In this episode of Careers in Finance on FinPod, we sit down with Iain Main, who has built a career working across global markets. Iain began his journey at BDO, where he trained as a Chartered Accountant and gained valuable experience in London and Vancouver. His career later took him to Omnicom, where he worked in FP&A, partnering with CFOs and CEOs across 25 countries, gaining deep insights into financial planning and business operations.

Now a consultant at Bedford Consulting, Iain specializes in implementing and optimizing Anaplan, helping businesses scale their financial planning strategies. In the episode, Iain shares key lessons from his diverse roles, the trends shaping FP&A today, and the importance of scenario planning and collaboration across organizations.

This episode is packed with actionable insights for finance professionals looking to navigate the evolving financial planning landscape.

Transcript

Anna Talerico (00:13)
Welcome back to another Careers in Finance podcast. I am here today with Ian Main calling in from Stockholm and I am thrilled and so excited to sit down and talk to Ian about his career journey.

Before we dive in, I should say Ian, I first came, became connected with you on LinkedIn and it was because of some of the content that you share around FP&A and how valuable and insightful it was. And so I started following you, LinkedIn with you.

I just really appreciate some of the content that you put out. And as I saw that over the last year or so, I thought, you know, we should talk to Ian about his career journey because you started in finance and now are consulting with FP&A teams. And so let’s just dive right in. Can you tell me a little bit about what I always call your finance origin story? Did you always know you were going to go into finance? What did you study? Tell me a little bit about that.

Iain Main (01:13)
Yeah, great. Well, great to meet you and talk today. I would say in short, I did not expect to go directly into finance. My family, my parents are doctor and nurse. My bachelor’s degree was in psychology.

And then towards the end of that, I started to think maybe I want to look into the world of business and study the masters in business management. And it was off the back of that, I kind of got my first kind of head start into the world of finance where I joined a large kind of auditing firm called BDO, where I trained as a chartered accountant or CPA. So that was kind of where it all started.

Anna Talerico (01:54)
Nice. And so what do you think it was psychology, right? So, but is your undergrad, which is you wouldn’t say necessarily the logical leap would be to into a business degree. What was it that made you want to do that? Was it just something that sparked your interest or telling me a little bit about deciding to go into, you know, get and pursue the business Master’s?

Iain Main (02:14)
Yeah, I mean, I’ve, I always found so much of the degree really interesting with psychology, but I just wasn’t seeing the natural route for me to kind of go into the world of work. And I had a number of friends that were starting to think, you know, apply to companies and apply to business. And I hadn’t really, I realized that kind of, I felt like that I would,

to kind of get a better grounding in some of the basics around it. So that was what led me to kind of made that transition across into studying business.

Anna Talerico (02:47)
Yeah, yeah. And then your first role, BDO, large accounting firm, one of the top, what was that role like? Tell me a little bit about just how long were you there and what was that role like?

Iain Main (02:59)
So I spent, I think, in total, around six and a half years at BDO, both between the London office and also I spent two and a half years in Vancouver.

But I found that it was a really energizing place to work. I mean, I started on the same day as maybe 200 people and we were going to be working and alongside working, studying full-time. So it was almost like going back into university. So it was, you know, you’re kind of starting to your career, you’re into this like usually energetic group. It was just a really fun way to start. And, you know, you’re studying on the weekends with these guys, but then you’re also working on the trenches in teams with different customers with these guys day to day.

So, it was a really fun way to get kickstarted in my career.

Anna Talerico (03:49)
Yeah, and you were studying for your CPA.

Iain Main (03:51)
Yes, exactly. So, in the UK, it typically runs over three years, three-year periods you might be familiar with. So the first three years was a lot. It was some long working hours, but also some really long studying hours.

Anna Talerico (03:53)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But I’ve heard from many successful people that have had a long career with varied roles in finance. Many CFOs today did get started in a big consulting firm. I mean, in a big accounting firm, it’s just a great way to kind of cut your teeth and get exposed to so much. What do you think, what did you, let me say this, what did you enjoy most about that role?

Iain Main (04:32)
The team environment was great. I got to work with different companies, learn about different types of cultures all the time. Every kind of project was different. So I loved the team environment. But what I think I didn’t appreciate at the time, but I reflect on it now is you really…

got trained to be an expert in something from an early age, like studying deep on accounting and seeing it applied in different industries, different types of companies and different countries. It’s a privileged place to be, so I think for that reason, I look back on it so fondly.

Anna Talerico (05:11)
and I’m sure informed so much of your career journey, just having that base. So, when did you decide to move on to your next role? What was that next role after BDO?

Iain Main (05:14)
Absolutely.

So I was a manager at the time and I just, I can’t remember the details. I think I just decided I wanted to take the step into what we call moving into industry. So I’d been in Vancouver for a couple of years and come back to London and decided that as great as it’s been, I wanted to test something new.

