Speaking CFO: Winning the Budget Conversation with Finance

HR asks for a new system, more headcount, a bigger training budget. Finance says no. The instinct is to assume the idea wasn't good enough.

John Sansoucie, Founder and CEO at CogNet, spent years as a CFO inside HR service companies and PEOs before he built his own business process outsourcing company, so he has sat on both sides of that budget table.

In this episode, he covers:

Why HR requests get denied even when they're worth funding, and what a CFO is actually listening for before approving a budget line

How to turn a list of 28,000 possible metrics into the three numbers a CFO will remember

What cost to serve measures and how to calculate it for any HR function

Timestamps

[00:01:05] John's path from CFO inside an HR outsourcing company to founding CogNet with his own former team

[00:02:20] Why finance treats HR as a cost center, and the shift in language that changes that perception

[00:03:18] What cost to serve actually measures and how to calculate cost per unit for HR work

[00:04:04] Why John sent his newly promoted CPO 28,000 metrics, and how they got that down to three

[00:05:14] The five-year cost of ownership question that ends most new software pitches