The Role Forward: A Strategic Finance Podcast

Temi Vasco, Controller at Gem, discusses the benefits of automation and efficiency in finance, emphasizing the importance of having the right tools. They explore the month-end close process for Gem, discuss various tools for automation, and highlight the significance of hiring the right people. The speaker also emphasizes the value of curiosity and asking questions in the accounting field.

When someone even mentions the budgeting season, most business owners and their team members — especially the finance department — start feeling anxious. But it should not be like that, says our guest, Brian Weisberg, the Head of Finance and Business Operations at Tidelift. The key to any fruitful budgeting process is a well-thought-out financial model. Therefore, each company needs a finance expert — someone ready to go beyond their role to get to know the business and its parts and "knit the whole thing together." In this episode of The Role Forward, Brian and our host Joe Garafalo discuss the importance of mindful sales planning, the role of technology in the FP&A space, and why every company should perceive a finance expert as a team captain. Guest-at-a-GlanceName: Brian WeisbergWhat he does: Brian is the Head of Finance and Business Operations at TideliftCompany: TideliftNoteworthy: Before joining Tidelift, Brian spent a considerable number of years running finance for fast-growing startups in the enterprise B2B SaaS space. Where to find Brian: LinkedIn｜Twitter

In this episode of The Role Forward, our guest is Andi Ruda, the founder and CEO of Rainbow CFO. Prior to starting her own business, Andi worked as the full-time CFO at three different companies. The experience she gained during that period and the challenges and struggles she saw many companies face when determining their financial strategies, empowered her to dive into entrepreneurship.  Her career is now dedicated to helping companies grow and to turning business owners' ideas into reality. Andi and our host Joe Garafalo discuss the best cash flow reporting practices, the tools she uses, and the steps everyone starting a finance career or aspiring to become a CFO should take. 

While departments like sales, marketing, and engineering have seen massive advancements in the technology they use every day, finance has been left behind. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools were supposed to centralize and streamline operations, but they never lived up to that promise.That's why upgrading the CFO tech stack with a new wave of innovative solutions is of the utmost importance for companies aiming to improve operations and provide the best experience for its employees and customers. In this episode of The Role Forward, our host Joe Garafalo talks with Graham Stanton, the co-founder of Avise. Before Avise, Graham co-founded Peloton, an exercise equipment and media company. Graham shares his experience with traditional finance technology and the challenges he faced while leading the finance function at Peloton. Joe and Graham also touch upon the ongoing software versus Excel debate and discuss the impact the right tools in the CFO tech stack can have on business growth. Guest-at-a-Glance💡 Name: Graham Stanton💡 What he does: Graham is the Co-Founder of Avise and Co-Founder of Peloton. 💡 Company: Avise💡 Noteworthy: Graham scaled Peloton from a startup to a household name. He's taken all that experience and co-founded Avise, a company aiming to unlock the power of accounting to help drive business forward.💡 Where to find Graham: LinkedIn

Kalor Lewis, Fivetran's VP of Finance, discusses the challenges and advantages of transitioning from subscription-based to consumption-based pricing. They explore aligning pricing with customer value, collaboration between teams, and the process of transitioning to the new model.

The most successful companies disrupt their sector by innovating and changing the way business occurs. They make it streamlined, they forge new relationships, they collaborate.Unfortunately, lack of technological investment has trapped the financial side of companies in a pattern of looking backward. Finance groups spend too much time finding data siloed in the tech stack, integrating data, interpreting data, and then finding and rectifying man-made errors in the data, leaving no time for proactive solutions. Moreover, the FinTech they use is primarily meant only for them, so even when they find solutions, it can be challenging for others to understand them, further complicating the push to improve and strategically disrupt continuously.Ajay Vashee, a general partner at IVP and the former CFO at Dropbox, joins host Joe Garafalo on this episode of The Role Forward to discuss how FinTech can help businesses look forward and focus on what really matters to the bottom line: Business partnerships, continuous improvement, and strategic disruption.