The UK left the EU on Friday 31st January 2020, with mixed emotions, and eleven months of colossal negotiations on a trade deal ahead.  Business is also conflicted, with many concerns, but overall the reduction of political uncertainty has fostered a return to optimism.

A budget expresses thoughts with numbers. Numbers can be financial like income and cash flow or non-financial like time and volume. Expressing thoughts with financial and non-financial numbers can be done through a variety of methods. One method is zero based budgeting which like all methods has strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of this article is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of zero based budgeting. 

In February 2020, the Dubai FP&A Board gathered for the 7th time to discuss the subject of "Building Winning Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) Teams". Lukas Herbert, FP&A Director at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, facilitated the meeting.

As I walk around various offices or even in social gatherings, I find many conversations about artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), and big data. And logically, then, the discussion quite often rolls into how our life will change due to the availability of data, how each of our actions is turning into data, how future consumer behaviour thus can be predicted etc. Thus people quite often discuss predictive analysis (PA), and we hear stories about its use in elections to predict voters' behaviour, customer behaviour, payment risks, etc.

A core aspect of financial planning & analysis (FP&A) is forecasting and budgeting. In this article, exposed are some of the more common myths so frequently accepted as truth within FP&A groups around the globe.
 

In this issue, we would like to look at key performance indicators (KPIs) from the perspective of a CFO. We will also discover which five important things will improve the effectiveness of a company's planning processes and look into how the analytics of FP&A are connected to the Simpson’s paradox. We will explain why data visualisation is considered to be a game changer for FP&A and then explain the 4 steps necessary to become a more valued FP&A professional.

The 27th London FP&A Board will take place on the 10th of September 2020 to debate the subject of "Digitised FP&A Business Partnering"

The challenges of running a modern business get tougher and tougher. Mainly externally driven challenges including regulation, increases in business complexity for example in the level of competition, the nature of competition, a more complex global supply chain, increases in the speed of change, in no small measure driven by the acceleration in computing and digital technologies. All this leads to a more uncertain and more volatile business environment.

The 7th meeting of the Brussels FP&A Board took place on 13 February 2020 at the Robert Half Offices in Groot-Bijgaarden. Hans Gobin, International FP&A Board Ambassador, facilitated the meeting for the first time in Brussels. The meeting was sponsored by SAP and Robert Half.

I would like to share my experience on my company’s journey towards a better budgeting process. I hope this will provide a starting point for fellow finance professionals to explore better ways to improve your own budget planning process.