Date: 12.11.2025 (2025-11-12)
Florian Drössler Spitzauer (12.11.2025) • https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-spitzauer-93a97292/ • Friend of Illichmann • Austrian in Vienna • WU • Strategic Projects MM Packaging
Notes:
• Notes:
• Not that close to finance team
• Division CFO went to teams to think what to do
• Their focus:
• Reporting
• Bots to automate repetitive processes
• Very inhomogeneous ERP landscape
• A lot of manual insertion of data
• A lot of errors
• They pull data from local ERP -> transfer to Excel
• Before Palfinger:
• Finance manager of a corporate startup within the company
• Accounting was done in Bulgaria - a bit of automation (supplier, Betrag)
• Biggest value:
• Automate manual work to get data from local ERPs to the central system
• Local people fill out a lot of potential
• Local Finance Manager are occupied
• AP / AR management is a lot of manual work
• His main tasks:
• Now at MM -> not in finance anymore
• Degetic as consolidation software - like an Excel plugin -> looks like ERP and connects via datacube to data
• Similar CapitalIQ - cube logic -> seems similar to
• They use it via remote desktop
• Strategic projects:
• Besser und günstiger produzieren
• Part of operational excellence
• wants to go back to finance
• Palfinger (2 years ago)
• SAP
• He sent invoices to Bulgaria -> he checked correctness then make corrections
• Treasury management system
• PowerBI daily -> all KPIs at one view - direclty from SAP cube
• Office Plus -> consolidation and reports that were not PowerBI
• Automation:
• Automatic calculation of business cases via AI
• He does scenarios
• He heard that companies hired bankers to create good templates for financial models -> to have a Startpunkt
• He tested LLMs: ChatGPT (had to anonymise data), Claude, Gemini, Copilot activated since a short time -> no further experience
• What he does: Investitionsrechnungen, payback rechnungen
• Very complex stuff -> swapping countries of production for different products
• Slides are also important -> creation of nice finance slides
• Most potential:
• Accounts Payables
• Accounts Receivables
• What would be cool: Cash Flow prediction models
• Was very weak so far in all companies he was at
• Finanzguru does it on private level
• Treasury departments in Finanzabteilungen sind sehr schelcht (FX hedging etc.)
• A lot of his colleagues are not really competent with Excel -> calculate with calculator
• No Einblick in AP process
• He could ask his colleagues - they want to move to a hub - accounting department
• He has a good network - he will think about it
• Palfinger
• Most important: how to integrate with existing system
• MM
• They do 4bn Umsatz
• 50% Packaging (D365 ERP); 50% Holz
• They have two different ERPs
• They have big internal AI push
• They will get a new CFO - former boss at Palfinger (Regional CFO USA) - ab JAN kommt er
• Biggest objections / challenges in his daily life?
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• Most valuable flows for him?
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• Context: team setup? internal and external?
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• Which tasks are the biggest pain? With magic wand -> what would he solve?
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• Which tasks would he focus on?
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• Do they already have automations? Which ones? How well do they work?
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• Which companies would he target?
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• General feedback to pitch?
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