Ashok Manthena has supported FP&A teams at some of the biggest and most well-known companies on the planet including Google, GAP, and Ingersoll Rand. This included a period at Google which was striking because of “the amount of resources available for finance” particularly when it comes to killing manual finance processes. He says there is an in-built DNA to “automate manual processes”. He says: “This bubbles up naturally when they find there is an, there is a manual process and everyone comes together and thinks about how to automate that process.” In a second career stage Ashok has been a leader in AI finance carrying out practical research, giving keynote speeches and providing practical advice on transforming businesses through the use of AI.

• Rapid fire questions: Why I want to meet Gandhi – to doing Doing sensitivity analysis in ChatGPT 
• Why we should all be embarrassed by the  stat that 70% of FP&A is spent on getting the data (vs only 30% on insights) 
• The power of meetups meetups and the return of face to face meetings for finance learning 
• What my career FP&A career at Google taught me 
• The near future of automation and AI including running daily reports to the CFO 
• Why data priority needs to be the #1 priority alongiside faster surfacing of data issues to leadership
• How I became a leading AI finance speaker and writer and started a tech startup
• Two ways AI is going to revolutionize FP&A Departments forever 
• How ChatGPT will be a new interface for finance – practical examples 
• The playbook for smaller finance teams and businesses to  thrive in the AI age
• Advice to get started with AI in FP&A
• The role of data science in the future of FP&A

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