CFO lessons learned in planning and forecasting - with Dan Fletcher, CFO Planful

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Reich, founder and CEO of RevOp Squared, and your host of the Metrics That Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of B2B, SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed decisions. Now on to today's show. Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics That Measure Up Podcast. Today, we are joined by Dan Fletcher, the Chief Financial Officer at Planful. Today, we'll be covering three main topics with Dan. First, charting the path to financial success and an uncertain economy. Second, gaining operational efficiency in a finance organization. And third, technology's role in the modern CFO's toolkit. Dan, please take a moment to give a brief overview of your journey to becoming a guest on the Metrics That Measure Up podcast.

**Dan Fletcher** (1:07)
Well, hello, Ray, and thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I'll keep it brief on sort of who I am. So as Ray said, I'm CFO of Planful, which is the leading planning and forecasting and reporting provider out there on the market, which I'm sure we'll get into. It's very topical to your podcast in many ways, Ray. Many of our customers are SaaS businesses. As far as my journey, I started my career.
If that's how far back you want to go as a CPA, as an auditor, shifted after a couple of years into investing, spent about five years in investing before finding my permanent home as an operator. I was first a hired gun interim VP finance, interim director of FP&A, etc., before landing with Planful in late 2019 in my first CFO role. It's been a wonderful journey with Planful ever since.

**Ray Rike** (1:57)
Daniel, if I'm not mistaken, you lived in Chicago for quite a while. Are you still in Chicago or are you on the West Coast now?

**Dan Fletcher** (2:02)
I live on the West Coast now. Hard to avoid if you're deep in tech, but I still root for all the Chicago sports teams, Ray. I couldn't betray them.

**Ray Rike** (2:10)
The reason I ask, 30 years in San Francisco, my kids all grew up and now my daughter is living in Lincoln Park. She's like, dad, I think I like Chicago. I'm going to stay here for a while.

**Dan Fletcher** (2:20)
Let's check in with her in the winter. Let's check in now, but truly it's a great city. Lincoln Park is one of the best spots. I lived there myself for a number of years. As they say with Chicago, beautiful city, but maybe find an excuse to go vacation somewhere warm between January and April.

**Ray Rike** (2:36)
I got you. I'm in New York right now, but we won't talk about that.
Planful. Well, let's talk about planning because uncertainty was the major factor as companies were planning for 2023, whether they call it FY23 or FY24 if they start in February. So I think a lot of CFOs got that board-approved plan and they're like, holy shoot, I wonder what's going to happen here in Q1. I'm not too optimistic. So what is your advice to our first-time CFOs out there? Because we have a lot of them listening. If you're still uncertain about their board-approved plan, how do you start building contingencies before the first quarter is over?

**Dan Fletcher** (3:17)
So for the first time CFOs, I feel your pain because whether you started in 2020 or 2019 or you're starting now, what a ride we've been on with the pandemic and now, and then with 2021 being a boom year and now some mixed signals in the market. You said uncertainty. I think that's the exact word I would use, Ray. So my heart goes out to you all, but really it goes out to all CFOs trying to plan into a completely unpredictable cycle here. So I can walk through my strategies and certainly as a planning provider, a provider of planning software, we do from time to time get this question. What are you seeing in your customer base? What are the best practices? And I would really bucket it down into four primary pillars of how to plan, really ever, but in uncertainty. The first thing, and you'll hear me say the two words, hyper realistic a lot in this discussion, Ray, because I think this is the year to be hyper realistic about a number of things. First of all, let's talk top line. You need to be hyper realistic when you're formulating that top line. By that, I mean, test all of your preconceived notions. One of the primary methods of forecasting a top line is to look at the drivers last year, the drivers throughout your go-to-market, things like pipeline creation and conversion, and then roll those forward or maybe even take them up a little bit if you're feeling like your team has less execution risk or is more experienced. I think this is the year certainly be informed by recent history, but really be honest about the cycle you're in. I mean, the name of the game this year is uncertainty, and that extends to buyers. People read the headlines about all the tech layoffs, and everybody's in a wait-and-see posture. Projects, maybe we should wait until 2024 before we tackle tech projects. It's really about testing all your preconceived notions on those go-to-market drivers and how they'll behave in this cycle.