Episode
From Rice Paper to AI: FP&A Lessons from 30 Years at the Top of Global Finance - Sébastien Privel
- Podcast
- FP&A Today
- Published
- Apr 13, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3146
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/fp-a-today-5699991/episodes/from-rice-paper-to-ai-fp-a-lessons-from-30-years-at-the-top-of-global-finance-s-bastien-privel/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/fp-a-today-5699991/from-rice-paper-to-ai-fp-a-lessons-from-30-years-at-the-top-of-global-finance-s-bastien-privel.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
What does it actually take to move FP&A activities into a shared service organization at Coca-Cola— and then transform how a global marketing giant manages billions in spend? Sébastien Privel, Senior Director Financial Services FP&A, has done both. Sébastien Privel career spans pharma controllership in late-'90s Beijing to country CFO for France, being involved in the implementation Coca-Cola's global FP&A shared services from scratch, before leading a multi-year marketing finance transformation In this episode Building finance infrastructure from scratch in 1990s China — from rice paper ledgers to SAP, with floppy disks in between. Business partnering and being the finance voice in multi functions projects (including Coca-Cola buying Tropico an iconic French brand) Driving transformation in the FP&A area standardizing processes and moving key activities to a shared service organisation Experimenting with AI including baseline forecasting and the real impact