After an absence of almost two years, I was looking forward to joining the London FP&A Board meeting, where a group of senior finance professionals met in person, many experiencing their first face-to-face industry event since the initial lockdown in the UK back in March 2020.

In this series of blogs, I am looking at areas where FP&A departments must improve if they are to support organisation decision-making in this technology-driven age. In this blog, I’ll cover the new staffing roles that are essential.

First and foremost, Best-in-class FP&A is about agility. Accordingly, it specialises in the ability to orient planning activity around the needs and cycles of the products and services provided by the organisation. With a constant flow of urgent demands leaving little time to make changes, finance teams need practical advice on how to digitally transform FP&A.

Organizational agility often faces a considerable barrier: unaligned top-down and bottom-up planning processes. Why does this gap exist? How can we bridge it, and what role does technology play?

Corporate Performance Management (CPM) has long consisted in breaking the company’s strategy down into operational objectives and indicators, measuring the achievement of these objectives against operational entities' budget or forecast and take action on that basis. This approach was effective in a stable business environment, with slow and controlled changes.

The vast majority of companies still rely on traditional organisational designs characterised by hierarchical structures, and steering with budgets. But these designs are outdated, severely limiting a company's ability to act and respond in today’s fast-changing environments. 

How can organisations operate viably in this age of uncertainty?