FP&A Insights

FP&A Insights is a collection of useful case studies from leading international companies and thought leadership insights from FP&A experts. We aim to help you keep track of the best practices in modern FP&A, recognise changes in the ever-evolving world of financial planning and analysis and be well equipped to deal with them.

Stay tuned for more blogs and articles from great authors.

The Essential Skill Set: What is the Role of FP&A?
FP&A Tags:
Financial Planning and Analysis, FP&A Skills, What is FP&A

By Dr. Amarendra Kumar, Global Account Finance Advisor at DXC Technology

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Dr. Amarendra Kumar is currently working in Pyramid IT Consulting Inc, as a General Manager (Finance) and heading profile of Financial Planning,   Analysis & Management Reporting.

There is evidence that FP&A interest is growing fast. Each and every day, CFOs feel the pressure building on the finance function to contribute more to business success. Within the CFO’s organization, the responsibility for tracking, assessing and reporting corporate performance normally falls to the Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) group.

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The Most Useful Graph Ever
FP&A Tags:
Data Visualisation, FP&A Storytelling

By Randall Bolten, longtime Silicon Valley CFO, author of "Painting with Numbers: Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand You,” and adjunct professor at U.C. Berkeley Extension​

RANDALL BOLTEN grew up in Washington, D.C., the son of a CIA intelligence officer and a history professor. He is passionate about the importance of presenting financials and other numerical information in a cogent and effective way, and in his current life is the author of Painting with Numbers: Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand You (John Wiley & Sons, 2012).

He is a seasoned financial executive, with many years directing the financial and other operations of high-technology companies. His experience includes nearly twenty years as a chief financial officer of software companies.

He has held the CFO position at public companies BroadVision and Phoenix Technologies, and at private companies including Arcot Systems, BioCAD, and Teknekron. Before his CFO positions, he held senior financial management positions at Oracle and Tandem Computers.

He received his AB from Princeton University, headed west to earn an MBA at Stanford University, and ended up staying in Silicon Valley. 

In addition to writing Painting with Numbers, he currently operates Lucidity, a consulting and executive coaching practice focused on organizing and presenting complex financial information. He divides his work time between Glenbrook, NV and Washington, DC, and maintains an office in Menlo Park, CA.

Well-designed incentive compensation plans – especially sales commission plans – are an incredibly powerful way to motivate great performance. But designing a great plan is both an art and a science.

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Demand Forecasting is Mostly About Data Exploration
FP&A Tags:
Modelling and Forecasting, Financial Planning and Analysis, Forecasting Quality, Data-Driven FP&A

By Hans Levenbach, PhD, CPDF author of Change & Chance Embraced

As most forecasting methods require data, a forecaster analyzes the availability of data from both external and internal sources. The availability of external data is improving rapidly. With the explosion of Internet websites, potential sources of valuable data are becoming limitless. With unstructured data, the need for data mining tools has become a necessity for exploring potential sources of data for consumer analyses and predictive modelling purposes.

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FP&A – Just for Budget Time?
FP&A Tags:
FP&A Business Partnering

By Simone da Silva Collins, Senior Financial Analyst at Sony

Simone da Silva Collins is an FP&A professional working in The Warranty Group, one of the world's premier global providers of warranty solutions and related benefits.

She provides business partnering and assists in development of MI to operations heads at TWG. Prior to joining TWG, she was the Finance Manager at Polycom (taken private by private equity firm Siris Capital Group) and provides business partner support to various departments in EMEA. She was previously the Group Finance Analyst supporting the Executive Team at Intec (now part of CSG), a provider of Business Support System (BSS) software and related services, primarily for the telecommunications industry. She also worked for Telewest (now part of Virgin Media) for over 7 years providing commercial and financial support to the Interconnect team.

Simone is originally from Macau in SE Asia. She gained her Masters at Manchester Business School. In addition to being ACCA qualified, Simon has also achieved FP&A accreditation.

FP&A does not work in the finance silo of providing backward looking analysis of what has happened. They arm themselves and their operational and departmental leaders with the “why” of the performances and develop insights on trends. In the leading state of the FP&A Business Partnering Maturity model, FP&A is a credible partner that the business leaders can rely on when developing a sound strategy.

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