4-5 years ago in Microsoft, Cloud business was a small portion of the overall business, but now is the key business for the company, with new and diverse purchase options like subscription model on office 365, pay as you go model on Azure cloud platform... boosting and creating an avalanche of data every day.

Integrated Financial Planning (IFP) and Integrated Business Planning (IBP) mean different things to different people. Primarily because there is no universal definition of what “fully integrated” processes entail. This article presents a maturity model to explain what it means and the capabilities that comprise it.

The Seattle FP&A Board met on March 14th.  Larysa Melnychuk, Founder of the FP&A Board, moderated the discussion. The meeting was sponsored by SAP and Robert Half. 

The purpose of a statement of cash flows is to describe how businesses receive and spend money.  This purpose is seen as an end result of financial planning but this purpose can be seen as a starting point of financial planning.  As a starting point of financial planning, people should think about how to accumulate wealth from the receipt and disbursement of cash.

Data management is a business function that, in my opinion, every company should have. Still, often it is not the case. Managing data means that everybody in a company knows what data they (can) get and have a good understanding of what can it can be used for. It also means receiving data when and where it is needed. And finally, producing and working with data of acceptable quality.

In 2019, FP&A Trends Group is planning a number of compelling webinars about best practices in modern FP&A. The first one in 2019 was devoted to an interesting subject — "FP&A Transformation through Effective Organisational Structure".

Connected Planning is an effective way to unify data, people, and plans on a single platform. Implemented correctly, it can help accelerate better business performance in the modern dynamic market conditions. 

In Part 1 of this article, we explained the data challenges faced by FP&A as well as how the expectations of the FP&A user community has evolved through the generations. In this article, we will explain how the boundaries have changed and the implementation framework.

These notes were made during the 22nd meeting of the FP&A Board on 7^th March 2019 in London.  They are a mixture of comments made by attendees and thoughts of those who presented case studies.

There have been two opposing forces at war in the UK for a while now.  Pulling the Accountagility Index (AAX) down is anxiety about Brexit, which is reaching fever pitch in the current febrile political climate. Keeping the score up on the other hand, is the surprising and reassuring underlying strength of the UK economy.