Data visualization – or graphing – is one of the hottest buzzwords in FP&A today… right up there with “big data” and “predictive analytics”. It can certainly be an immensely powerful tool for helping your audience grasp your most important points.
By Randall Bolten, longtime Silicon Valley CFO, author of "Painting with Numbers: Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand You” and adjunct professor at U.C. Berkeley Extension.
Less than a quarter of a Financial Analyst’s time is spent with high value-add analysis - this is a finding of a survey run by SAP. Although the survey is 5 years old, it’s still relevant, the percentage may even have shrunk further as the amount of data to be analysed and reported on keeps increasing.
How many of us, when we are asked to a meeting with someone from FP&A, have rolled our eyes, thrown the head back and done a neck roll to relax the shoulders? Why do we have this over whelming feeling of dread when it comes to meeting with that team?
Finance and FP&A communities are regularly traversed by theoretical and generally hot discussions concerning few topics that are at the heart of FP&A processes. Analytics systems, business partnering and budget are currently among of the main one.
Q: What do motorists, composers, musicians, architects, engineers, and builders have, that FP&A professionals don't?
A: Read on...
The Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) function has become more prominent in the decision making process in most large organizations because of the emergence of BIG DATA (large volumes of unstructured and structured data). Today, most companies have access to vast amounts of data (financial and operational) and must figure out how to use it to drive growth and profitability.