A lockdown is a challenging experience for all of us and we, at FP&A Trends, would like to make our digest as useful as possible for you. Therefore, we have divided this digest into three parts, allowing you to choose the most effective way to learn and grow while staying at home.

The world has changed in so many ways since the last Brexometer on 11th March.  There have been millions of Coronavirus cases and more than a hundred thousand deaths, with almost every human on the planet affected in their daily lives.  The impact on business has been nothing less than catastrophic. Whole sectors have come to a grinding halt, across all countries and economies.

The image of a silo is one that is sealed off from its surroundings. It is insular and protected. In the organisation, this has tended to manifest itself in functional silos. Meaning Finance, HR, IT, R&D, Supply Chain, Marketing etc. It can, of course, apply broader to also divisions within an organisation or even regions / markets. How does this relate to Finance?

This is the second article in a series of articles devoted to the wide variety of the benefits provided by the next generation budget, the operational budget (OB), and its associated operational income statement (OIS). This article will describe OB’s benefits over the current budgeting process and its results. It will be of particular interest to FP&A professionals focused on the current budgeting process and how to improve it. 

“If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.”

For FP&A professionals the box is budgets.

Two years ago, the company moved away from our annual budget and monthly variance reports, and adopted quarterly rolling forecasts supported by key performance indicators and scorecards. Is this approach useful to a line manager?

Why may businesses not seek out, or even resist, greater involvement of their FP&A partner? What is the basis of successful FP&A Business Partnering? Find out by joining this FP&A Board Connect online meeting, where David Wittenberg, Finance Manager at Providence St. Joseph Health and Valerie Martin, Finance Director at Autodesk, will share their practical insights on the subject.

At this difficult and uncertain time of global Black Swans and Perfect Storms, the demand for modern FP&A knowledge is higher than ever before. Keeping this in mind, the team at International FP&A Board has decided to start sharing the insights from more than 200 Board meetings with our global professional community.

Over the last 4 years, we have held more than 200 meetings in 27 cities, 16 countries, and across 4 continents. It has been incredibly inspiring to see so many FP&A senior practitioners come together to shape the future of our profession. We would like to share this accumulated knowledge with the entire FP&A community.

One of the advantages of working in the domain of FP&A is that it provides excellent opportunity to learn about many aspects of the business. This enables the individual to, not only do the job with a more solid ground, but to also get a better picture of what and how is done in the other departments. Additionally, working closely with colleagues from different functions increases one’s visibility in the organization. But how do you get started in FP&A?

This FP&A Board Connect meeting will be delivered from France. Stéphanie Didier, Finance Director, and Tina Vermeyen, Digital Transformation Manager at Janssen, Johnson & Johnson will share their company's Predictive and ML forecasting journey.