Introduction to the co-author Mark Vigors’ 34-plus-year career has spanned financial services and technology across a variety of major organisations such as Westpac, Telstra and Equifax. As a General Manager and Program Director he gained deep experience running large teams delivering transformational outcomes. He now serves as the Chief Operating Officer of POTENZA, bringing a clear view of process, system and solution delivery best practices. Why did Mark select the topic and why is he passionate about it? Throughout his career, Mark has focused on driving transformational technology change ..read more

Introduction I’ve never been more excited to start a new year than this year coming in 2024 and there are several reasons for that, which we are going to cover in this article. But rather than just rely on my thoughts, I thought I’d call upon my helpful co-pilot Bing Chat to assist and challenge me and visa versa on the topic. For transparency, I have put in italics and have referenced Bing Chat sources. Interesting to see what trends it dreams up from the Internet, and compare that to the reality that I see on the ground as a professional Excel and Power BI trainer for accounting and finance ..read more

Introduction  As the opening article for this knowledge series, I think it’s important to really understand the key aspect of what we see today in AI.   For many years I showed how I could change an Excel model through a visual presentation surface called Modeler and back then someone thought that was AI.   There are exciting verticals of AI like the generalised language models in ChatGPT, text and video synthesis I showed recently and of course some of the more widely used forms of algorithmic-driven advanced, predictive and prescriptive analytics (data science).  ..read more

7 March 2023 | by David Benaim and Lance Rubin Introduction to the co-author David Benaim has been a Microsoft MVP in Excel since 2020. He has an active YouTube channel, and regularly blogs and gives webinars about Excel, Google Sheets and other workplace technologies such as PowerPoint, Zoom, Teams, Power BI and more. David was also the guest battler in the Financial Modelling in Excel meetup, Google Sheets vs Excel with Alan Murray. Links are included below. Why did David select the topic and why is he passionate about it Most dismiss Google Sheets as inferior to Excel Desktop in all aspects ..read more

23 March 2023 | by ChatGPT and Lance Rubin  Introduction to the co-author “ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI that is trained to understand and generate human-like text. It is based on the GPT (Generative Pre-training Transformer) architecture, which uses deep learning techniques to generate text that is similar to what a human might write or say.” “The model is trained on a large dataset of text, and can be fine-tuned for specific tasks such as language translation, question answering, and conversation.”  “ChatGPT can be used to generate human-like responses in a ..read more

17 February 2023 | by Russ Wood, Alex Artajaya, and Lance Rubin Introduction to the co-authors Russ Wood is Co-Founder and Director of Latitude Network, a social impact consultancy that works across social policy areas including homelessness, mental health, employment, Aboriginal services, and justice. Prior to founding Latitude Network, Russ worked as an executive in the NFP and commercial sectors and as a ministerial advisor at both State and Federal levels of Government having worked for two Cabinet Ministers in that time. Alex is a senior financial modeller at Model Citizn and has been lea ..read more

10 February 2023 | by Khaled Chowdhury and Lance Rubin  Introduction to the co-author Tools are valueless without people who can leverage them.   Khaled’s focus is on empowering people to make better-informed decisions. Starting his journey in Excel, he worked his way up in the data life cycle. He went from running FP&A to driving a revolution as Global Director of Data & Analytics. It all started from his passion for improving our jobs and a fateful encounter with Power BI. To learn more about his Power BI journey, check out the following podcast about his origin story If yo ..read more

Introduction to the co-author Benjamin Stoter is a Chartered Accountant and self-taught financial modeller.  He has a wealth of experience in the financial industry, having completed his articles at KPMG before joining a national Real Estate company and working in various roles such as Asset Manager, Operational and Financial Controller, Group Financial Manager, and ultimately Group Head of Treasury, FP&A, and Systems. He has also served as a Group Finance Business Partner, providing strategic support and analysis to business heads within a group of local and international companies ..read more

Why I’m passionate about guiding the next generation? The more I see polls on people’s views of what accounting and finance professionals need to focus on the more concerned I get.  The gap between companies desperately wanting to hire talented accounting and finance professionals and those looking for a job grows ever wider.  People learning to code yet not focusing on understanding the fundamental basics of accounting and business is a big concern.  People build complex data models and advanced calculations but are not able to clearly communicate and visualize the outputs. I w ..read more

Which one are you? Model Citizn builds operational 3-way rolling driver-based financial models. It's the budgeting, forecasting and monthly management and compliance/covenants reporting processes all rolled together. Arguably the most efficient finance process most organisations lack. Often each of these is a separate workbook, model or report run by different people or groups of people and are therefore not in sync at any given time. We work with many CFOs, CEOs and Co-founders to help them simplify their decision-making that is relevant, informed and purposeful. These models are highly autom ..read more