Budgeting no longer helps organisations to perform better. On the contrary. It prevents organisations from performing to their full potential, because given the level of volatility, uncertainty and ambiguity in the world only thing we know for sure is that we don’t know. “The future ain’t what it used to be”, as the American baseball player Yogi Berra once put it.

At the third meeting of the AI/ML FP&A Committee, Xena Ugrinsky, Principal and Founder at GenreX, talked about the future of FP&A and some ways of incorporating AI into the financial forecasting process. Also, Xena provided an example explaining how Stanley Black & Decker improved financial forecasting by 60%.

We all know the budget and we all hate it! So why do we continue to do it when it represents a static picture of the world seen at one moment in time? It’s not like we haven’t realized that the world is a lot more dynamic these days.

On November 5th 2019 the sixth meeting of the Brussels FP&A Board, launched in November 2016, gathered 40 financial professionals from companies such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, Barco, Bekaert, Puratos, UCB, to name but a few.

The idea of a budget is so core to financial wisdom that it’s one of the first lessons we learnt from our parents for keeping our finances (and lives) on track. Annual Budgeting exercises have been the norm in almost all companies, big and small, across the world for decades. However, in recent years, there has been a lot of news about companies, some very prominent headline-grabbing ones, doing away with their annual budgets and moving to a monthly rolling forecast-based system.

Is your most fancied FP&A RPA initiative not delivering the anticipated benefits? You are not alone. So, what are the most common pitfalls? And more importantly, how can you sidestep them and increase your odds of a successful RPA implementation?

The Copenhagen FP&A Board took place on the 29th of October to debate the key factors for successful Rolling Forecast implementation.

Working at a local business unit often doesn’t give you access to sophisticated corporate systems to monitor performance. However, as a financial you are quickly immersed into daily operations, learning how things really work. A sample will be given of key indicators used to improve the cash forecast and position of a business unit. 

As an FP&A professional, one of the key foundation points is to build trust and respect with the business. Trust comes in many forms and is built over time, and is something that cannot be obtained immediately. Respect relies on providing quality and timely outputs that the business can rely on as a trusted partner. 

So how did I get there? This article is a snapshot of Turgut Kapisiz's journey and the steps involved.

In the age of metrics and measurement, what are we doing to measure the satisfaction or happiness of those involved in FP&A? When organizations have low employee engagement, they incur additional costs related to the overall drain on productivity, turn-over, etc.., but more importantly companies are missing out on the upside potential to grow and compete based on the creativity, innovation and hard-work invested by an engaged workforce.