This year Bruno Oliveira got promoted to CFO, flying up the FP&A route at Swissport, the world’s leader in airport ground services and air cargo handling, active at 286 airports in 60 countries.
In this must-listen episode:
- FP&A in the trenches from banks, to automotive, agriculture and aviation at Swissport
- How to cope without control on demand in aviation
- Financial planning three to six months ahead
- Structure of FP&A at Swissport
- Factoring in safety as the most important aviation metric, direct labor and fleet management costs
- How our FP&A Team works together with our data analytics team
- Cross functional relationships piloting Swissport success
- Walking through the business budget planning at Swissport
- Instead of dreaming of a new technology (such as AI) use the specific blade of a swiss army knife for your business
- Why PowerQuery is mandatory for FP&A
- Getting to fifth place in Latin America in the Financial Modeling World Cup
Follow and connect with Bruno on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bosilva/
Glenn Hopper:
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From Datarails This is FP&A Today. Hey, everyone. I wanted to pop in with a quick note ahead of today’s episode. We’ve recently received some feedback from our listeners. We’ve had some special requests for more grizzled financial analysts on the show. Not that we don’t love our influencers and leaders, but we heard from our listeners that they want to hear more insights from the trenches. So this is a shout out to anyone in FP&A a grizzled or not who would love to join us on the podcast. If you know someone who’s making waves in FP&A, or if you’d like to come on yourself, just drop me a message on LinkedIn. Now, onto the show.
In this episode of FP&A Today, I spoke with Bruno Olivera Silva, a brand new CFO, who spent 18 years in the FP&A trenches. We discussed his diverse career journey and how his experience in sectors like manufacturing and aviation has shaped his financial approach. Bruno shared valuable insights on managing costs in an industry with external demand constraints, and emphasized the role of business partnering in driving FPNA success. We also explored Swissport post pandemic transformation and the integration of data analytics and operational planning. Let’s dive in.
Bruno, welcome to the show.
Bruno Oliveira:
Hi, Glenn. Very honored to be here. Honored to be the first Brazilian in your show. Right. So
Glenn Hopper:
I was gonna say, we discussed, yeah, we discussed before we came on. You are our first Brazilian, so welcome. We could spend the whole show probably talking about, um, the Twitter ban in, uh Brazil. I guess we’ll focus on finance instead. Yes. Let’s go, let’s go <laugh>. But
Bruno Oliveira:
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
Glenn Hopper:
You know, we’ve been talking a little bit about your career journey, and I was wondering if you could walk our audience through, through your career journey and the diverse industries you’ve worked in and how sort of moving across these different industries and countries, how that’s shaped your approach to FP&A.
Bruno Oliveira:
I had the opportunity to work, uh, in banks, in, in, uh, in the automotive industry, in technology, in the agro business too, in Brazil, in food industry, working in startup. And now I, I had opportunity to be in the aviation industry. So in the end, finance is finance everywhere, right? But having the opportunity to understand these, these very different kind of businesses and how, uh, we can create value in, in all of them, it’s a unique opportunity to, to apply where you are, right? Because you have the, you, you can gather these, these different approaches, the different views, and apply in, in such an, an unique view. So I really believe that when I understood that I needed to change my career from finance, uh, transaction function to this strategic finance, that’s where I, I really, I really became more relevant to the companies that I, that I work. And I really believe that my game stepped up when I work in manufacturing, that you have a, a sea of data in, in, in this wholesale view. You need to understand where you need to focus. Right.
Glenn Hopper:
I love that you mentioned manufacturing, because through most of my career, I didn’t work in manufacturing. And then when I got into consulting, I started picking up some clients who were in manufacturing. And it really, it, it’s not just your FP&A, it’s your controllership. It’s the accounting is more complex and it really, if you can work in a manufacturing environment, a lot of, a lot of other, uh, areas seem a lot easier. <laugh> no,
Bruno Oliveira:
And, and, and, and the taxes that you have a way, uh, a very complex environment and even more working in Brazil, that, that has such a, a complex tax, uh, uh, government, uh, uh, structure. So it was really nice to, to be there and to learn a lot from it.
