Career Spotlight - Axelle Cazalets

Introduction:

Hello Pigmenteers! I’m Axelle Cazalets (​@Axelle Cazalets in the community). I’m based in Toronto, Canada, and I work at Procore, a construction management software company. My role is focused on FP&A systems and program management, with my main responsibility being to maintain and continue developing our Pigment workspace to support financial planning across the organization.

I also have FP&A responsibilities outside of Pigment, which I’ve been really happy to take on as I continue developing my understanding of what FP&A teams do every day. I would say my role today is around 60% Pigment and 40% broader FP&A responsibilities.

Can you tell us a little about your career journey?

I’ve been in the EPM industry for more than 10 years. I first entered the consulting world without really knowing what to expect, and over time I had the opportunity to work with many different businesses and understand the challenges FP&A teams were trying to solve.

In 2022, I joined Pigment as a Product Manager for Standard Apps before moving into a Solution Architect role within Customer Success. That gave me the opportunity to work closely with the product while also helping customers implement and get the most out of Pigment.

Then, about a year ago, I saw an opportunity to move to the customer side at Procore. It felt like a good balance because I could continue using the Pigment knowledge I had built over the years while stepping into the FP&A world that I had been serving throughout my career.

In a way, it felt similar to when I first stepped into consulting 10 years ago. I was entering a new side of the industry and learning something different. Now I get to experience the problems I spent years helping customers solve from the other side of the table, while still keeping that connection to Pigment.

If someone was just getting started with Pigment today, what advice would you give them?

I actually think this is one of the best times to start with Pigment.

Pigment has released so many features over the past few years, and the platform has reached a level of maturity where you now have a lot of tools available from the beginning. The biggest differentiator for me today is the Modeler Agent.

If you are starting from scratch, you can establish best practices from day one, with the right naming conventions, commentary, documentation, and model structure. With the Modeler Agent, you can create something in a matter of days that might previously have taken much longer to implement.

My biggest advice would be to leverage the Modeler Agent as much as you can from the beginning. The context it can add to your workspace becomes increasingly valuable as you start leveraging MCP and other AI tools.

Starting today also means you do not have years of legacy models to untangle. You have the opportunity to build a really strong foundation using all of the tools and best practices that are available now.