There is no lack of discussion about the skill sets that FP&A professionals need throughout their careers to be successful; even a cursory search on the Internet would provide a wealth of resources.  Broadly speaking, those articles focus on four areas of skills:

FP&A teams have been growing in popularity because they have always known about one big thing that drove and accelerated value better than anything else, which other functions and teams sometimes forget. This is why organisations then, and even those today, need a FP&A team. So what is this one big thing? 

Every large organization in the world today, from Apple to P&G and from Ford to Goldman Sachs has a dedicated Financial Planning & Analysis team with bespectacled finance professionals claiming to be “more than mere accountants” or even “value-adding business partners”. What is FP&A and why has it become arguably the most important function in a company’s finance organization?

Looking to leverage your FP&A team into strategic partnership? One question to ask is how does FP&A drive strategic partnership & value? Strong FP&A teams have a neutral perspective and bring data driven decision making into the partnership.

Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) Centers of Excellence (CoEs) are an increasingly potent solution to a very timely challenge: How to improve the analytics and decision support capabilities of FP&A, when finance is under continued pressure to do more with less.

One element for FP&A teams to provide value is strategic partnership. Therefore, with any change in direction or focus, it is important to understand how to start. Below, I will cover a simplified and quick start guide for starting the strategic partnership process.