP&A today? So someone came to you and said, Hey, can you give me some advice? I’m looking at maybe just finished college or grad school or whatever, and I want to work in FP&A. What advice would you give them?
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, I think that’s a great place to start. And the reason is you get as an analyst you’ll work hard, but you get unparalleled visibility with the leadership and visibility of the business, which I think is fantastic. You’ll also learn a lot of core skills like Excel, building a model, understanding kind of core processes. The advice I would give is definitely learn how to prioritize. Definitely don’t be scared to make mistakes and just go there and do things and pick up new things. To be honest, I don’t think it’s specific FP&A advice necessarily, but I always been as whatever you get given or offered or whatever the opportunity is, take it, learn and you’ll, it will happen and get going. I mean from FP&A specific, I think the one thing I would do is look, it’s a certain profile. It’s a certain profile. You need to really like it. You need to like numbers, you need to like getting things right, reconciling things, et cetera. So I think be prepared for that but it will reap you great rewards,
Paul Barnhurst:
Couldn’t agree more that there’s great rewards, great opportunity, but you need to be prepared and it is a certain profile. So last thing here. If somebody wanted to get ahold of you or learn more about you, what’s the best way to connect with you?
Egor Lyasko:
Yeah, I think probably LinkedIn is the easiest one, right? We all adds the social network of connecting about career and stuff. So LinkedIn is the easiest one. So always happy to connect.
Paul Barnhurst:
Well and we’ll have that in the show notes for people that they can connect with you on LinkedIn. I figured that’s what you say. I mean that’s the standard answer these days. We all do.
Egor Lyasko:
LinkedIn didn’t surprise you there. <laugh> would’ve been strange if us not like Instagram. That would’ve been a weird one.
Paul Barnhurst:
I was waiting for you to say something like Mastodon, right? The new one that I guess is kind of coming up like a replacement for Twitter or something. I’ve heard since all the challenges they’ve had with Twitter, they added like a million followers in a week or something. Wow. It’s not a bad week for them.
Egor Lyasko:
Not at all. Not at all.
Paul Barnhurst:
Well, thank you so much for being on the show. We’ve really enjoyed having you. We’re excited to, our guests have the opportunity to listen to this episode.
