I had the pleasure of attending the 7th London FP&A circle. The Circle is the educational branch of the International FP&A Board which shares the latest professional trends and developments with the UK FP&A community. It is open to both senior and mid-level finance practitioners.

Recent trends in FP&A have been to focus on data analytics and driver-based planning to provide better information for business leaders to make decisions. An often-overlooked challenge in transforming financial planning and analysis is the FP&A team’s structure and resource alignment. This article examines how we are transforming the people part of FP&A.

In October, we held the fourth Brussels FP&A Board meeting devoted to FP&A Business Partnering. 32 senior finance practitioners joined the event. They represented international companies in different industries, such as

For the second time, we had meetings in three US cities — Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. The discussions were devoted to the subject of FP&A Analytical Transformation.

In October, the International FP&A Board had two successful meetings — one in Geneva and another one in Zurich. Both events were devoted to the interesting subject of FP&A Team Building.

Even if last six years I have been specialized in Data management,  I still follow (thanks to FP&A club) developments in FP&A area. While reading some publications on FP&A trends I realized the strong connection between FP&A and Data management topics. 

A finance manager is nothing without the team that they work with and that got me thinking about what makes a good finance team and pushes the department forward from being perceived as a ‘bean counters’ and a group of people that are constantly saying no to a real business partner function and being the engine room of any organisation.

Financial Planning is seen as a service however seeing Financial Planning as such limits its value-added capabilities. Financial Planning creates products that help people maximize wealth. There are two products created from Financial Planning for this task.

Last month I attended the FP&A Board event in San Francisco focused on the latest advances in financial analytics. The event was well attended and composed of a main presentation punctuated by thoughtful audience discussions, group polls and comparisons to global statistics, a case study presentation, and small group break-away sessions.

It can be one of the greatest intangibles in the FP&A world – how do you succeed as a business partner?