The current COVID-19 disruption has led to a historical change requiring adaptability and increased visibility for CFO and the executive team. At the First Pan-Australian Digital FP&A Board, the panel of 7 high-profile speakers discussed how financial planning and analysis (FP&A) can adapt to the "New Normal".

The first Pan-Australian FP&A Board was held digitally as a response to the pandemic outbreak. This digital meeting was devoted to 6 facets of the New Normal FP&A including Scenario Planning, Cash Flow Planning, FP&A Team Building, Technology, Driver Based & Predictive Planning and FP&A Skills and Roles.

Finance, and FP&A, is facing specific challenges as far as multinational companies are concerned. What are these challenges and how can you deal with them?

The current world is full of dead budgets and unrealistic forecasts, and FP&A teams need to adapt quickly to prepare for the future. At the first Digital Pan-Asian FP&A Board, senior finance practitioners from large organisations shared their insights on a variety of topics.

While rolling forecasts have clear benefits, their successful implementation needs to consider several risk areas. The purpose of this article is to explore what consequences and costs a move to rolling forecasting has for the other actors involved in the process.

In this article, I would like to summarise this insightful meeting filled with practical presentations, interactive polling questions and compelling discussions around the six facets of the “New Normal” FP&A.

We are excited to share with you the results of the third annual FP&A Trends Survey! The research is based on insights from 338 finance professionals across a diverse set of industries around the globe. We focused our attention on the changing role of FP&A into a strategic partner and how technology can support this evolution.

By deploying integrated FP&A organisations see greater performance improvements compared with traditional FP&A processes. This is enabled by combining strategic planning, business planning and forecasting and operations planning and forecasting.

FP&A is going to thrive and evolve if it continues to enhance the decision-making process in an uncertain business environment. This is why we need to see a huge shift in the FP&A skill set. 

What is systems thinking and how can it be applied in a real-life finance business partnering scenario? A modern finance business partner requires a shift in mindset away from linear to more of interconnectedness.