“I have my spreadsheet, you have your spreadsheet, everybody else has their spreadsheets, and none of them talk to each other.” This statement from Bruce Lynn, Managing Partner of The FECG LLC, is more accurate now than it has ever been. Spreadsheets are ubiquitous and work well for prototyping and managing operations at a small scale. Almost 1.5 billion users globally use different types of spreadsheets (like MS Excel, Google Spreadsheets) to meet their operational needs. On the other hand, spreadsheets tend to be extremely limiting as the scale and complexity of operations increase.

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In this episode of CFO Talk, Nilly Essaides, Managing Director of Research & Insight at NeuGroup, and Steve discuss the evolving role of the CFO and the finance function in the face of the transformational change taking place in their businesses.

Nilly recently published research on the topic (link below) and shares insights from the study on this episode of CFO Talk.

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In this CFO Talk Jesper describes the next evolution in finance partnering, the Analytics Business Partner, as the intersection of great communication skills and powerful insights.

He provides the roadmap for how finance leaders can make the case and create the budget for building a great analytics team.

He answers the question what tools belong in the Analytics Business Partner’s toolbox.

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While conducting interviews in preparation for an upcoming keynote presentation, I asked my standard question, “If you could ask your leader for just one change that would enhance your engagement and effectiveness, what would it be?”

One employee, Toby, quickly responded, “just kill me,” which seemed to be a dark answer to what’s normally an uplifting question. Buying time to gather my thoughts, I reiterated what I’d heard, and he quickly corrected my understanding, “not just kill me — just skill me.” After a good laugh, he went on to share how his role was changing and he didn’t have the data analytics or coding capacity that was needed — nor the communication competencies required to get ahead in the organization. He was deeply concerned about his future in the absence of skilling up.

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It’s not always easy for a small business to do an equity capital raise or get approved for a bank loan in order to get the cash they need to grow, especially for startups and early-stage companies. When business owners don’t want to give up equity or aren’t able to obtain a traditional bank loan, what other financing options do they have?

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