FP&A Trends Group held another global webinar with over 430 participants joining from around the globe to discuss zero-based budgeting’s next evolution, zero-based financial planning & analysis (FP&A).

Every month the Managing Director or Country Manager has to report the business results to the CEO or internal board. Depending on the corporate structure, there are different narrative reports, each with a different focus. This defines the role of Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) and the information that needs to be collected for future growth. Two opposite cases will make the same point.

Using P&L as a map for the journey (see image 1 below), the first three articles explored three initial steps focusing on the pre-P&L analysis and price management. In this article, we will move via net sales to marginality and look at how finance can take initiative and lead the effort to increase both sales and business profitability.

In this article, I will share several challenges and dilemmas in building a strong FP&A department and also describe how they can be overcome. I‘ve gone through this process in 3 different companies as a Head of FP&A, so I can give my observation and say what are the crucial conditions to make the FP&A department successful and to minimize the ambiguity. 

Nearly all enterprises strive to significantly grow sales and income in their multiple-year business plan, yet not all of them will achieve this goal. This blog digs into the traps of the dream machine Long-Term-Planning (LTP) and how the FP&A function can support quantifying the expectations in a different way.