Welcome to the fourth issue of the monthly FP&A Trends Digest! This time we will share some essential tips on strategic finance, the purpose of planning, the driver-based analysis approach and the power of scenario planning.

What is the Holy Grail for any leader? For me, it is to create a high-performance team AND to sustain that team over time through high-performance leadership. That is not easy to do, so when we get the chance to learn from someone who has managed to do it really well, we must pay close attention. In this first “FP&A Talks” we’re speaking to Fredrik Hedlund, Senior Vice President and CFO for Global Connect at Nielsen. Fredrik is one of the few senior leaders who has truly invested in creating a high-performance leadership team and it shows. “FP&A Talks” is a new series running on fpa-trends.com featuring senior leaders in Financial Planning & Analysis who share their views on how we can create a world-class FP&A department. 

The idea that your analyses are not impacted by your behavior is belied by a new field of research called behavioral accounting. This focuses on the impacts of behavior on accounting frameworks and their data products. 

Forecasting new product launches are a tricky business with plenty of emotional baggage. They are also often, inevitably, wrong. This blog argues that when commercial finance or FP&A professionals are involved they should focus equally on model flexibly as well as the outcome.

Ask anyone working in the finance field now, how much time you consume in some manual tasks; such as data entry, accumulation & validation of data, accounts reconciliation & preparing some basic statements or reports. Unfortunately, statistics say that more than 35% from Accounting & Finance Teams spent from 50 to 70% from their time on manual processes & data entry on ERP systems!

Normally, integrating actuals into the planning cycle is not an easy task. Often financial and operating results are spread across multiple databases and actual results and plan detail are at different levels. All of this makes meaningful Performance Evaluation difficult. 

The seventh meeting of the Singapore FP&A Board will take place on the 28th of November 2019. The Board will interactively discuss Beyond Budgeting Philosophy.

Most people are familiar that all businesses go through a life cycle – establishment to start up, startup to growth, growth to maturity, and then finally into decline. Similar to companies, careers have a lifecycle as well. 

Being critical of one’s own work, is even more important for the financial doing the forecast. A forecaster will undoubtedly have his or her bias and blind spots. However, some can be avoided by looking at the forecast itself, and some by looking at person doing the forecast. The aim here is to create deeper awareness of ‘forecasting’ by presenting some structural elements.

On the 25th of July 2019, the International FP&A Board held its second meeting in Hong Kong where 37 senior finance practitioners shared their ideas about FP&A Analytical Transformation.