Eighteen months after COVID microbes first began marching across the 50 states, business planning software developers have no shortage of business case examples to better expose the relevancy of their offerings.  Still, not every customer door that swings open leads to an avenue for success, according to Grant Halloran, CEO of FP&A developer Planful of Redwood  City, Calif. “We love the word “focus” in our organization, and we believe that there have been lots of software companies over the years that have lost their focus and gotten caught up in their returns,” explains Halloran, who—along with Darren Heffernan of accounting software company Trintech—sat down for an in-person interview with CFO Thought Leader host Jack Sweeney to discuss the two companies’ budding partnership amid COVID’s stubborn residency. Halloran believes that software developers in the finance space too often stray from their finance office customers as they seek out relationships with the leaders of different functional areas. “We stay very close to the office of the CFO because we want to drive change from them in the center,” comments Halloran, who tells us that even Planful’s recent partnership with Trintech was in part driven by Planful’s mantra to stay focused. “The reason that we partnered with Trintech was that the financial close is such a specialization for accounting teams that when we evaluated things, we felt that it would take us way too long to build such an offering ourselves since it’s so specialized,” notes Halloran. At Trintech, Heffernan says that the office of the CFO has never been more central to a business’s operations. Observes Heffernan: “During the pandemic, people ran to the CFO for guidance and to restore confidence due to all of the challenges that were happening. The demands on the office of the CFO and the position of the CFO have dramatically changed forever.” Now Listen | This leadership interview was recorded on Sept. 19, 2021, at Planful’s Perform 2021 Customer Conference, Redwood City, Calif.. In addition, the podcast features exclusive customer interviews with Johann Cabe, FP&A leader, Imperial Dade; Glenn Snyder, FP&A leader; and Noah Pieper, director of FP&A, LifeStance Health.