This article covers some author's key forecasting learnings from the perspective of an FP&A professional and outlines how to potentially apply them to other online marketplaces.
Matt Armstrong
Matt is a commercially astute Finance executive with extensive experience serving as the Finance lead for multi-million to billion-dollar divisions for numerous high-tech organisations such as Expedia, Hotwire, Revinate, Uber, Wish, Prevoira, and Busbud. In addition, Matt is an accomplished author and speaker in the FP&A community.
During his career, he has developed an outstanding track record of achievement which can be attributed directly to his extensive experience in financial and operations leadership, FP&A and strategy, forecasting and reporting, budgeting, accounting, technology and systems integration, policy and process development, and team development.
Author's Articles
Installing a planning tool early, regardless of the company's situation, is a good idea despite the investment required. Prioritising the proper criteria based on organisational needs using a checklist of standards will help compare all the different tools on the market to identify what suits the organisation best.
Best practices from mature technology businesses have stable recurring Rolling Forecasts based on momentum, executive buy-in and a solid understanding of the drivers in both revenues and costs. And those forecasts have defined processes to ensure the right level of risk is mitigated with the right action plans to drive success. However, start-ups have a different focus: getting their product to market and ensuring there is a fit, or there is no business
Providing decision support on product offerings in an online marketplaces environment requires digging deep on the granularity of the key business drivers to evaluate success. Using a method called “A/B testing” allows an FP&A leader to easily build a framework on key criteria to better understand the various behavioural impacts that consumers apply in different scenarios and to analyse their performance.