Glenn Hopper:
So manufacturing has its challenges, and I’m sure aviation does, and I’m thinking about working in these different industries with operational challenges. And obviously all all industries do have this, but, you know, managing costs and aviation when you don’t really control, demand and kind of working through these operational challenges, how has that influenced your approach to finance? You know, we talked, we talked before the call about business partnering and all the challenges and everything. And so just, I, I, I would imagine seeing these different industries and these different challenges you’ve had to tailor your fp and a approach along the way.
Bruno Oliveira:
The example that you gave, for example, uh, for, uh, Swissport, that we don’t have too much control on our demand because the airlines, uh, they, they control their, their schedule. And we as, as their, uh, service providers, we need to adapt and to be sure that we are cost aligned. So we need to be very good on managing our costs. That’s the key. When I understood this. Uh, this movement in Swissport also is very important to understand where, where are the business going? How can we, uh, evolve the way the things that we are doing. So, um, to be very good on managing costs, we need to be very good on transforming our business on doing things better each day on, on the future better, right? I think that, for example, considering the complexity of, of the seasonality of the, the travel industry, it’s a very important factor too, to have a good planning, maybe not a three, five years plan, but if you plan very well, you are three to six months ahead, you have great chances to be successful. So
Glenn Hopper:
For this planning, identification of metrics and everybody in the company, being locked in and understanding the same metrics is, is, is so important. And when, you know, I’m thinking about cost management, I’m, I’m assuming, you know, pretty tight margins. So managing costs is, is very important. So when you’re working with these external demand constraints and you’ve gotta optimize cost management, what are the key metrics that you’re tracking? Like, how often are you reporting on these, on these metrics and, and what are the most important? And maybe talk a little bit about some that might be, if you have examples like of, of leading indicators and which ones are lagging indicators, and what, when you’re talking to the rest of the c-suite and to management across the company, what are the key metrics that everyone’s focusing on?
Bruno Oliveira:
In Swissport, we have a very well structured, um, FP&A and analytics team. Um, these are two separate teams. And, uh, the analytics team, ha has been working very well with us to being able to, to provide us, uh, information from the operations. Because the most important thing for Swissport is safety. We need to ensure that we are serving the aviation industry with a safe operation. Also a very high standard of operational excellence. So there are a lot of information that we can track daily from the airports, the details of the flights. Uh, what was the, the, if we are achieving the SLAs and, and what is the perception of our clients regarding NEPS? In, in, uh, with several aspects in these surveys that are applied weekly, of course, the financial results are formed with the quality of the operation and the perception of the clients on it.
So it, it’s, it’s not by chance, right? And, uh, when we go towards the financial view of this, we can understand that talking about the KPIs, right? We can compare, for example, amongst our regions, amongst the countries. Swissport is present in around 60 countries in the world today. So we, we have a comparison basis of which countries are very well, which countries are, are needing to evolve. So, uh, when talking about KPIs, it, once we are a service provider, uh, our major costs are, are of the direct labor. So that’s where we are always having our, our ia, uh, close, but also own fleet management costs and, and selling, general and administrative expenses (SG&A. So using the, using the right KPIs, direct labor per revenue, gross margin, and also some other specifics from the industry is the key for, for driving.
Glenn Hopper:
And you mentioned in there that you’ve got the FP&A team, and then the BI or, or, uh, data analyst team being separate. And your data analyst team, do they roll up to the, to IT? Are they, and then I’m guessing they’ve adopted sort of the same business partnering approach like the FP&A team does. So they’re, tell me a little bit about the FP&A team working with the data analysts and how that flow of information goes, and how much direct access FP&A has to information versus how much they’re dependent on, you know, BI pulling that for them.
