Why is strategic partnership important? You might be asking yourself this question when going to a sales meeting, working with another department or attending a company meeting.  Strategic partnership is paramount as it allows FP&A teams to spend less time on traditional finance functions like reporting, treasury, tax and investor relations. 

I belong to the rather small group of Finance people who also have worked in Human Resources. The four years I headed up HR in the petrochemicals company Borealis was a great experience (after heading up Finance where we kicked out the budget already back in 1995, another great experience!).

The great thing about being in FP&A is that we get to observe in real life and hear stories about many interactions, good and bad, between many colleagues across the business.

At a high level, the best-performing organisations take a more rigorous approach to FP&A.  They have tightly integrated all the components of FP&A, merged operational and financial planning, and have a deep understanding of how operational metrics drive their financial results.

The below article summarises an approach developed throughout the years of my work and explores ways to fully integrate FP&A with other divisions and remove barriers in cooperation. 

Ever notice how the personalities and dispositions of animals often resemble humans'? An organisation’s pursuit of adopting FP&A involves personalities of all types. How are they like the creatures that populate our planet? Here is a zoology of analogous types of employees that you might recognise.