And an opportunity kind of came my way to move for a large global company, a large marketing communications group called Omnicon, where I got the chance to go and work in an environment which to me was super appealing. And it was what I guess we’d define maybe as like a corporate FP &A role or group finance business partner role, but essentially I was part of a team of five.

reporting to the regional CFO and executive team, but managing the group reporting, group forecasting process for, I think, 25 countries for like a multi-billion dollar chunk of business. So really kind of fun opportunity to go into a company, use my existing experience and see broadly across a company.

So that was a really fun opportunity. And the chance to be a finance business partner to CFOs and CEOs of different countries managing the business on a granular level. So, day to day, there was just so much variety. So I just kind of, you know, on paper, it looked good. So I went for it and it was a great experience also.

Anna Talerico (07:02)
So that first role, what was that like day to day? You mentioned the day-to-day, you know, working with the different countries, but what was the day-to-day in that role like?

Iain Main (07:12)
So I mean, you’re working for a big, global, publicly listed company. So I mean, reporting and getting numbers out, it forms a big part of the role. On a month to month basis, as always, you know, monthly, quarterly reporting that has to be done.

But you know, that forms a period of any given month. You know, between that time, you start working more, much more closely with the business units on their day to day kind of decisions that they may be needed to get through the systems and processes that exist in a big company. So for example, helping them do their capital expenditure requests and plans to making requests for new hires, to planning for pay raises,

to helping them manage moving into new office spaces with the property teams. Like every day in every country had a different set of challenges and we were there to just kind of help them, listen to them and help them figure out how to get through.

Anna Talerico (08:16)
To so much of that FP &A type of role, right? It’s really truly business partnering. I would imagine with 25 countries, you must have been exposed to so much, right? So much country-specific and culture-specific work. Tell me a bit about that.

Iain Main (08:32)
Yeah, I mean, absolutely you’re spot on culturally across Samir. There’s so many differences. I mean, let me think about working capital. So a lot, you did a lot of work around managing working capital and the cash, the cash cycle with these businesses. And,

you know, some countries will never, they will never fail to collect a debt on time. Maybe they’ve got an overdue of maybe 1%, even 0%. But some cultures, there’s a very different approach to paying. So like with the Middle East, they’re often long cycles. It wasn’t that they were going to, customers weren’t going to pay. Just culturally, there was a difference there. And then, you know, the same with statutory requirements around, you know, the costs associated with employ, employing people had a huge

impact on the cost base from country to country. I’m based in the Nordics, there’s a big social system here, very high employer taxes, whereas in other countries it’s much less. And the way that you navigate your target setting and your ability to deliver on targets, these things have a huge impact.

And then I mean most importantly the people, the culture of working with what are ultimately people and colleagues, everybody’s different, different daily cycles. Some people start later, work later. Some people have lunch later. Like there are so many different things and depending on who you need to speak to and work to, you need to respect their culture and work with that so you can kind of build a partnership. Because if you start forcing, my take is if you start forcing your way,

onto people, then you don’t build that partnership, and I think to be successful as a partner, you need to be good at partnership.

Anna Talerico (10:23)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, well said for any, anybody in so many roles, but particularly in, you know, FP and a roles and finance roles, right? The working inside the organization, building that trust and respect and, yeah, really great advice there. So, what did you love most about that role? Because I know that you really enjoyed that one. What, what did you think was the standout or the highlight for you in that one?

Iain Main (10:50)
So I thought it was to be, I was five, six years into my career and I think I got the opportunity to first of all report directly to very experienced people managing a very significant part of a big business. And so I got to learn from those day to day, which was fantastic. And then likewise to join them a lot in meetings with

CEOs and CFOs of individual business units to get that experience to listen and hear about what they care about what’s keeping them up at night and then over time build relationships where you go from maybe just listening to them starting to ask you questions I think that that to me so early in my career was like really humbling and fun opportunity.

Anna Talerico (11:39)
Yeah. And so between BDO and that second role, you have got exposed to so much, which I am certain as we flash forward to your current role has really helped you in your role at Bedford. But what did you do next? What was your sort of like third role?

Iain Main (11:56)
So, I’d say my next step was within the same group. For personal reasons, I made the decision to move to Sweden, where I’m based now, so where my wife and young family live. And I spoke to my boss,

who was very supportive and he facilitated and moved to the business unit side of the business. So I went from working in the group to working in the individual kind of one of the units that was reporting into the group. So I got the chance, I went, got the chance to kind of head up within their financial control as well as financial planning, FP &A or business control as it’s called here. And before moving into the finance directorate where I got to join the management team within the business.