Bruno Oliveira:
The FP&A function needs to, we cannot depend on, on IT to do most part of our job, right? But also we can, we need to respect the, the, the IT governance and all the limitations in the policies that the company has, has. So when we, uh, are developing new models, when we’re dev, developing new views and exploring this, this sea of information that, uh, that huge companies like Swissport has, the key is not just about the information and the modeling, the, the details on it, but what is the, the answer that we are trying to, what is the question that we are trying to answer? So, uh, we need to have, we need to present to explore, uh, 1, 2, 3 key problems, create hypothesis for these problems, do like an exploratory analysis, and then try to answer these, these questions, these important questions, these, these possible value adding questions, uh, to the business. So I think that FP and A just is, is not, of course, just about analyzing data and modeling and everything, but, uh, FPA needs to be able to answer the questions that the business needs to know to, to step up and to keep, uh, bringing value to the business.
Glenn Hopper:
And do you see FP&A end up crossing over to, you know, because some of the data they need and some of the audience that they’re reporting to is, is outside of finance. Do you see the fp and a team crossing over? Like if I’m picturing two Venn diagrams of the BI group and fp and a group, and I’m imagining, imagining there’s a lot of overlap. Is it, is it difficult sometimes to know where that line, you know, is it a hard line or kind of a blurred line on the type of reporting? I’m thinking about things like establishing kind of, uh, your, your data lexicon and everybody understanding this, you know, reporting on this from the same source of truth and understanding all that are, is FP and a pretty involved with the BI group with, uh, defining all that?
Bruno Oliveira:
Yes, yes. The point is that FP&A almost transitions between everything, right? <laugh>, we are a focal point. We are a communication focal point, uh, almost all the time. Uh, and mainly when we are talking, uh, country management as I am in Mexico today. So when you consider that FP&A, uh, needs to, to drive this communication, as I said, you, we need to direct the data people to help us to answer the questions of the business. So I really understood in the, in the last years, the importance of the business partnering and how can we leverage and transform a company making have been at the center of this communication. So we need to show people where the money is and, and how can they increase value addition to the business. So, uh, I think that that’s how finance can make a difference.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, I agree. And this is, you know, being able to do that, it’s really, hopefully it’s the kind of thing that helps finance move from this sort of reputation as a cost center to a real value add to the business. And when you have that good partnership with BI and, um, and have strong teams, that’s great. Yes.
Bruno Oliveira:
Because sometimes we can have a lot of fancy dashboards and a lot of things in finance and 2000 different views from, from the things, but may, from my experience, almost all the time, if you have the right 10 analysis, you’re gonna succeed.
Glenn Hopper:
Business partnering, and I, we talked about this before the show, it, it’s so important and it’s really making a difference. And like when I started my career and, and when you started yours, you know, business partnering wasn’t a term that we were Yes. That we were using back then. But, um, we did talk some about, um, you know, how these cross-functional relationships can help really drive success. Can you maybe give us an example of how some of those cross-functional relationships, either at Swissport or, or at prior companies, how have they driven success in your FP&A initiatives?
Bruno Oliveira:
In, in a lot of companies that, um, and I’m talking about, uh, global companies and large companies, you can use examples of small and medium companies that has different areas, different business lines, different regions or geographies to manage. We need to make people talk between each other. So as I said, when, when finance, when FP&AA is in the center of this communication, driving the, the value addition, uh, horizontally and vertically, we really make the difference. We can use examples of, of business that have, uh, geography management region now management, and, uh, the simple benchmarking of some KPIs and making people have changed, best practices and change, uh, what are the initiatives that everyone are doing isn’t a simple of how fast you, how quickly you can make the ones that are not that well, uh, step up in the, in the show. So I really believe that the communication is, is the key for, for finance.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s nice to, you know, think about finance sort of getting out of that ivory tower where you’re just sitting in front of a, in front of your keyboard, just modeling things out based on, you know, historical data or whatever, and really partnering and working across with, um, with the other teams. Do you ever see power struggles with that, with that crossover and overlapping? Is there, do, do you ever have to deal with sort of a turf war or <laugh> or working with, with bi of, oh no, this is ours. We report on this, you stick to your lane. Do you, do you have any examples of areas like that where you’ve had to overcome sort of that friction between different groups?
