Date: 24.11.2025 (2025-11-24)
Niklas Bernal (24.11.2025) • Friend of Rory • https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-bernal-76682683/ • Former CFO Australia for Marley Spoon • Now: Brunswick Lion delivers high-impact CFO & change services, building robust financial models, control frameworks, and board-ready reporting to support confident decision-making. • Located in Australia -> Verwechslungsgefahr • My message: • Hier etwas mehr Kontext: • Wir entwickeln proprietäre KI-Modelle für Controlling & Accounting, die auch für komplexe Fälle trainiert sind - etwa mehrere Purchase Orders auf einer Rechnung, Price-Variance-Tolerances bei Lieferanten etc. • Ziel ist eine ~60% Automatisierung in AP/AR und auch 50% weniger Aufwand beim Closing & Reporting - direkt integriert in bestehende Systeme (auch ohne API) und angepasst an aktuelle Prozesse. Aufgrund deiner Erfahrung, wäre es super dein Feedback zum Konzept zu bekommen (kein Verkaufsgespräch) - gerne einfach 15min bis 20min. Würde mich sehr freuen! • Reply: • Sehr gern und passend, da ja definitiv überfällig, dass das wegfällt. In 23 hab ich mal die landschaft angeschaut und das war schon schwach, was die anbieter da hatten.
Notes:
• Notes:
• He starts a new job in a scale up that scales quickly
• He looked at AP in 2023
• Concurs and Coupa
• OCR did not really work
• They did meta data
• There is need for AP
• He tried to change the process at Marley Spoon to not touch the booking anymore -> blind booking
• Add a chatbot to do initial communication
• Via n8n or Zapier workflows -> he knows it
• AR is also interesting
• At Marley Spoon they had 3500 invoices per month
• Pricing was a barrier
• He hired a working student that worked on this
• Integration is super important
• Steuerberatung he is not an expert
• But extract information from a certain long document is a problem
• People do not trust it yet because they have experience with ChatGPT and it did not work properly
• Boards make finance people pressure to get AI
• He saw Konfidenzintervalle with other providers
• He likes cross tool automation he likes it
• because of change management and budget is good
• Automation:
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• 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?
• AP and AR are the biggest topics
• He has 15 to 20 people doing AR and AP in his new company (Philippine people)
• Communication and management friction - also cost factor
• AP is super boring
• 3 way match is important and supplier management
• Bank reconciliations was a challenge at Marley Spoon (a lot of small transactions)
• Will also be a problem at his new company
• Often an intermediary that manages the payments
• Eucalyptus (in GER MyJuniper)
• Telehealth - similar to Hims&Hers
• Head of Global finance (SVP Rolle - report to CFO)
• FP&A / Controlling
• Excel by Claude does not work
• They had a lot of Excel tables
• Download of ERP -> compare to other Excel etc.
• They did not user PowerQuery
• Many accountants are not technical super savvy
• FP&A
• Noch nicht verdienter Umsatz -> only book revenue when you did Lieferung -> often automated in ERP -> was a pain at Marley Spoon
• Depends on which system the company has - they had Adaptive as ERP
• Analyse ledger and tell me what happened
• His idea: always same template, analyse Data and put slides / info in that template
• Reporting and insights
• Too much AI makes people not understand their own business anymore
• He was at a company that did a lot reporting -> 100 of pages -> automated directly -> Reporting should go
• FUP with him in a couple weeks when he started his new job (i think he starts 1st of DEC)
• 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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