On November 18, 2020, the International FP&A Board welcomed two FP&A thought leaders - Mike Huthwaite from the USA and Michel Haesendonckx from Belgium - to discuss the important subject of Empowering FP&A to bridge the Strategy Gap.

COVID-19 and potentially other black swan have taught us the importance of recruiting & having great synergistic team, ensuring their welfare, making sure we assess the skill sets required for the changing world and leveraging technology to ensure best performance.

In this article, we will walk you through the practical examples and case studies from Hilti and Roche presented by our panellists, compelling discussions around the journey to more agile budgeting practices and the results of the four interactive polling questions.

The meeting subject was “Building Winning FP&A Teams in the New Normal”, delivered by a truly international board panel of 5 members based in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the UK. Below is a summary of what was discussed on the day including a summary of the polling questions and answers.

FP&A Digitalisation was discussed at several FP&A Boards in the past but the recent mindset shift has changed the perspective. It went from anxiety before the implementation to peace of mind in fully controlling the processes and confidence in the quality of provided FP&A insights.

This article summarises the presentations and discussions during the recent Digital FP&A Circle on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have reduced the process burden, increased the speed of insights, and ultimately supported improved decision-making at Konica Minolta and Amazon.