Bruno Oliveira:
This often happens because when, when financing is in the middle of this communication, it is, it’s very common that finance also try to over manage the things, right? But we need to respect these boundaries with other areas, with operations, logistics, commercial. So we need, we need to influence and to, and to a point where they can put energy, but we need to respect this, these boundaries in this limit. So when you create a trustable relationship will make easier this, uh, this influencing in this business party role. This, this can make a lot of difference too, to, to make people trust you.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And you know, since you’ve been doing this a while, I’m thinking about, it’s been a few years that we’ve been talking about business partnering and sort of this new model. Have you seen the other departments warm up to understand better or get value or, or understand the value they’re getting from fp and a rather than just, oh, well they’re reporting on the whole company. And I, you know, thinking about that, that pushback of, I remember the first sort of business partnering, sort of embedding relationship I had in other departments was, was pretty early in my career. And the initial response we got was, why is finance coming in and poking their nose in my business? I’ll report on my side. I don’t want finance in here. Do you, do you see any of that still? And do you, how have you seen that change over the years as, as fp a and business partnering has really shown other departments that, that there is value to working this closely with finance?
Bruno Oliveira:
Uh, I have a good example. Um, I worked in, uh, in a Brazilian, uh, multinational cosmetics company. Uh, and they, in the, in the finance structure, they have inserted one finance manager with a team inside each area. This is not common. It is not that common. And this is kind of the dream, right? Uh, and, uh, this business partner role, it was very kind of turn it organic when you have a, a finance manager inside operations, for example, that a very good partner of the, the direct, the operations director, the the operations team. And, um, you really break these, um, this bulking view for being able to, to, to apply the business partner. You cannot have people seeing you as the pointing finger one, uh, they need to see you as a partner, as the business partner. Uh, role says right in the, this, this view of the company that I’ve been, uh, when they decided to have finance inside, uh, uh, like a finance sell inside of each area, really make it way more easier to make each area understand that all the decisions that are made in the end of the day, they have to be financially evaluated.
So sometimes when you have just a central FP&A or a small team in FP&A, it is really hard to ensure that, that the most part of the decisions in the areas are being evaluated with this financial view too.
Glenn Hopper:
And I’m also thinking, so we’re in the middle of budget season now, and, um, I’m thinking about when in the old days
Bruno Oliveira:
You’re thinking about budget, right?
Glenn Hopper:
<laugh>? Yeah, yeah, <laugh>. Yeah. And you know, in the, in the old days when we budgeted it, it felt, I mean, you know, it’s different. There’s the, the top down approach from the bottom up, and then there’s what, you know, the, what most people do meeting in the middle. But I think pre-business partnering versus now, I guess, walk me through the budgeting process in Swissport or, or one of your other companies. But I’m thinking about having this business partnering and how you’re going through and how you sort of iterate through the models. What, uh, what kind of tools do you use? Is it a lot happening in Excel or in, in your ERps? Walk me through the budget process and, and in particular how business partnering is helping in that.
Bruno Oliveira:
Uh, for example, here in Swissport, we are doing kind of, uh, yearly business plan that directionally put us where we need to be in the, in the budget processes. And, and, and this fa facilitates a lot because we do like a business plan more, uh, high level, uh, seeing them the most important KPIs. Where should we go with the commercial growth? Where should we go with the margin, uh, profitability improvement? So when we are done, when, when we start doing the, doing the budget, we already know where we, where we need to go. This saves us a lot of time because a lot of companies likes to do like a zero basis budget. This is good in some aspects, but it’s bad in others because people in the earth, in the earth commonly have a lot of dreams, <laugh>. And when we receive templates or information, we need to, to be the bad ones and, and cutting almost the, the most part of it.
