We are all storytellers in a sense but FP&A stories need particular skills to be great. In an era led by technology, data and automation, where do the stories fit? How will the FP&A stories of the future be told? What are the skills needed to be a great FP&A storyteller? 

On 28th January 2020, more than 35 senior finance professionals gathered in the heart of Geneva to discuss “Best Practices in FP&A Storytelling”. This was followed two days later by a similar event by the Zurich FP&A Board.
 

The 25th London FP&A Board Meeting was brought together 25 Financial Planning and Analytics specialists to discuss some of the biggest trends in the industry.

Research shows that the human retina can transmit data to the brain about 60,000 times faster than it can transmit simple text! On top of processing visuals faster, people retain visual information at more than three times the rate of text alone.

According to Google's Chief Economist, Dr. Hal Varian, "The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it— that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades."

To paraphrase the concept of Occam's razor, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex explanations. In a sense, the answer is in the question, "How do we make the complex easier to understand?" Keep the explanations simple.