As organisations get to grips with data and technology, now more than ever, we see the emergence and the importance of FP&A Storytelling. So how can we apply analytics, visualisation and dashboards for better FP&A Storytelling and what are the dos and don’ts of FP&A Storytelling?

FP&A Storytelling has been one of the biggest trends in FP&A over the last few years as executives and C-level leaders want to know how their company is performing, what segments are performing well or not so well, and why so. 

“Telling the story” is one of the most important parts of the FP&A role, and data visualisation can help immensely. This makes the FP&A dashboard a very powerful tool, but 80% of dashboards are seldom or never used.

Increasingly, FP&A’s most valued skill is turning data/facts into a story and putting these into context. However, there is generally too little focus on the actual art and science of storytelling, the primary tool in business partnering. This article on Storytelling will evolve around the three core elements of a good story – the narrative, visuals and data and cover how combining these allows FP&A to fulfil our goal in life of influencing change.

What is your data literacy level? Everybody agrees data visualization is powerful. This article will guide you through the most common and not so obvious data visualization mistakes.

Every FP&A professional has an active role to play in business partnering, supporting the leadership team to aid decision making. To enable this, the FP&A team must be positioned to inform the future impact of decisions that are being made now. This requires understanding what the company’s strategy is, where the company is heading, what part your business unit/function play to get there and what are the KPIs on which they are being measured.