What is the Holy Grail for any leader? For me, it is to create a high-performance team AND to sustain that team over time through high-performance leadership. That is not easy to do, so when we get the chance to learn from someone who has managed to do it really well, we must pay close attention. In this first “FP&A Talks” we’re speaking to Fredrik Hedlund, Senior Vice President and CFO for Global Connect at Nielsen. Fredrik is one of the few senior leaders who has truly invested in creating a high-performance leadership team and it shows. “FP&A Talks” is a new series running on fpa-trends.com featuring senior leaders in Financial Planning & Analysis who share their views on how we can create a world-class FP&A department. 

The idea that your analyses are not impacted by your behavior is belied by a new field of research called behavioral accounting. This focuses on the impacts of behavior on accounting frameworks and their data products. 

Forecasting new product launches are a tricky business with plenty of emotional baggage. They are also often, inevitably, wrong. This blog argues that when commercial finance or FP&A professionals are involved they should focus equally on model flexibly as well as the outcome.

Ask anyone working in the finance field now, how much time you consume in some manual tasks; such as data entry, accumulation & validation of data, accounts reconciliation & preparing some basic statements or reports. Unfortunately, statistics say that more than 35% from Accounting & Finance Teams spent from 50 to 70% from their time on manual processes & data entry on ERP systems!