Date: 18.11.2025 (2025-11-18)
Daniel Kuchenbaur (18.11.2025) Context: • https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-kuchenbaur-085965160/ • Friend of Felix Kreuzer - Bayern Fan • Head of controlling at AirUp (260ppl) • Bayern, GER • Worked at Heidenheim parallel to work • My message: • • Reply: •
Notes: • Ask about job at Heidenheim • Cheftrainer von 10 Jährigen - now ended • General • Head of Controlling • Moves towards Head of Finance • Before consulting -> strong focus on controlling • Automation: • • Biggest objections / challenges in his daily life? • Business has limited finance understanding • They use Moss • Wrong Kostenstellenzuordnung -> data is trash -> not possible to create reporting • Important to explain people what costs they are looking at • Biggest pain point: invoice comes in and correct Verbuchung • AI could support there -> check how invoice was booked in the past (e.g. based on supplier) • MSBC from MSFT -> savely durchbuchen the invoice -> this is high effort • How he fixes it: • A lot of manual correction -> sanity checks / gut checks -> e.g. COGS are higher -> check what is wrong manually • Then they go to accounting to correct the booking • They use Pigment for Controlling • Standard reports • Management dashboards • Cash Flow forecasting is a big pain • Multiple countries • Many currencies, many bank accounts • USD; EUR; Swedish Crowns • They realise on short notice that they are missing a currency -> expensive to convert money • Should be easy -> take invoices and when to pay them -> but currently nobody does it • Suggest when to change currencies • Team: • Corporate Finance: treasury, bank accounts • FP&A is part of Controlling (Business Partner) • Accounting • Completely central structure • 160 Mio revenue - most in DACH • 2 operational entities • GmbH in Europe • US entity - not much revenue yet • In the past they had a finance team in US • IT landscape: they have two ERPs at the moment • Airup came from B2C focus • Retail was introduced later -> highest growth -> they have different formal requirements -> new ERP; they have their own ERP (but does not work for retail) • Most valuable flows for him? • • Context: team setup? internal and external? • • Which tasks are the biggest pain? With magic wand -> what would he solve? • The two areas above • Another very difficult topic: • WACC calculation of inventory -> there is a huge data quality issue -> not that much finance, more supplier -> wrong COGS -> make sure that data is correct • AI based on reference data can analyse a P&L -> where are weird findings -> budget vs. IST comparison • Flag stuff and try to find root cause • A lot of things are done in Pigment, but also Excel (70% in Pigment; rest in Excel) • Reporting • Different formats: • Investor reporting: different per shareholder - for some more detailed; for others only high level • Internal for management and department leaders • Worst thing in Pigment: • Sth he saw but they can not do it: ChatGPT to create custom views and talk to data -> someone wants to have contents that are • Which tasks would he focus on? • • Do they already have automations? Which ones? How well do they work? • They are very bad with automations - he did not see much yet • They have a data engineering team -> not much in finance area • Which companies would he target? • • General feedback to pitch? • He is very interested • Question: • New tool vs. integration?