As demand for Financial Planning & Analysis’s (FP&A’s) services has increased in recent years, teams are having to work ever harder on analytical projects just to maintain a significant influence on business decisions.
Last month, we brought over 30 heads of FP&A together to discuss how the world’s leading companies aim to increase the impact of FP&A’s business analysis.
Four Takeaways
Four good takeaways came from these discussions. Overall, the most successful FP&A teams are more concerned with being a champion for better use of data analysis.
Takeaway 1–Set expectations for analyst behavior: The heads of FP&A generally agreed that a good process for generating insights must start with clear guidelines on what analysts should do in specific situations. Managers should reinforce this framework through formal and informal coaching sessions and best practices sharing amongst analysts.
Otherwise, analysts—especially junior analysts—will struggle when confronted with vague requests and with requests where the “perfect” data isn't readily available, wasting scarce analytic resources and tarnishing FP&A’s brand as a valued business partner
