Operating IN and ON The Business

Planning Aces co-hosts Brett Knowles and Jack Sweeney discuss the strategic efforts of two CFOs leading organizational turnarounds, and a third CFO, who offers key organizational insights from an earlier career chapter. Emphasizing simplification, strategic focus, and leveraging both human insight and technology, Marc Suidan of The Beachbody Company, Emma Brown of Medius and David Freeman of Starburst share their experiences in cutting costs, enhancing digital experiences, and repositioning product offerings as key strategies for revival and expansion.

Together the CFOs underscore the importance of a deep understanding of business operations and the potential of AI in supporting decision-making processes. Their narratives reflect a common theme of distilling operations to impactful actions, demonstrating the critical role of CFOs in navigating companies through challenging transformations towards sustainable growth.

Unique Challenges Faced by CFO Marc Suidan:

1. Complex Product Offering: Suidan dealt with a company whose business was evenly split between digital subscriptions and nutritional supplements, each with its distinct challenges.
2. Digital Experience Overhaul: A significant challenge was revamping Beachbody’s digital platform to enhance user experience, which was crucial in a competitive fitness industry.
3. Cost-Cutting in a Shrinking Market: Implementing dramatic cost reductions ($200 million in savings) in a market that is not growing requires strategic precision and aggressive management

Unique Challenges Faced by CFEmma Brown:

1. Simplification in Financial Management: Brown’s primary challenge was stripping down the company’s overly complicated financial systems to basic cash flow management. This involved going back to the basics and understanding the core financial inflows and outflows.
2. Poor Financial Visibility: She faced a situation of poor visibility into the company’s finances and cash flow, necessitating a ground-up rebuild of financial understanding and management.
3. Strategic Investment Alignment: Identifying and prioritizing investments that directly contributed to revenue generation or cost reduction was a key challenge, requiring a strategic shift from growth investment to sustainable growth based on actual cash inflows.

While CFO David Freeman is sharing details of a transition earlier in career that moved him from finance to sales there are several themes his discussions shares with CFOs Marc Suidan and Emma Brown:

1. Strategic Focus and Prioritization: Like Suidan and Brown, Freeman emphasizes the importance of focusing on key priorities to drive success. In his case, the shift to sales brought a new perspective on prioritizing actions and outcomes within a defined timeframe (i.e., the quarterly sales cycle), similar to Suidan’s focus on three key pillars for The Beachbody Company and Brown’s back-to-basics approach for financial management and strategic investment.
2. Simplification and Clarity: Freeman’s narrative about gaining empathy for sales and understanding the nuanced yet high-pressure environment parallels Brown’s emphasis on simplification and clarity in financial systems and processes. Both narratives highlight the importance of removing complexity to improve performance and outcomes, though from different functional perspectives.

Beyond technical expertise in financial planning and analysis, the three CFOs stress the necessity of a deep understanding of business operations. This knowledge enables FP&A professionals to contribute more broadly to strategic objectives, often extending their influence beyond traditional financial roles into advisory or consultancy capacities.

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