So when you have a business plan, we already show people where we need to go because we decided together. Okay? So this is, is a, a very good difference on making the business partner role in the high level. But when you, when you go to a more managerial level of the business partner, I think we go back to what I said, that is finance needs to, to show people where the value is. And, uh, once people understand that working together with finance, we can leverage the results. We can leverage inclusive, the perception of the achievement of that area, but not just because finance help it, but because we work it together to achieve it. They realize that that finance being closed in every part of the process and, and mainly in the budget process, is very valuable. It’s, is way valuable. So
Glenn Hopper:
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When you do that business plan, are you starting with, okay, here’s our, our revenue trend. And, you know, you factor in this, the seasonality and you say, this is, you know, if you just continue the trend, this is where we’re gonna be on revenue, but then maybe you layer, layer in whatever your projects or or plans are on top of that. And then I’m assuming, you know, you do this for each region and or each business line and all that. And then do you, from the business plan, do you just say, well, these are our margins, let’s focus on tweaking costs. You know, our goal is to reduce cost to services by X amount. I mean, is this, is that sort of the structure that happens in the business plan, and then you translate that into the model from from there?
Bruno Oliveira:
Yes. Once we don’t have too much control on the demand. Uh, we need to be, we need to understand where the demand is going to, to draw everything, uh, in the board of it. But also we need to understand where we have more opportunities to grow the business. And this is very important. And also connect this with, uh, several transformation projects that we are working that can help us to accelerate acceler this, this margin capture that we seek to, when we talk about transformation, we talk about, for example, uh, projects that will help us to make planning, uh, operational planning better, uh, the, to, to make a better rostering, to, to build without fails. So what can we do to ensure that we are capturing 100% of revenue? What can we do to ensure that we are being the most effective as possible when, uh, executing the costs amongst the, the stations, amongst the airports? And, uh, and how can, how can we see these? And, and that’s, that’s why we do a business plan before the budget, because you can see where we are going in a not that detailed level yet. And, and then in the budget we deploy it. So this yearly business plan process has been working pretty well. It is is the second year that we are doing and is, is working. Amazing.
Glenn Hopper:
And what’s the timing on that? So what is your budget season? You start with the business plan, you know, midyear. Are you, are you on calendar year or fiscal year, or,
Bruno Oliveira:
Yeah. Yes, we are, uh, from January to December. So the, the business plan starts, uh, the conversation starts in May to June. Uh, we finish in July, something like this. Uh, then we, we used to work on a forecast to the H two and then finishing this forecast, we start a budget process that, that’s where we are right now. Uh, we just kicked off in the budget process, and we are hoping to, to finish in the, in the end of November, possibly.
Glenn Hopper:
Gotcha. And when you’re doing your, your budgets, do you factor in, uh, do you model out, you know, macroeconomic expectations and, and sort of the exogenous outside of the business factors as you, as you’re doing that, you know, will you run different scenarios for each of the, uh, each of the regions, or how much of it is just, you know, we, this is the plan we have to hit, but then you also have to, uh, you know, plan for other po potential eventualities? Like how do you, how do you handle that process?
Bruno Oliveira:
Yes, we analyze a lot of things in the, in this view of risks and opportunities, right? We do this firstly first in a, in, in a macroeconomic view, for example, in suport is very important, the inflation, because this corrects the most part of our costs regarding, regarding labor, and also to understand, for example, what are the projections on minimal wage adjustment. Because in a lot of contracts, these also are, are drivers that, uh, can impact our, that will impact our costs. And we need to understand how much of these we can translate to, to revenue. So, uh, we are all the time analyzing the, the, the possibilities of the renewals, of the contracts of where we are going on this margin side, on where my costs we gonna be and how can we work to translate it to, to the revenue. So it’s, this happens during the whole year because, uh, we, we not only have contracts that they have their timing starting in January, we have, for example, contracts that have an anniversary in the middle of the year. So these negotiations with the clients, with the airlines are, are going during the whole year. So
Glenn Hopper:
I wanna shift to, um, another part of, of what your focus has been in your career. And as I talk to more and more FP&A people, it’s interesting how much technology is a part of what we do and how, you know, the tools that we’re using, the tools that we’re, that we need, how much we, not just being finance people, but we also have to have some level of software and, and data understanding and all that. You know, we’ve been talking for, I don’t know, 30 years now about digital transformation to the point where nobody wants to hear that anymore. But it’s, and it’s really, I think the idea, at first we thought, well, we’ll do this once and then we’re done. But really it’s just an ongoing process. And I know a big part of what you’ve done in your career has been on financial transformation, business transformation. Maybe talk about the, the role of that in your career, and maybe if, if you have any examples of a very complex transformation you’ve been through and how you sort of see that as kind of ongoing that just we’re, we’re constantly transforming and evolving in finance across and, you know, back office across the business.
