Design thinking is a creative and practical approach to problem-solving. It involves the creation of multiple options which are then scrutinised through varying viewpoints and lenses to determine the most effective solution.

For most marketing managers doing the annual budget is a bore or waste of time. With most transactional services outsourced and financial management centralised in the home country of the company, local financials spend more and more time with planning, budgeting and forecasting.

This article highlights some of the common cognitive biases that the author has come across in his career and how awareness and mitigation of these could lead to our becoming better finance and FP&A business partners.

FP&A professionals have various desirable attributes. This article looks at these attributes from a diamond perspective – cut, colour, clarity and carat – plus culture.

Many commercial finance or FP&A professionals focus on getting the model right and not enough time considering the how people are going to react to the outcome. This blog sets out a few tips to navigate the politics. In the words of Oscar Wilde ‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple’.

As financial professionals we Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) professionals spend a lot of timing learning - learning the basics of accounting and finance, learning the business and learning about the impacts business decisions have on budgets and forecasts.