What ignited this article? I was talking with some upcoming college graduates from a similar background as myself. They were looking to go into corporate finance/financial planning & analysis (FP&A) after graduating from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. I shared with them lessons I learned from 10 years in the finance game.

A groundbreaking survey designed to benchmark current and emerging trends relative to how companies are leveraging technology and empowering FP&A professionals to unlock the strategic value of FP&A.

The CEO walks into the CFO’s office and says, “You need to take more ownership of the customer experience and the professional development within and beyond your team. Even a few years’ ago many CFOs would have thought, and some still might think, is that the beginning of a joke?

Framing is how situations are presented to people. How situations are presented affect the decisions that people make. Framing has a role in the work of FP&A practitioners. FP&A practitioners can work through narrow frames.  Narrow frames can appear on income statements through revenues from specific products, executive salaries, and equipment depreciation.

At one of the previous meetings, The London FP&A Board addressed the technological requirements needed for effective FP&A. The well-known Chatham House anonymised rules were deployed to encourage a full and frank debate.

Financial model definitions can be tricky. Financial models are often dependent upon numerous functional areas and academic disciplines, such as accounting, finance and statistics. These disciplines may have differing uses of the same terminology. Model risk management has also drawn on numerous disciplines in its evolution.

It’s the middle of the year and it’s time to take charge of your “data destiny” before the budgeting and planning season starts. What exactly is your data destiny? No, it’s not the new Netrunner card game where the objective is to control all the data in the Universe.

Many sophisticated business environments use budgets as a bridge between actual and forecast. Within the corporate finance domain, budgets are used to allocate resources and provide a starting point for current and future period estimates.

Through the financial crisis, the advent of drill down database capabilities and with direction from the Federal government, financial modeling is evolving into both a defined art and science.

The Value Cycle is our approach at redefining FP&A’s role in the organization. To take a leadership position influencing the direction and outcome.  It is our role to help facilitate this process by taking the insight that we have generated and converting this into more long-term strategic thinking.