Anna Talerico (12:45)
Yeah, yeah. Finance director is an interesting one. Tell me a little bit about that kind of just day-to-day. That’s a role that many of our CFI members aspire to be in or are in. So just to give us a sense of, like, what’s that day-to-day like when you were a finance director?

Iain Main (13:02)
Definitely lots to do, lots of questions, really a chance to be a part of really interesting discussions. I got to work with some really smart and interesting people who were, I mean, it’s big advertising, so they’re working day to day with some of the biggest businesses on big accounts. So getting to like listen, to learn, give financial input and guidance when needed.

And as well, of course, a lot of time working with the group team for what ultimately we have to deliver, which is the set of numbers to the group so that they can report. So it was kind of that in that position in the business, you’re working very much with the guys on the front line, to the guy in the business with customers, to the guys on the front line, and in other sense, to the stock markets and the investors and management team.

Anna Talerico (13:59)
Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned building partnerships and I’m curious, what do you, first is what is your personal philosophy to building those partnerships because they’re so important. You mentioned you have so many constituents and stakeholders. You’re managing up, you’re managing sideways down, but how do you think about your personal approach to building those partnerships and what do you think, what advice would you give to somebody that needs to strengthen their ability to do that internally?

Iain Main (14:30)
I think, you know…

Good question. I think I’ll always try and maybe I fail from time to time, but listen, ask questions, get to know the person. Yes, we need to get through a set of tasks together maybe, but for me, I’m always interested about the person that I’m working with. Like what do they care about? You know, what makes them tick? I think and kind of learn what’s important to them. I think you’re going to be a good bit

partner you over time yes you need to help figure out solutions but you need to have a good professional working relationship with the people you’re working with.

Anna Talerico (15:12)
Yeah, it’s, you know, that kind of curiosity and listening is a common thing I hear from people that I have on this podcast in particular, and, you know, just in terms of what it takes to be successful in these roles. So, yeah, I love it. Great advice. So let’s jump ahead a little because so much of your initial career work led to what you’re doing now at Bedford Consulting. So why don’t we tell us a little bit about Bedford Consulting and what you’re doing there.

Iain Main (15:44)
So, towards the end of my time where I was within Omnicom, I was kind of introduced to the world of financial modeling and Power Query by one of the guys in the team and I kind of…

developed the kind of strong interest in it and over, you know, learned to work with a tool called Power Query, Power BI, and then started getting interested in the, what we call the kind of maybe the FPNA platforms. And that’s what landed me in Bedford Consulting, which is…

specialist partner to a one tool called Anaplan which is a connected planning platform that people may have heard of. So I was able to spend some time first implementing the solution so I was out on the ground consulting with companies about implementing the solution when they’re typically moving away from something else that they handled their modeling into Anaplan.

And then for the last couple of years, I’ve been working in a role which is a bit more focused on working with companies that are up and running with Anaplan. They’ve got the tool, they’ve taken big steps with how they want to kind of modernize their approach to FP&A. And…

but you’ve invested in a platform, where do you go next? As a business, what are the key value-adds, planning-related processes that you could bring into the platform to scale up your overtime business performance?

So I get to day-to-day work with different companies who are starting to think, okay, we’re up and running. Where do we go next? And how do we start building a more connected planning organization? Which is super fun. So I get to work with my former self a lot. I work with a lot of, as you might expect, with finance leaders, as well as kind of business planning leaders around the business, to kind of help make sense of how they could maybe use the technology alongside new processes to kind of of take the company to a new level.

Anna Talerico (17:56)
Yeah, I think that that’s such an interesting part of it to be working now once they’ve got it and then thinking about how do you really leverage it, right? Because so much technology, not just in finance, but companies invest a lot to stand up these platforms and programs and then don’t do the next things that they need to do to really take advantage of it. So, what are some of the things that you’re doing to help people,

the trends right now that you’re seeing inside of organizations? You’re exposed to so many different types of organizations. What do you see as some of the trends right now?

Iain Main (18:31)
Good question. And I’ve tried to frame some of these in my content recently. You may have seen it. I can kind of outline a few. Maybe we can kind of talk about some examples of how companies are trying to do that. Definitely seeing

that creating a red thread between maybe what strategic target setting, we call it long-range planning, you know, your three, five, 10, sometimes for some industries, 30-year plans with yours,

annual target setting. So, you know, the components of that long, longer-range plan into an annual goal, which then manifests itself in what many companies use for rolling forecasting. So the more close to the operational performance. So how do you create that red thread from what we hope to do in the long term and how are we performing towards that goal? So how do you not have disconnected plans, but how do you get them working in a more kind of a way?

So that’s one.

