The FP&A Trends Webinar: Digitised FP&A Business Partnering: How Technology Can Support It
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The FP&A Trends Webinar: Digitised FP&A Business Partnering: How Technology Can Support It
Click here to view details and register
By Mohamed El-Rouby, Global Finance Lead and CFO at Pharmanovia
The increasing pace of change in competition, technology, and business landscape is driving FP&A leaders to provide real-time insights from large amounts of data. FP&A is expected to be more agile, more insight-oriented, and more data-driven. How can FP&A become a trusted business advisor and help organisations navigate through uncertainty? There are five things to keep in mind.
FP&A needs to start by building strong business relationships with other functions, including commercial, supply chain, IT, Marketing, Sales and HR. The FP&A team needs to create ways to build rapport with the other functions so that they feel comfortable talking to finance and explaining their goals, needs, and business challenges. The next step is for FP&A to work on helping them achieve their goals.
There are a few guidelines for FP&A to follow:
Business acumen is one of the most important competencies for any FP&A team. It includes a full understanding of the company’s operations and a complete awareness of all external factors. In other words, a person who has solid business acumen can see the full picture of the business, including both internal and external views. To better understand the business, FP&A leaders can do the following:
FP&A’s credibility can be impacted positively or negatively based on the quality of data they use. As we know, “Garbage in, Garbage out”. There are several ways to ensure that FP&A are getting the data they need to provide businesses with relevant insights. FP&A need to:
FP&A’s role is not to provide business leaders with accurate data explaining what happened or why it happened. Rather, FP&A need to show business leaders what they do not yet know and answer the question of what might happen. This can be enabled through a digital transformation process where FP&A leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI), Predictive Analytics and technological advances to provide real-time business insights.
How can FP&A achieve this?
FP&A need to transform numbers into narratives and inspire action through stories. Facts are not as memorable as stories. The career path of FP&A can stop at analysis or problem-solving. Yet, the skill of storytelling can facilitate a move from gatekeeper to a trusted business advisor. There are several key steps to delivering an impactful business story:
FP&A has a unique opportunity to become a trusted business advisor by building strong business relationships, telling impactful business stories, gaining solid business acumen, and providing helpful business insights. The increasing pace of change in today’s business environment has also demonstrated that FP&A needs to leverage technology by implementing the right analytical tools.
The article was first published in Unit4 Prevero Blog
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