CFO THOUGHT LEADER

Marc Mehlman still recalls the moment a senior leader pulled him aside and told him he was “in such a rush” and needed to “enjoy the journey,” he tells us. At the time, Mehlman was part of a leadership program filled with high achievers eager to move quickly into senior roles. Instead, he took a different path—spending nearly a decade moving laterally across FP&A, corporate development, strategy, and operational roles.
That deliberate detour became the foundation of his leadership philosophy. By working across divisions and even geographies, Mehlman built a broad understanding of how businesses actually function. Later, when he stepped into operating roles—including leading a roughly $1 billion revenue segment—he began to see a gap. Many finance leaders could explain results, but not the decisions behind them. “They’re just numbers,” he tells us, emphasizing that financial outcomes are simply the result of actions taken across the business.
Another pivotal moment came when he initially declined an investor relations role. After multiple conversations with senior leadership, he accepted—and discovered the power of communication. There, he learned to tell a consistent story, build credibility, and deliver on expectations quarter after quarter.
Today, as CFO, those experiences converge. His early focus on exploration, combined with operational insight and storytelling discipline, shapes how he evaluates decisions, partners across functions, and defines the modern CFO—not as a reporter of results, but as an architect of them.

Michael Perica had been discussing the market implications of AI with investors for a number of years, but the market didn’t fully react—until one particular moment. In late January and early February, a wave of announcements around enterprise-focused AI models and workflow plugins triggered what has become widely known as the “SaaS-pocalypse.” In a single day, roughly $258 billion in SaaS market value disappeared, he tells us.
For Perica, the episode confirmed something he had already been sensing in conversations with investors and clients. The traditional path to enterprise modernization—committing to large, monolithic software platforms—was no longer the only option. AI, particularly emerging agentic AI technologies, was beginning to offer organizations a new route: modernizing workflows and processes without necessarily replacing entire systems.
The sudden market reaction accelerated those conversations. Investors and executives began reaching out to Rimini Street asking whether this moment validated the alternative technology path the company had been discussing. For Perica, the answer was clear. The event underscored that organizations now had the ability to tailor AI models directly to specific business processes rather than conforming their operations to a rigid software roadmap.
That shift has shaped how Perica thinks about strategy going forward. Instead of viewing AI purely as a tool for efficiency, he sees it as a catalyst for enterprise-wide transformation. Finance leaders, he argues, now have an opportunity to work closely with CIOs to rethink workflows, eliminate operational bottlenecks, and deploy targeted AI solutions that create quick wins across the organization.
In Perica’s view, the SaaS-pocalypse wasn’t just a market correction. It was a signal that a new technology paradigm had arrived—and that forward-looking CFOs must be ready to lead the change.

Andrew Bender still remembers a moment from high school football practice when a coach challenged him with a simple question: “Do you want to be all conference or all state?” The comment surprised him. At the time, Bender tells us he wasn’t even sure he had the potential to reach the lower bar. Yet the moment stayed with him because it revealed something important—that sometimes others see possibilities before we do.
That lesson about recognizing potential shaped how Bender approached his career decisions. Early on, while working at William Blair, he faced a choice common among his peers: continue toward private equity or pursue a different path. Instead of following the typical investment track, he realized he preferred working inside organizations rather than advising them from the outside. The parts of investment banking he enjoyed most involved “diving into the organizations” he represented, Bender tells us.
Over time, that realization led him toward roles blending strategy and finance. Consulting and business school helped him develop structured problem-solving skills and the ability to learn new industries quickly. Later, at Snyder’s-Lance, he worked across corporate strategy and business-unit finance, gaining operational perspective that would prepare him for future CFO roles.
That blend of strategy and finance thinking surfaced again after Bender joined BNI Global. Preparing board materials, he realized the company tracked numerous KPIs but struggled to explain performance drivers. If the metrics didn’t link to financial outcomes, he recalls thinking, “what are we doing here?”
The solution was simplification. Bender helped refocus leadership on five core business drivers—member renewals, visitor activity, conversion rates, chapter launches, and pricing—while teaching operational leaders how those metrics translate into financial performance.

Early in Lucanet’s expansion, two Chinese employees working in Germany had a moment of insight. Seeing how configurable the consolidation software was, they believed it could succeed in their home market. Acting on that conviction, they traveled from Berlin back to China and built what would become Lucanet’s Chinese business. The story illustrates how a tool designed for global complexity could travel easily across borders, Gurney tells us.
Lucanet’s origins are firmly rooted in Germany, where the company first built its reputation with a consolidation platform designed for companies operating across multiple jurisdictions. That design decision proved foundational. Because customers often consolidate entities across countries, the platform had to integrate financial data from different jurisdictions and support multiple accounting frameworks, Gurney tells us. The system can report under German GAAP, IFRS, or different management accounting rules and allows users to toggle between those views efficiently, he tells us.
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Today, the company’s geographic reach reflects that original cross-border orientation. While Germany remains Lucanet’s strongest market, the company now operates across Europe and Asia, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, China, and Singapore, Gurney tells us. Increasingly, a majority of new customer bookings come from outside Lucanet’s historical DACH and Netherlands markets, he tells us.
Growth has also been shaped by capital structure changes. After roughly eighteen years as a founder-run business, HG Capital made a majority investment in 2022, accelerating both product development and geographic expansion, Gurney tells us.
For Gurney, who joined Lucanet at the start of May last year, the company’s focus remains clear: build tools that make the Office of the CFO more effective across borders and systems, he tells us.

Ashley Still, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intuit’s mid-market business, discusses how the expectations of finance leaders are shifting as AI reshapes the finance function. She explains how Intuit is expanding beyond its small-business roots with Intuit Enterprise Suite, designed to serve growing mid-market organizations seeking faster implementation and lower total cost than traditional ERP systems. Still highlights how AI-powered agents are helping finance teams reduce manual work, accelerate month-end insights, and focus more on strategic decision-making. As the CFO role evolves from scorekeeper to growth driver, she believes technology will increasingly enable finance leaders to connect data, manage risk, and guide business growth.