You want to set yourself apart and get noticed for your amazing work, but…
You’re frustrated to be spending so much time on data and rework, updating your files, and going through the motions.
You know that you’re wasting time and you’re convinced there must be a better way. Where you really want to spend your time and focus is on valuable activities like analysis, sharing insights, and presenting to leaders. You want to give them the intelligence they want while at the same time developing yourself and positioning for a more exciting career.
You’re not learning all you want on the job, and you certainly didn’t learn all the skills you need from university or an MBA. Rather than wait for opportunities to come to you, you want to further yourself so you can go after them.
You know you need to develop yourself on your own, but you don’t have a lot of free time and don’t want to waste the time you do have.
You wish there was an immersive experience with real-life companies, stories, and examples you can relate to, not cookie-cutter training that is either overly simplistic, generic, and not engaging or just simply not relevant to you.
Imagine the days and weeks ahead when your work files routinely work for you and mesmerize others because of their power and simplicity.
Envision not spending so much of your time on work you don’t like. Think about what recognition and career prospects would look like if you gave your Managers, Directors, and Leadership the insights and intelligence they’ve been hoping for.
Transition from:
Being a doer and not working at your fullest potential to stepping into the next level of your talent and leadership.
Wasting time on low-value tasks to enjoying your work solving big problems.
Inefficient business modeling to completing your work in a fraction of the time using simple, easy-to-implement techniques most people don’t know exist.
Not knowing what’s available to you to mastering the ins and out of Excel and its connection to other platforms.
Getting passed over for the best opportunities to having opportunities come to you.
Being on a gradual promotion timeline to getting the credit you deserve and being elevated more quickly.
That’s not a dream.
That’s what you deserve and can achieve.
You get to do amazing work by developing the same skills and expertise as the top trailblazers in FP&A.
Introducing
Excel in FP&A
The most comprehensive training and development program for FP&A professionals, allowing them to eliminate mistakes, minimize rework, build efficiencies, and position as the top performers in their companies.
“This training was very helpful in providing modeling and presentation concepts that are not always learned as part of on-the-job training.”
By the end of this course you will know:
How top-performing FP&A professionals utilize Excel, EPMs, and other tools to plan, analyze, and model for the benefit of their business partners.
The ins and outs of Excel, including more than 30 Excel functions – from the foundations to the most advanced – that will save you tons of time and eliminate your mistakes.
How to build dynamic business models that self-update and self-correct for future time periods and expanding data sets.
Best practices in business model design and structuring, making work files easier for others to understand.
Multiple ways to solve solutions, rather than defaulting to a limited number of options.
and you will be positioned to:
Take on more complex and strategically-oriented FP&A projects and be the go-to professional for new opportunities.
Build operating and financial models from scratch or augment others’ models cleanly and effectively.
Apply the most efficient and effective analytical techniques to your work in FP&A.
Coach and develop junior staff to be top performers on your team and make your life easier.
Why most training providers get it wrong and training fails to stick.
You have an entire career ahead of you.
Don’t leave it to others to create it for you.
The time to elevate your skills and ability is now.
Get instant access immediately to the exact Excel in FP&A training the Fortune 1000 use to train their future finance leaders.
“It was very informative and helpful. The real life examples helped and made it easy to understand how to apply the techniques we learned. Passion shows through class.”
What’s Excel in FP&A all about?
The State of Technology in the FP&A Profession
What is the current state of technology in FP&A
What is the future state of technology in FP&A
Microsoft Excel vs. next generation platforms
Time-critical vs. time-lag decisions
Key Excel Functions and Formulas
Basic functions
Lookup functions
Dates/math functions
Dynamic and advanced functions
Formula foundations
IF, IFS
SUMIF, SUMIFS
SUMPRODUCT
COUNTIF, COUNTIFS
EOMONTH, YEARFRAC, and NETWORKDAYS
INDEX
MATCH and XMATCH
XLOOKUP
Connecting to External Data Sources
Direct data imports
Direct data links
Power Query
Application programming interface (API)
FP&A Functionality and Dynamic Business Modeling
What is dynamic modeling and why does it matter?
Native issues within Excel that prevent it from scaling
The FP&A business modeling evolution
Dynamic data tables
Dynamic INDEX
Dynamic INDIRECT
Dynamic OFFSET
Dynamic arrays and spills
SEQUENCE and date functions
RANDARRAY
SORT and SORTBY
UNIQUE and FILTER
Structuring, Building, and Designing FP&A Work Files
Focuses of mechanical and intelligence questions
Balancing granular detail with flexible modeling
Workfile and model layout
Horizontal vs. vertical worksheet stacking
Model design and the PEACE framework
FP&A core modeling best practices
Auditing FP&A Work Files
Tracing formulas
Managing formulaic relationships and errors
“I thought the training was fantastic, everyone from new hires to more experienced professionals was engaged all day and learned something new.”
