The current world is full of dead budgets and unrealistic forecasts, and FP&A teams need to adapt quickly to prepare for the future. At the first Digital Pan-Asian FP&A Board, senior finance practitioners from large organisations shared their insights on a variety of topics.

Victor Barnes, Global CFO, The McDonald’s Division at The Coca-Cola Company, shared their recent global digital transformation initiative toward one source of truth to improve their processes.

Defining what Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) does has always been challenging. Most people place FP&A in the Office of the CFO, which makes sense, for many of us have certainly played the role of CFO a time or two. Still, as business partners, strategists and advisors, that is also not necessarily a perfect fit. This categorisation may change as our roles continue to expand to become the central hub of corporate analytics and reporting.

One important skill finance professionals are never taught during their formal education is the power of personal engagement with operations and using these relationships to deliver bottom-line value. There is too much focus on models, processes, procedures and systems without regard to the fact that all these have to be developed, operated and interpreted by people. 

The world of financial planning and analysis has observed changes of such magnitude that they cannot be described by our traditional statistical and analytical models.