Bruno Oliveira:
Yes, yes. Uh, I really believe that, that the most, most complex set of projects that that have been is the, is the current wave of transformation that we are living in Swissport right now. You, you may know that considering the, the pandemic in 2020, the, the aviation industry was very, very harmed. And we are somehow since then creating kind of a new company. So, uh, it’s a huge opportunity to be close of the global management and to be part of this moment. So we have a lot of parallel projects going on at the same time. Uh, we invested a lot in, uh, in a robust structure of transformation globally. And this is, is making the difference to be able to push a lot of things at the same time. And, and it’s really hard to do it, you know, it to make people across the 60 countries almost that we work on, to make them have the same view of value addition of dividing themselves between the, the daily operations, the daily finance, and the supporters on the evolution of the projects. So we have projects in HR, we have projects in operations, we have projects in finance, and everything is going on at once. It’s, it’s crazy <laugh>.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, yeah. <laugh>. Yeah. And it’s, um, and it’s never ending. And you know, now everybody’s talking about, you know, how are we gonna use AI in, in our business? And, you know, different businesses may be set more on industry and size, you know, different businesses are going into AI in, um, at different paces. And there is sort of a, you know, some people are diving in right now and others are taking a more cautious wait and see approach. And I’m seeing in traditional industries, and you’re seeing more people take this wait and see approach to leaning into generative ai. I’m wondering, have you guys been working with any generative AI tools at Swissport, or even if not generative ai, maybe some machine learning, uh, you know, sort of traditional ai, um, to focus on, uh, you know, uh, on, on forecasting or, or anything on the backend?
Bruno Oliveira:
Yes, there are some, some machine learning embedded in, in our, our operations projects. And these, these, these are gonna help us to understand, for example, how could we do better the rostering planning? So we have airports that, that has, uh, like a hundred daily flights in Brazil. We have our in, for example, you can compare Brazil, the VCP airport in Cancun Airport in Mexico. We have, uh, almost a thousand employees in, in each of these airports. So there’s a lot of things happening all the time in the same time. And we need to be sure, um, that we are being the most efficient as possible. So, uh, using this help of the AI and the, and the machine learning is the key to, to accelerate, uh, this evolution. So, but in the daily basis, we are, uh, still evaluating how could we, how could we support the local teams to, to have tools like these? But by, by the moment, uh, we are not exploring that much in, in, in a, yeah, in a local level person.
Glenn Hopper:
Well, on that note, I mean, looking at where FP&Aa is today and what the impact of, of AI might be in the, in the future, what do you see as the most critical skills that FP&A professionals would need to really focus on over the next five to 10 years? I mean, is there, you know, there’s the classic skills, but is that evolving? Are you seeing that the, the skillset is poised for a change? What would you, what would you recommend for FP&A where, where they would focus to improve their skills?
