Just as soundtracks enhance our favourite movies, FP&A’s soundtrack can amplify the strategic narratives of our businesses. This article explores how FP&A can leverage its activities to become the soundtrack of the business.

Movie Soundtracks

Movie soundtracks indeed share quite a bit in common with FP&A. They exist to support and enhance the main product. They are not the marquis event. Nor do they play the leading roles. Yes, they often call attention to key plot elements and add a sense of cadence, clarity, and colour. But they exist to support something bigger.

Movie soundtracks can foreshadow, provide resolution, and/or signal impending danger when needed. They also provide valuable cues that prompt the audience to pay close attention as key plot details unfold. They often use motifs to paint a picture for the audience. They can even aid in character development. Yet at other times, they may simply provide a necessary and effective transition to the next scene. In the end, a movie soundtrack’s contribution is usually nuanced and subtle, and its impact may go largely unnoticed.  

Just Like FP&A

It is somewhat striking that the ways in which we frame the elements of effective movie soundtracking are very similar to what drives FP&A soundtracking success.

FP&A storytelling is the vehicle by which FP&A can and should become the soundtrack of the business. This becomes especially true when the storytelling contains or is accompanied by strategic insights. However, just like almost anything else in FP&A, this advanced state of organisational being is not a given.  

If it was, everyone would be doing it. And the 2025 FP&A Trends Survey pretty much tells the story here - more specifically, that not everyone is doing it. The survey reports that only one-third of FP&A time is spent on high-value activities like storytelling and generating insights. The 2025 FP&A Trends Survey also notes that this figure has remained unchanged over a four-year period.  

To be fair, most FP&A organisations do spend time on their narratives. But becoming the soundtrack of the business gets to an even more advanced organisational state of FP&A being. And as we know, positioning FP&A to do this requires reaching the higher levels of the FP&A activity pyramid via the tools, processes, and focus we should be using to spend less of our time on data-handling tasks.  

Repurposing even relatively small swaths of the “other two-thirds” of the total effort presently spent on what is primarily data handling can have a potentially huge impact when it comes to soundtracking the business. This is clearly a strategic gap that is well worth closing!

Successful Soundtracking 

The irony here is that the data, in its own humble existence, remains critically important to FP&A’s soundtracking success. In other words, “going beyond the numbers” still requires the numbers. And it requires that these numbers be timely, accurate, and relevant. Reaching higher states of FP&A will remain elusive if we have issues with our data. Nothing kills credibility faster. This remains an enduring truism of FP&A life.

Successful soundtracking is based on layering. Much like the way in which the more basic musical elements and instrumentation form the base layers upon which the more nuanced and sophisticated melodic elements of the movie soundtrack are built, effective FP&A storytelling and delivery of strategic insights very definitely still rely on the cadence, accuracy, and dependability of data and reporting. It takes a solid base upon which to build something great. Think of it as: foundation (data) → rhythm (cadence) → motif (insights) → cue (action).

But it goes even further, as soundtracking our businesses extends well beyond just spending more time on narratives and storytelling. These are just the activities. And of course, effort and focus are great starts, but they do not guarantee success and payback on their own. What matters is whether the business can hear and follow the cues.

Incorporating the following characteristics of effective FP&A soundtracks can help FP&A to achieve soundtracking success.

Characteristics of Effective FP&A Soundtracks

The parallels between movie soundtracks and FP&A soundtracking become even clearer when mapped side by side.

Figure 1. Comparing Movie Soundtracks and FP&A Soundtracks

As shown in Figure 1, the qualities that make film soundtracks powerful, such as accuracy, cadence, and memorability, also define the effectiveness of FP&A’s soundtrack.

To expand on the table, the following bullet points illustrate each characteristic in practical FP&A terms:

Accurate
Ensure that the base level is solid. Data issues here undermine all that follows. Storytelling and strategic insights need a solid base from which to rise.

Actionable
Accompany storytelling and strategic insights with specific calls to action related to key drivers and levers that need to turn. Do not assume any of these elements are self-sufficient and/or self-evident.

Balanced
Develop content that consists of more than just numbers, words, and spreadsheets. Data visualisation helps provide balance, heightens audience engagement, and inserts creativity.

Clear
Make conclusions and actions easy for audiences to understand and act upon. De-jargonise the messaging into familiar terms. Clarity, context, simplicity, and specificity are clear-cut winners.

Compelling
Bring out the “why(s)” behind your calls to action. Demonstrate the impacts of inaction. Paint a picture of the current and future states. Insert personality, but not to the detriment of messaging and content.

Concise
Streamline the messaging for maximum uptake. Brevity strikes gold and will be appreciated. Most likely, even valued. Overloading an audience with excess content has the same effect on action as a big meal.  

