In this article, Steve Morlidge argues that the quality of business forecasting is unacceptably poor. He goes on to present six simple principles that will help executives significantly improve the performance of their forecast processes.

Imagine you have 3 minutes to explain to a six year old what FP&A is and what  place it takes in a business ecosystem. Tough, isn’t it? What are things that a six year old would understand? For example, animals, right?

A twenty nine year old newly minted FP&A manager for an NYSE listed public company sat in utter bewilderment across CEO and CFO, as the CFO said to CEO, “the most important position in his department is FP&A”.

The Seattle FP&A Board will meet on 14 March 2019 for the third time. The professional debate will be devoted to the subject of FP&A Business Partnering.

The San Francisco FP&A Board will meet on the 12th of March 2019 for the third time. The professional debate will be devoted to the subject of FP&A Business Partnering. 

At a high level, the best-performing organisations take a more rigorous approach to FP&A.  They have tightly integrated all the components of FP&A, merged operational and financial planning, and have a deep understanding of how operational metrics drive their financial results.

The 22nd London FP&A Board will take place on the 7th of March 2019.

Over the last month, the Brexit weather becomes more overcast, with the House of Commons vote on Theresa May’s deal suspended due to evident lack of support from MPs. Almost every day has seen a storm, with the deal being attacked from all sides and the EU leadership maintaining a hard line.

In 1992 a professor named Robert Kaplan and a consultant named David Norton created a measurement system called The Balanced Scorecard.  A reason for creating The Balanced Scorecard was to go beyond financial statements in measuring what businesses do in order to improve performance.

The below article summarises an approach developed throughout the years of my work and explores ways to fully integrate FP&A with other divisions and remove barriers in cooperation.