Financial Leadership Blog

Practical strategies, industry trends, and expert perspectives for finance leaders navigating the modern data landscape.

Claude for Excel for FP&A: Setup Guide and Best Practices

Claude for Excel opened to Pro subscribers in January 2026. Here's the 10-rule playbook I've built from daily use, plus a live QuickBooks write-back demo.

How First Principles Thinking Transforms the CFO Role

The best CFOs I've met don't accept 'that's just how it works.' They apply first principles, the same way Elon Musk rethought rockets, to automate the mundane and focus on what actually drives the business.

5 Tools to Cut Your Month-End Close in Half

The 5 best tools to automate month-end close for mid-market finance teams, from free Excel add-ins to full data integration platforms. Save 40+ hours/month.

Go Fig March 2026 Product Updates: Celeste is Here

Celeste, Go Fig's AI analyst, launches with dashboard generation from a prompt, streaming answers, @mention context, follow-up questions, and a UI overhaul.

Workday RaaS Explained: Reporting as a Service - A Complete Guide

Stop manually exporting spreadsheets. Learn how to turn Workday reports into JSON, XML, or CSV API endpoints with RaaS to automate your finance data flows.

Go Fig January 2026 Product Updates: Revamped Flows powered by AI

January 2026 updates: rebuilt Flow automation builder, smarter Celeste AI that creates flows from a prompt, auto duplicate removal, charts in emails, Azure SQL.

Go Fig December 2025 Product Updates: Microsoft Excel Bi-directional Sync

TL;DR Microsoft Excel sync , Connect your Excel files directly to Go Fig both as scheduled imports and exports New data sources , Dialpad and Google Sear

Go Fig November 2025 Product Updates: Database and Datawarehouse Connections

TL;DR Connect your own warehouse , Customers can now connect BigQuery, Snowflake & PostgreSQL and combine data across all their other sources Favorites &

Tips on using AI for Data Analysis with LLM Reasoning

Last Tuesday, I talked to a Finance Director at a fast-growing SaaS company who spent 45 minutes trying to get ChatGPT to write a simple revenue cohort analysis

Sync Data Between Excel and Your SQL Database

Ever started working on a project with data in an Excel spreadsheet only to find the data is out of date? Spreadsheets are the go-to tool for Finance teams to p

Spreadsheets and Data Science: Why You Need Both

Last week, I talked with the CIO at a tech company in Columbia, South Carolina. They were lamenting about how their Finance manager spends hours updating the sa

Implement Version Control and Automation in Your Spreadsheets

Ctrl + C => Ctrl + V is a language that is deeply ingrained to my fingers. They allowed the elixir of life to take a dusty spreadsheet system and revive it, no

Go Fig Named Top 20 South Carolina Startup

Go Fig was recognized by SC Biz News as one of the top 20 startups in South Carolina that are experiencing early success stories and strong growth potential. In

Greenville, SC Based Tech Company is Using AI to Help Small Enterprises Do More with Their Data

Go Fig, founded by Nathan Freystaetter in 2023, was featured by Greenville EDC for using AI to bring enterprise-grade analytics to mid-market finance teams.

Go Fig Recognized for Innovation Awareness Month in South Carolina

Go Fig founder Nathan Freystaetter was interviewed by Fox Carolina for Innovation Awareness Month about building an AI analytics company in Greenville, SC.

How to Avoid Stalling Growth: 10 Specific Tips to Scale Your SaaS Sustainably in 2025

Let's have an honest conversation about SaaS in 2025. It's a highly saturated market with fierce competition, and everyone is yelling the same things about

How data can turn uncertainty into traction in 2025

The yield curve inversion continuing to re-invert and the threat of broad tariffs are mounting an increasing amount of uncertainty for companies across virtuall

Go Fig Receives Grant Funding from the South Carolina Research Authority

Go Fig received a $25,000 Project Development Fund grant from the South Carolina Research Authority in November 2024 to fund product and go-to-market work.

Data Cleaning: Why Clean Data Matters

We all know the saying, “garbage in, garbage out,” right? Well, its especially true when it comes to your business’s data. If your data is chaotic, you can bet

How to Get Value from Data to Drive Impact

Alright, so your business has a ton of data, great! But now what? It’s like having a pile of ingredients in your kitchen but no recipe. Data is fantastic, but wi

True Cost of a Complete Data Infrastructure in 2026

A mid-market data infrastructure runs $25k-$500k/yr for software plus $400k-$800k for a data team. Full 2026 breakdown, line-item costs, and how to cut them.

Reactive vs Proactive Data Analytics: How Analytics Empowers Business Leaders and Frontline Employees

Did you know that 90% of the world’s data was generated in the last two years? Crazy, right? Despite this surge in information, most businesses are still strugg

The Business Resilience Playbook - How to Thrive Through Economic Cycles

With just 1:30 left on the clock in the 2002 Super Bowl, the New England Patriots were locked in a 17-17 tie against the powerhouse St. Louis Rams. The pressure

Go Fig becomes a finalist in the 2024 InnoVision Awards

Go Fig was named a 2024 South Carolina InnoVision Awards finalist, recognizing the company's work advancing AI analytics for finance and product teams.

ChatGPT-4o Just Made it Easier For You to Advance

The world just changed....again. It seems like every 6 months, a new upgraded version of ChatGPT is released and completely changes the game. This happened agai

Customer Segmentation: Step One to Tap into Growth

Have you ever wondered why you're having a slow day on a Friday night? The weather is great, you just released a fresh batch of a new beer, and you even sent ou

Go Fig Received $5,000 Grant Award in GVL Starts Demo Day

Go Fig won Best Technology and a $5,000 grant at Furman University's GVL Starts Demo Day 2024, a 9-week entrepreneurship program capped by a pitch competition.

Build Your Own AI Business Consultant for less than $1

As a business owner, you and I have seen peers in our communities that have sadly gone under. Maybe a competitor opened up that took all their business. Maybe t

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