The title of my LinkedIn profile is “Finance Influencer.”  My LinkedIn profile summary contains the titles of accountant, lecturer, and writer.  One could conclude that I do not need another title however a situation has arisen in which another title is necessary.  The situation is the criticism of budgets.  The criticism has presented an opportunity to assume the title of defender and as a defender I would like to defend budgets.

In this blog I take a broader view of new products and talk about how best to monitor progress post-launch when information is still a little sketchy, volumes are still very low and reporting mechanisms may not yet be fully in place.

During 2019 I have contributed articles to FP&A Trends that have addressed financial planning.  The articles have addressed financial planning from the perspectives of financial statements, fields of study, and business functions.  The purpose of addressing financial planning from these perspectives is to provide insights into usage. Usage of financial planning is important because it begins a process of improving financial health.  Improving financial health can be achieved when finance professionals use financial planning.

Businesses exist in order to improve the well-being of others. One approach businesses use for achieving this goal is the concept of people/process/technology. In businesses the element of technology is the responsibility of information technology (IT) departments; information technology is responsible for the acquisition, maintenance, and enhancement of technology. How can information technology improve its ability to acquire, maintain, and enhance technology? An answer is financial planning, thinking about how businesses can accumulate wealth.

Budgeting no longer helps organisations to perform better. On the contrary. It prevents organisations from performing to their full potential, because given the level of volatility, uncertainty and ambiguity in the world only thing we know for sure is that we don’t know. “The future ain’t what it used to be”, as the American baseball player Yogi Berra once put it.

At the third meeting of the AI/ML FP&A Committee, Xena Ugrinsky, Principal and Founder at GenreX, talked about the future of FP&A and some ways of incorporating AI into the financial forecasting process. Also, Xena provided an example explaining how Stanley Black & Decker improved financial forecasting by 60%.