Nearly every financial planning and analysis professional understands the need to embrace big data and analytics. But how can firms move beyond basics to advanced analytics? That challenge was on every attendee’s mind at the recent FP&A advisory board meeting in London. There, FP&A and business intelligence professionals gathered to discuss the state of business intelligence (BI) and FP&A analytics with Nigel Geary, BI specialist at power utility British Gas.
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The financial planning and analysis (FP&A) board met for the third time in London on 1 May at Hermes Fund Managers’ offices in the City of London. Marc Lloyd, the firm’s head of FP&A, again played host to Ash Sharma, head of FP&A at Alliance Boots Healthcare; Darren Craddock, director of planning and forecasting at insurer Aviva; and Frederik Reynaert, head of financial planning and reporting at travel firm Thomas Cook.
The inaugural full meeting of the London FP&A Board confined itself to detailing the attributes required of an FP&A professional and the evening’s roundtable discussion produced a set of best practice recommendations detailing the necessary skills and mix of different personalities that should go into building a successful FP&A team.
We live in an era with an interconnected global economy, where constant change and uncertainty are taken as a given but planning for such an environment is not easy. Flexible and dynamic financial planning and analysis (FP&A) can help firms to cope.
FP&A goes by many names. In Germany, it is called “Controlling”. From my previous visits to Germany, I know that German Controllers are different from Accountants: they are forward-looking, analytical and often very technical in their approaches. Recently, I got a great opportunity to learn how FP&A is evolving in Europe’s strongest economy.
The past 5 years have seen significant transformations in the FP&A world. I have been fortunate enough to have travelled extensively and seen these changes. I saw a lot of changes in the FP&A World first-hand: both successful and painful. I met a lot of FP&A professionals – hard working, exciting, inspiring and often burned out.
Karl Kern has a BBA degree in Accounting from Temple University, and an MBA degree with a concentration in Finance from Babson College. Karl’s reputation as a problem solver is based on his ability to create as well as implement initiatives that have helped organizations increase revenues, decrease expenses, and improve cash flows.
Kedar Kale is an Indian Chartered Accountant, has cleared all levels of the CFA course and has an Advanced Diploma in Management Accounting from the CIMA. He has a keen interest in the future of finance as a function and analytics and loves to write.
James is a thought leader in FP&A and has presented at many Finance summits. He has also held various finance and operations leadership roles in multinationals such as Dell and Nokia and has clients such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Andrew Codd set up the Strength in the Numbers Podcast to share with others in Finance & Accounting stories and practical guidance on what really works.
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