I ran presales, GTM and partner strategy for a major EPM vendor. Now I work for you.

CFO Shortlist is an independent advisory practice that helps mid-market finance teams evaluate and select FP&A and EPM software. I've seen every vendor playbook from the inside — the demo scripts, the pricing tactics, the roadmap promises. Now that knowledge works for buyers, not sellers.

Before building CFO Shortlist, I spent over a decade inside one of the major EPM vendors. I ran presales engineering, structured go-to-market strategy, built and managed partner ecosystems, and led sales strategy on key enterprise accounts. I was a consultant who implemented the software. I was on the due diligence team that evaluated acquisitions to fill product gaps.

That means I've sat through hundreds of RFPs from the other side of the table. I've written demo scripts designed to steer evaluations. I've seen the POC datasets that make every platform look good. I've been backstage at the marketing events and keynote presentations where roadmap slides promise features that are years away.

I know exactly how vendors position, how they price, where they stretch the truth, and what they hope you never ask.

The pattern I kept seeing was the same. A finance team would spend months evaluating software. They'd sit through demos designed to impress, not to reveal. They'd compare vendors based on feature checklists that don't capture the things that actually matter — data architecture, implementation complexity, total cost of ownership, how the platform handles the messy edge cases that define real finance work.

They'd make a decision. Then they'd discover during implementation that the platform didn't fit how they actually operate. Not because the software was bad — because the evaluation process was designed by vendors, optimized for closing deals, not for finding the right fit.

The people making these decisions didn't have anyone in the room who understood both sides. Now they do.

CFO Shortlist is the practice I wish existed when I was watching those evaluations go sideways. Every report, template and advisory engagement is built on a simple premise: the right vendor-customer fit should be decided on merit — not on who runs the best demo, who has the biggest marketing budget, or who gets the last meeting before the decision.

What we've published

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Book a Direction Session to map your requirements and build your shortlist — or browse the research and toolkit at your own pace.