“I loved the pauses to reflect on how we can implement concepts in to our current work. Carl has a ton of applicable experience that colors the content with practical examples helping to make the concepts/techniques more practical.”
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You will learn core foundations, intermediate skills, and advanced techniques within Excel and discover how to apply them in a wide array of FP&A contexts. For a more detailed description of the topics we cover, you’ll find them listed above.
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This training program is designed specifically for strategic finance professionals. This includes: experienced and aspiring FP&A professionals, Controllers, CFOs, and heads of finance. This also includes accountants who are expected or want to take on more strategic finance responsibilities; analysts who work deep in data, and even business intelligence professionals who want to get better at finance and critical thinking.
Now, if you’re looking for training that is basic and slow, you may be in the wrong place as this course is probably not the right fit for you.
But if you’re wanting something that’s going to challenge you to think, that’s going to push you to learn techniques you’ve never seen before, that’s going to make you the go-to person on projects you want to work on, you’re likely in the right place.
You’re going to get what took more than 2 decades in FP&A and management consulting to learn and master, but deciphering it and surgically stitching it together, for high-potentials and top-performers like you.
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Well, let me put it this way. Attendees of my lives programs at two of my longest-standing corporate partnerships said the following:
“Carl’s training covers what we should have learned in our MBA but didn’t.”
“I learned more about Excel in these past 2 days than I have in the past 2 years.”
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The results of your learning will be immediate. I promise you will discover techniques and tools you have never encountered before. However, you must practice and revisit the techniques on your own time and in your own work to ensure you are increasingly mastering them and applying them.
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Financial certifications are usually granted as a result of studying for, taking, and passing exams. There is no indication that the person certified is actually equipped to apply the lessons of the certification to real-life circumstances. Excel in FP&A is practitioner-focused experiential learning developed by a seasoned FP&A practitioner. While there is zero promise that a certification will prepare you a job or future roles, Excel in FP&A does.
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Excel in FP&A is one of the most widely used FP&A training curriculum at Fortune 1000 corporations and middle-market companies. More than 13,000 finance and accounting professionals across 6 continents have gone through the learning modules, helping them build their confidence and become more powerful performers.
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Most of my training programs are delivered to large corporations with sizable FP&A teams and high expectations. These programs are often 2-5 days long and very intense. While Excel in FP&A is a dense program too, the objective of this course is to help you develop the skills and techniques you need to build your core abilities. These abilities will serve as the pillars that you need to be increasingly more successful in your current and future roles.
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Most of the FP&A training programs available to the public are very basic, built by non-FP&A practitioners.
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What’s most important to me is that you learn and are happy with your experience. In more than 10 years, across 300+ companies and more than 13,000+ people, there hasn’t been a single person who’s requested a refund. However, if for whatever reason you have technical problems that take away from your experience, we will do everything we can to rectify it.
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If you look forward to 3, 5, or even 10+ years from now, where do you see yourself? As a top-performer, you may envision being a Director, Senior Vice President, or maybe even a CFO. But you know you don’t get to the top just by waiting for opportunities to come to you. And you don’t get promoted just by being a good doer. You progress by being able to execute consistently. You get recognized when you shine reliably.
When you develop the skills, awareness, and confidence to deliver consistently and reliability, something peculiar happens. You get famous in your company. People hear about you, find out what you’re capable of, they talk favorably about you, and they want you on their projects. You don’t have to push as often for opportunities, because the opportunities finally start to come to you.
But if you want to develop yourself, the opportunities you want may never come.
By investing in yourself, and putting in the time to grow, you’re increasing the likelihood that you’ll be recognized for your talent, identified for promotion, and able to attain the future roles you aspire to have.
If you want to learn the same skills as the top FP&A professions at the most influential companies in the world, they’re right here.
“It is an excellent way to take your Excel skills from basic to advanced; he used a lot of real applications and showed tools that makes your life easier.”
Hi I’m Carl.
Hi I’m Carl. You’re probably wondering who I am and what makes me qualified to lead you on this journey to Excel in FP&A.
You may also be wondering why there are so few training and development courses in financial planning & analysis (FP&A)?
Well let me walk you through both my rationale for creating this course and why I am the right person to have done it.
Who am I and Why Am I the Best Person to Lead You?
The best people to teach, coach, and inspire are those who have been where you want to go. You want someone who’s spent the entirety of their career in FP&A and management consulting – not investment banking, academia, or writing Excel books.