Bruno Oliveira:
Yes, by the moment, I, I will not say something specific to you, like in a specific tool or knowledge that you need to have, but I’ll give a tip that I, that really helped me a lot in my past years that I really, I really try to learn a lot of different things, but mainly understanding, okay, what we have new now, uh, uh, this example of, of AI that is not that new, but we need to understand that finance will not be the ones that are gonna develop things in AI. We cannot do the BI job, but we need to know where we can achieve what, where can we go with all these tools that are available in the market and that are available in, in, uh, in this daily environment. So I think the most important for an FP&A professional is to explore, to understand what can be done to this whole set of, of Swiss knife that you, that you can have, but to, to understand what is the moment of the company that you are, what can really be applied?
Not, not just like a dream of AI and everything, but what can really be done in your company to make your process better. So a very good example that I give is, okay, I think that should be mandatory for f and a professionals to understand how to work with Power Query, for example. Okay, we need to stop using that. Okay. We can do a lot of formulas. It’s okay. And we, we are gonna talk about formulas, uh, a little bit. I know that it is, uh, it is, uh, a traditional question in your show. That’s right. <laugh>, I, I talk a lot about it, so I really need that. The finance professional needs to know, uh, where can we go? We need to be the visionaries, we need to have a vision. The tool that you’re gonna use to apply this vision depends on a lot of things. Depends on your company, depends on the, on the strategies, depends on the moment, depends on the team that you have. You need to, you need to evaluate which way, which, which pathway, it’ll be better for you to, to succeed.
Glenn Hopper:
The tools are gonna keep evolving and, and changing. And so, you know, being, uh, obviously the ones that are, they’re the stalwarts that are gonna be there. You need to be very good at those and, and adding in power query and, you know, some of the other tools that are out there. But I think that as more and more of the sort of, uh, more mindless tasks that we used to have to do, I think more of those are gonna be automated. And to me, for finance professionals, we all took statistics in our, our finance programs, but really kind of leaning in a little bit more to statistics and understanding kind of the law of large numbers and what you can do with it and, you know, when certain models might apply. And then, I’m not saying become machine learning engineers, obviously that’s a, a whole different skillset. Sure. But sort of understanding the basics of how, how data science works and being able,
Bruno Oliveira:
Yes.
Glenn Hopper:
You know, part of that is education and part of that is partnership with the BI teams and under, and really having that relationship with them so they can explain to you, you know, this is a K means clustering algorithm and this is what it does and this is when it’s useful. Um, and being able to have that rapport and be able to sort of talk, the talk will really help because I think we are gonna have more time to kind of lean into that. So understanding what the data scientists are doing and how we might benefit and knowing what to ask them for, um, you know, to help us with our, our forecast.
Bruno Oliveira:
This is, this is is is a very strong sentence, know what to ask. And this connects what, what I was saying, that we need to know where we, where we want to go to be in that vision that you have, you need to, to, to create this roadmap to success and know the tools and know where to go. Maybe not to know exactly how to model and how to create a formulas in, in SQL and, and I don’t know, Python, whatever we’re talking, but, uh, help driving the, the, the technical teams to, to evolve to your vision.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, yeah. Well said. Um, alright. Well there’s, you know, I think we could go down, especially down the transformation road, uh, <laugh> all day, all day. And it’s, um, you know, it, it’s work that’s never done, but it, um, it’s, you know, it, it’s key to be able to, uh, keep adding value. So, uh, appreciate the work you’re doing there.
Bruno Oliveira:
No, this is a, this is a never ending pathway. So, um, I really admire, for example, the, the Brazilian company of cosmetics called Boticário . They have a first class, um, data team, and they are doing things that no one is doing in the world. We can really invite our, our audience to, to research a little bit about the, the data work of the Boticário team, and they will understand how could also their, the data team and IT team be an accelerator of a lot of, uh, understanding of, uh, of this kind of questions that I was saying that finance needs to help as answering too. But if you have a a, a good data team, this is gonna happen a lot faster.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And that’s, uh, that’s something I’m very passionate about too. As, as listeners will notice, I’ve, uh, I’ve gone along and, uh, <laugh> gone down the road of, of talking a lot more about data, but it is, we’re learning how to use it more and it is becoming more and more a part of, of what we do.