So another trend that’s definitely been talked about a lot and top of mind, especially with leaders and decision-makers, is how do we use our forecasts and our projections to make better decisions? Like they can’t just be a set of numbers on a spreadsheet. How do we give ourselves…

a tool that can help us kind of navigate the unknown. So much has been happening in recent years. You know, a forecast is an estimate, but it’s how do we use them in a way to make us make better decisions? So scenario planning, particularly scenario planning at speed and scenario planning in a more cross-organisational way, is definitely something that we’re hearing more and more of. And

some and so many companies and different components of businesses are looking to use it in different ways. So it’s about kind of giving those end users of information a tool that can help them do this navigation of the unknown.

Anna Talerico (20:40)
So, you know, you mentioned doing that with working across the business, obviously in different functions, which finance, FP &A, leaders and teams do. How do the best teams, or have you even seen it? Because I think it’s rare with true silo-busting, right? Like how do some of the best teams break down silos where there’s true collaboration on things like scenario planning and contingency planning and things like that?

Iain Main (21:06)
I mean, it’s, yeah, it’s definitely very difficult. There are some companies that are really leading the way. And, you know, I’m talking about tools and processes here, but…

Anna Talerico (21:11)
Yeah.

Iain Main (21:19)
the underlying culture and attitude towards change. I think from an executive level is just so important for making this happen. I mean, you can have the best tool, you can have the best processes, but everybody needs to be on board and excited about the change. So many factors that go into it.

I think that is really difficult and should never underestimate the importance of getting it right or trying to at least get it right with that respect.

Anna Talerico (21:50)
Yeah, trying, at a minimum you’ve got to try, right? Because it is so important, right? So what are some of the, you mentioned some of the trends, you know, what I hate to say, but here’s the, what are some of the common mistakes that you see teams doing? You get exposed to so many different teams, and I’m sure, you know, we’ve all got mistakes and things we’re not doing well, or things we don’t have our eye on the ball, but what are some of the common ones?

Iain Main (22:18)
Question. I think it’s, transformation is tough by nature. There’s so many factors that come into play, but I think when you need to have a buy-in at decision, you know, a decision-maker level, a management level, I think when you don’t have…

Anna Talerico (22:25)
Yeah.

Iain Main (22:41)
that full buy -in, it’s very difficult to really embed something new. So I think when you haven’t got all of the key stakeholders, which includes, can include people from all the relevant departments, management team, to the guys on the ground doing it, I think when you don’t get all of the key guys aligned, that’s when things can fall flat.

Anna Talerico (23:07)
Yeah, yeah. Change management is certainly an art and a skill and not easy in any way. Yeah. So before we wrap up, I’m curious for you, how would you compare and contrast the difference between working inside of organizations like Omnicom, you know, incredible global large organizations, and then now working as a consultant with a vast variety of different organizations. What’s the difference?

Iain Main (23:36)
So I would say, from my experience when working, say maybe within the company, within the business, I mean, you’re involved in so many different…

things in a different way to when you’re a consultant. So coming in as a consultant, you typically focused on one area. It might relate ultimately to many parts of the organization, but you’re coming to focus in on one kind of key area. And if you’re on the side of working within the company, it’s one of many other things.

So I think it’s been an important learning for me to always remember and respect that people have time, they have their priorities. And that to me, if I can build that level, demonstrate that I understand those realities gives me a chance to be a better consultant because…

I’m typically one of a number of things of the leaders I’m working with, you know, that’s on their plate at any one time. So that’s, that’s definitely a big difference. Whereas maybe the variety comes as from a consulting perspective by working with lots of different companies on the inside, it’s working with lots of different tasks, but within the same company.

Anna Talerico (24:56)
Yeah, so similar but different, right? What advice would you give to somebody who thinks about their career path and thinks perhaps they want to get into consulting? What advice would you give somebody?

Iain Main (25:10)
I think if you want to do something, go for it. I think, you know, I did a few years ago. I did my executive MBA here in Stockholm, and one of the best sessions that we did was a session called Fail Gloriously, and it was run by…

this guy did a brilliant job. He had us all running around. It’s all built around the fact that if you’re going to fail, just fail gloriously. Just go for it and see what happens. But if you have an interest in doing something, just put yourself out there. Don’t doubt yourself. You bring so much to the table. And if you’re interested in doing something, then trust yourself that maybe the people that you’re going to meet would love to meet you, too.

Anna Talerico (25:58)
Best advice ever. You’ve just got to go for it, right? You’ve got to take the leap. I love it. that was a great way to wrap up today, Ian. Thank you. Thanks for sharing your story. And I highly recommend, if any of our listeners are interested in FP &A, which I know most are, follow Ian on LinkedIn because he’s got some great content that he puts out. Super insightful, super helpful.

So, Ian, enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much for joining us on Careers in Finance.

Iain Main (26:29)
Thanks, Anna. Great to be here. Thank you.