I’m an FP&A practitioner who consults with current clients, across 6 continents and two dozen industries. I help them establish effective FP&A practices, processes, and teams. At the same time, I support financial professionals, positioning them for greater control of their careers by helping them build their competence and confidence while eliminating time-wasting activities and mistakes.
The FP&A development methodologies and curriculums I’ve developed and delivered over the past 20 years have been implemented by leading organizations as part of their financial leadership development program (FLDPs) for top talent and emerging leaders. Because of the prestige and reputation of these programs, I’m one of the most prolific speakers in the FP&A circuit, addressing companies, associations, and student groups around the world.
I serve as an FP&A and CFO advisor to entrepreneurial businesses throughout North America and Europe, assisting them with financial planning, strategic value enhancement, and revitalization.
I’m a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and have earned other professional credentials including the CIRA, CFF, CFE, CGMA, AM (Accredited Member in Business Valuation), CSP (Certified Speaking Professional), Certified Anaplan Model Builder, and was a National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts (NACVA) 40 Under Forty honoree. I hold a BA in finance and economics and an MS in managerial accounting.
Want to learn more? Check out my LinkedIn profile at: www.linkedin.com/in/carlseidman
As your leader, I’ve been where you want to go.
Why did I create Excel in FP&A?
As you probably know as an experienced or aspiring FP&A professional, there is not one university with a major in financial planning & analysis. Further, few undergraduate and even graduate students are familiar with FP&A upon finishing school. This means that almost all education and development within FP&A is realized on the job. And that’s the problem.
More than a decade ago, FP&A Directors at large corporations would come to me and complain that, while their people were smart and talented, they lacked the fuller acumen and skill sets to perform at the highest level in FP&A. Many of these companies had invested in financial modeling training, most often delivered by ex-investment bankers. But those programs completely missed the mark due to the instructor’s lack of FP&A experience and cookie-cutter approaches to building 3-statement financial models. Further, the curriculum being taught was geared toward capital markets and M&A at Wall Street banks – it didn’t touch upon operations, data management, budgeting and forecasting, variance analysis, business modeling, data visualization, business presentations, running scenarios, critical thinking, and strategic planning.
And so Seidman Financial FP&A training programs were born.
When I created the FP&A training programs nearly a decade ago, it was because companies couldn’t find the training they so desperately wanted. In fact, the Director of Finance Transformation at one of the largest Canadian telecom companies said, “We’ve been looking for a program like yours for years. There’s nothing else like this that exists out there.”
The goal was to take my two-decade-long career in FP&A and management consulting and weave it into a training curriculum that would make the greatest amount of difference in the shortest amount of time, create standardized practices across the FP&A function, and empower teams to elevate the quality of their work.
Fast forward 10 years – these corporate training programs have become the premier professional development courses in the FP&A space. They have been delivered live, in-person, and virtually, to over 300 companies and more than 13,000 people at these companies, public seminars, and professional associations.
Why do the top companies hire Carl Seidman again and again?
Nearly all advanced financial training is done by former investment bankers, Excel gurus with little-to-no financial background, or professors with little-to-no corporate experience. Even other FP&A-centric programs, created by FP&A professionals with limited breadth of experience, are primarily focused on fundamental concepts. They don’t effectively address the nuanced world of FP&A and don’t know what’s changing in the profession.
Carl has nearly 2 decades of FP&A and management consulting experience and has delivered training programs at companies including: ABM Industries, AlixPartners, Broadridge, Choice Hotels, Cigna, Crawford & Company, The Department of Housing and Urban Development, Discover, HP Enterprise, Marsh & McLennan, Michelin, OutSystems, Spotify, United Technologies, U.S. Steel, Whole Foods, Verizon, and Walmart.
Seidman Financial is trusted by
“The training was filled with valuable information that I could see making an immediate impact on our business. I am really looking forward to putting into practice so many of the tools you shared with us.”
Hiring me for one day to train you in FP&A?
$7,000 - $15,000
Your investment today to Excel in FP&A and own your future?
Just $347
“Carl is an excellent presenter! Verizon should definitely hire him back because the people I’ve told about it now want to take it.”
Plus, you get the following future benefits worth more than $7,300:
15% off Seidman Financial public training courses ($397 - $1,999 value)
10% off Seidman Financial on-demand learning ($297 - $599 value)
6 months free access code to Seidman Financial Office Hours ($2,000+ value)
Discounted Inner Circle Mastermind for corporate customers ($1,200 - $2,500 value)
Subscription to The Statement semi-monthly newsletter ($200 value)