Of course, we’re getting towards the end of the show and we always like to bring it back to our guest at, at the end. And one of the things that we always, always ask, there’s kind of two questions that we, uh, we ask of everyone. And the first is we dove straight into your professional background and everything, but we didn’t really talk anything on the personal side. So what’s something that not many people know about you? Maybe something that they couldn’t find just by Googling you real quick <laugh>?
Bruno Oliveira:
Well, my, my first, first, first job I was, um, boarding clerk in, in, in the shipping industry. And I used to visit the, the, the vessels in, in, in the port of Santos that is the, is the Latin America largest port port. So this was, uh, a very, very good experience. But then, uh, i, I got tired of working in the old times of the day and the, and the night and noon and everything. So I, I joined a Brazilian bank, and that’s why that’s where I started my finance career. I played guitar since my, since nine years old. That’s, that’s something interesting too. And I’ve been in 2021, if I’m not wrong, in the financial modeling World Cup. And, uh, oh wow. I placed it in the 2021, um, uh, season, uh, in the fifth place in Latin America. So it’s a, it was a very, very fun experience to, to be, uh, a, a, a heartful help to, to, to Andrew and to Linman that runs the worldwide and the Brazilian version of the financial modeling World Cup. So,
Glenn Hopper:
So that’s great. That had to be a blast somehow that slipped by me in your bio. That’s, uh, that’s pretty exciting. So <laugh> and, and great credential <laugh>.
Bruno Oliveira:
Yes, I know. It was really, it was for fun. It, it was not for anything else. And it was, uh, very interesting to, to, for example, to, to to work in, in different business and a lot of things that they, they bring, uh, as, as the challenges that we have monthly. So it was really nice to, to do it.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. That’s great. Well, since you’ve done all that and since you went and, and since you have your FMVA, we know that you’re, and because you, you came up through, uh, FP&A through the ranks to CFO, we know you’re an Excel wiz, so the, the next question that I’m gonna, that I have for you is what is your favorite Excel function and why?
Bruno Oliveira:
Okay, let’s go. And, uh, I, I needed to, I was, I wasn’t sure about what to answer here for you and, uh, since this morning I thought a lot about this yesterday and the night, but I really, really like what we can do with SUM Product. So I think it’s always how versatile is this formula? So it’s amazing that you can do a lot, a lot of different things with SUM products.
Glenn Hopper:
That’s great. That’s great. And it’s, uh, that’s a, that’s a common one we get too, so, uh, yeah. Well this is, uh, this has been great. It’s been good to kind of, you know, we’ve, this summer we’ve been focused a lot on more on the data side and AI, but it’s, it’s good to remind that, it’s great to talk about this, but there is our core job of being FP&A professionals and even, you know, even at the CFO level, it’s still a, a big part of our, our job more than just leaning into AI like I have been. So really, it’s, it’s felt good to kind of get back to our roots and talk FP&A with you. And I guess, you know, congratulations on the recent promotion to, to CFO and, um, for our listeners out there, um, how can our listeners connect with you and learn more about your work?
Bruno Oliveira:
Yes, you can add me up in my LinkedIn. My LinkedIn is slash BO Silva. Okay. It’ll be a pleasure to connect with, with the people. And, and just finishing, I really liked everything that we discussed here. It was, uh, honorable opportunity to talk with you. I’m really great fan of the show and, and wrapping up everything that we said. I really believe that we need to understand the company’s language and the moment of the company that we are. So all your narratives, uh, your projects and everything that you’re gonna work through, you need to adapt to understand, okay, where we are, we are, we are crawling, we are walking, we are already running. So understanding where we are is the key to not be frustrated. So you’re gonna work exactly on what we need to work and you’re gonna evo evolve and bring people with you faster if you are very conscious of what you can do right now, what we can do tomorrow, and what you can do in, for example, in the next years.
Glenn Hopper:
Very well said and great advice to close out the show on. So thank you again, Bruno <laugh>.
Bruno Oliveira:
Thank you. Thank you Glen.
