People are the most expensive asset but they are vital to running a successful business and delivering value. However, few organizations understand the why talent management and retention is important to their bottom line.

Recent trends in FP&A have been to focus on data analytics and driver-based planning to provide better information for business leaders to make decisions. An often-overlooked challenge in transforming financial planning and analysis is the FP&A team’s structure and resource alignment. This article examines how we are transforming the people part of FP&A.

A finance manager is nothing without the team that they work with and that got me thinking about what makes a good finance team and pushes the department forward from being perceived as a ‘bean counters’ and a group of people that are constantly saying no to a real business partner function and being the engine room of any organisation.

Within any organisation you’ll find some groups of people who are the most well-known and highly valued. Given there are many functions, groups, roles & people within our organisations today how can FP&A become, and be seen to be more valued?

Finance staff should find Logos the easiest dimension to work with. As opposed to sales who may use only a small part of the whole facts to support their story.

Like many of you, I have spent significant time thinking about 1) What does FP&A do and 2) What should FP&A do?  My team and I landed on this very “packed” vision statement for our finance business partnering group.