The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies to revise their strategies and budgets in preparation for the "new normal". In times of such unprecedented uncertainty, complexity and risk, Scenario Planning and Predictive Planning processes came to the forefront of the management teams and FP&A professionals. 

If the last year has taught us anything, traditional financial planning and analysis approaches did not work (or at least proved suboptimal) when navigating through uncharted landscapes. The pandemic forced FP&A practitioners to reassess and adapt our approach to planning, forecasting, and bringing to the forefront the importance of scenario planning. 

FP&A Transformation has been taking place for some time, with teams moving from the Traditional FP&A Model to the extended FP&A (xP&A) Model. This represents a move from scheduled to on-demand planning, from one scenario to multiple scenarios and from finance to entire company planning.

FP&A is no longer just a reactive part of an organisation. It has now become a very proactive partner in the business planning process. The modern FP&A is responsible for running multiple scenarios to equip the business decision-makers with a rich data set.

While the economic environment is getting increasingly volatile, processes and tools are not always available to support taking the right business decisions. This blog explores how to identify the right drivers to monitor and how to build flexible scenario templates.

To navigate the uncertainties in 2020, FP&A had to change their way of working. On the 4th of February 2021, during The Digital Swiss FP&A Board, we looked at the Scenario Planning via different perspectives. The insightful meeting was delivered by a board panel of 4 distinguished FP&A Board members. This article summarises the key case studies and polling questions.