Improving financial planning and analysis (FP&A) means investing in people and systems. It only takes three pages to design a process and identify new roles and responsibilities. This method is described in this article and has been used to introduce new financial processes and operational reports.

Does your organization’s strategy seem like a mystery or carefully guarded secret? Can it feel as if people's daily work doesn't relate to the direction where your business wants to go? Are people unable to access and understand your corporate goals easily? If you answered "Yes" to any of these scenarios, chances are that your organization is not as connected as it needs to be.

In this 7-minute presentation, Stefan Spiegel, CFO at Swiss Railway Freight Logistics (SBB Cargo AG), explains his company's journey towards merging finance and operations.

Eric Hoffer, an American philosopher, is famously quoted as saying “in a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future.” Although the concept of "growth mindset" was coined almost 7 years ago, it is more relevant than ever before. In this digest, we dive deeper into what a growth mindset means for FP&A as well as exploring ways to identify the right drivers for your planning process.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Culture Eats Strategy”.  This quote often attributed to Peter Drucker is seared into the minds of many as the reason why Strategy often fails.   But for some reason, I’ve never been able to fully buy into this statement.  Am I alone in this thinking?

xP&A is extended planning and analysis, a term coined by Gartner to explain the technology that allows distributed inputs from the business units, algorithms and edge systems directly into the planning function. Information is dispersed, requiring a different set of skills to integrate the information. Here are five ways you can apply the structure of integrative intelligence to your xP&A process. 

Similar to a conductor of an orchestra, the finance team looks at all different functions, allowing some to grow faster at times but never taking eyes off other functions so that every function in the company always performs as one to achieve the best results possible.

FP&A teams are skilled at pulling data from various information systems, manipulating it, and gathering insights. Although FP&A plays a crucial role in supporting companies in becoming more intelligent, there is a lot to think about when getting ready for big data and the FP&A transformation journey. Below are a few things to consider. This list will continue to evolve as we all learn from each other. 

FP&A professionals need to be motivated and motivate others to trust and to make strategic decisions based on insights from the team. If trust is not yet established between you and your business partner, find the trigger that will make them believe in your analysis and the numbers behind them. 

“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” (c) Jack Welch