Calendar months are for accounting and GAAP reporting 🗓️ While you can’t ignore calendar months, 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 in a strategic role should be focusing on real-time trends using a metric like Last 4 Weeks. You don’t need to wait for the month to end to get a signal on monthly metrics and trends. Each week, you should be looking at the past week’s KPIs 𝐀𝐍𝐃 the same KPIs for the last 4 weeks (L4W)

ChatGPT vs Bard. Regardless of the current capabilities, as a finance person, my mind goes to scalability and risks. Finance and procurement teams have a huge role to play when it comes to growth and scalability 📈 One interesting thing I recently learned is that Google (being Google) designs their own AI chips which are then manufactured by themselves (or a 3rd party). Most other AI companies use AI chips designed by NVIDIA and manufactured by TSMC 👩🏻‍🔧

Are today’s LLMs (Large Language Models, like GPT4) ready to be deployed at scale into enterprise, and especially into finance? 🔮 Probably not. Why? 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 🔑 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 🔒 Just like most tools that try to go enterprise, there are nuanced permissions and data sharing compliance measures that need to be followed. Most companies store 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐬 with customer revenue/churn, payroll, and vendor data with identifiable names. 📊 You need to train the model and customize the responses based on who is asking the question 🙋🏻‍♂️🕵🏽

𝐏𝐚𝐲𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐥 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐬 are top of mind for every company, especially for venture backed companies. It's increasingly important to accurately forecast payroll lines to know your cash position: salary, benefits, taxes, etc. However, when it comes to explaining the variances for these lines, it makes me want to pull my hair out. PTO, benefits, 401K, and taxes all make things super hard to tie out. One 𝐡𝐚𝐜𝐤 I figured out a few years ago is to forecast these lines more granularly.

Every company is trying to maximize investments, especially marketing and technology investments, and turn those investments into revenue (ideally near-term and recurring!) 💰 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐇𝐔𝐆𝐄 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡 𝐛𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 ⚖️ What are some levers finance teams can pull?

Finance leaders - while I love Accounts Receivable teams, I would highly recommend these teams work with marketing and customer success to craft your invoice emails. This is a golden opportunity to communicate with EVERY SINGLE customer to share: 1) value your product is providing 2) thank them for being a great customer 3) ROI and how much money your product is saving