Consistent
Audiences find comfort when content is as expected and formats recur. KPI trend reporting is ideal for this. Somewhat ironic here, but consistency works well in setting the stage for the creativity.

Credible
Earn audience trust as the single version of the truth. This applies to both good and bad news. Finding one’s most effective voice involves trial, error, courage, and occasional reboot. But builds credibility.

Strategic
Move past tactical. Connect content to overarching strategic frameworks. Go beyond the numbers to provide insights and recommended actions that help the organisation progress along its strategic path.

Memorable
Be in the transportation business. Take FP&A audiences to new places. Pursue and achieve a creative and engaging blend of data, analysis, storytelling, and strategic insights.

These characteristics give FP&A the tools to build its soundtrack. The process can be visualised as a simple flow:

Figure 2

Like in film, where music builds from base notes to memorable themes that drive emotion, FP&A builds from accurate data to insights and ultimately to decision cues that leaders can hear and act on.

Case Study: Lyft

Speaking of transportation, Lyft has taken significant strides in recent years toward its own soundtracking success. Accurate and verifiable data has been foundational in this journey and has become a solid and consistent layer upon which FP&A can build next-level capabilities.  

When Lyft’s FP&A transformation began, there was “a phenomenal amount of data in many different systems”, and there were “many reconciliation issues”. The key to moving forward was the development of a new in-house reporting platform that cleared a cleaner path by enabling a pivot to a well-defined set of forward-looking metrics.  

With this foundational layer effectively rebuilt, Lyft FP&A could then focus on building trust with business leaders and pairing the right formats and visualisations with the right audiences. This, in turn, enabled FP&A to go beyond the numbers to enhance its narratives' quality and achieve greater strategic impact.

Takeaways for FP&A Leaders

1. Embrace the Challenge. Before much else can happen, FP&A must accept the challenge. Step up and into delivering this higher-level set of FP&A value adds. Soundtracking is a layered set of outputs that FP&A leaders must build.

2. Be Realistic
Know that it will involve trial and error to get it right. And very likely that this is more art than science. Expecting immediate perfection is not a reasonable expectation and is likely counterproductive.

3, Set Some Soft Targets 
Define & envision impact and success. Assess the present state regarding the percentage of staff time spent on data vs. storytelling and strategic insights. Take an inventory of team skills, and adjust skills as needed.

4. Ensure Your Base Is Solid 
Ensure that your data level and reporting cadences are solid and dependable. Without accurate, timely, and relevant data, effective soundtracking is not likely to happen.

5. Employ the Right Skills
Be aware that data wranglers are not typically FP&A’s soundtracking stars. Finding “total package” talent is fortuitous at best. Creating specialisation is advised. Segment the work accordingly.

6. Take Audiences to New Places
Be in the transportation business as cited above. It is the entire organisation taking a journey, not just FP&A. All gain when FP&A takes its audiences to new places via effective soundtracking.

7. Celebrate Team Wins
Celebrate team wins when FP&A achieves soundtracking success. Include those who wrangle the data, as the bright lights of success do not shine without them.

Summary

FP&A leaders need to set the tone and define the agenda for driving soundtracking success in their organisations. The journey must be based on a solid data foundation, but this may first involve work to fortify the requisite layer.

Further, the implications for skill development and talent acquisition are important to understand, as the skill sets necessary for soundtracking success are not necessarily the same ones as those needed to manage data and perform first or second-level analysis.

Sources

1. Financial Narratives / Storytelling:
- Corporate Finance Institute (CFI). FP&A Storytelling Techniques. CorporateFinanceInstitute.com
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/fpa/fpa-storytelling-techniques/ 

2. Insightsoftware. The Art of Financial Storytelling. (2023)
https://insightsoftware.com/blog/the-art-of-financial-storytelling/ 

3. Lucid. 7 Principles for Financial Data Storytelling. Lucid. now
https://lucid.now/blog/7-principles-for-financial-data-storytelling/ 

4. Movie Soundtracks / Music Descriptors:
- Fictionary. 100+ Words to Describe Music. 
https://fictionary.co/journal/words-to-describe-music/ 

5. The Drama Teacher. Words to Describe Sound in Theatre
https://thedramateacher.com/words-to-describe-sound-in-theatre/ 

6. Educators Technology. 60+ Adjectives to Describe Movies
https://www.educatorstechnology.com/2024/03/60-adjectives-to-describe-movies.html 

7. Lyft Case Study Sources:
San Francisco FP&A Board: Unveiling the Power of FP&A Storytelling | FP&A Trends
The Power of Storytelling for FP&A Professionals: Beyond Numbers to Narrative Excellence | FP&A Trends