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.

In December 1999, Gartner introduced the concept of Corporate Performance Management (CPM), which they defined as the “... the processes, methodologies, metrics and systems used to monitor and manage an enterprise's business performance”. 

Xavier Fernandes, Analytics Director at Metapraxis, talks about how FP&A teams are using AI to drive changes in business performance. Xavier also mentions a couple of examples where FP&A teams were faced with ongoing disappointing business performance and what AI approach they chose.

Organisations often struggle to find a balance between their long-term strategic objectives and short-term goals. Being a key player in an organization’s strategy setting and budgeting process, FP&A professionals also face this dilemma as a part of their roles.
 

Fredrik Hedlund, SVP, Global Markets CFO at Nielsen, who is responsible for more than 105 countries, explains how he transformed the company's FP&A and finance function to a centralised structure and shares some lessons learnt during the journey.