With constantly evolving role of the finance function in the organization, these are FP&A practitioners who feel the most pressure to be jack-of-all-trades. Growing variety and complexity of tasks force them to develop skills, both hard and soft, to keep up with all requirements and expectations.

There is a specific product on the market I could associate FP&A with, and this is a Swiss multi-tool.

So, if FP&A were a Swiss multi-tool, how could we sell it?

Finance business partnering is not a new concept and has been around for a while. Well, not just for a while, for more than 60 years. Since then, finance community could not come up with one single definition of finance business partnering. It’s still unclear whether it’s a job title, or a role, or the way of working, etc.

Indeed, the concept is not the easiest one to define, but its benefits for the companies are intuitively obvious and well known.

FP&A is the sexiest job in finance… While this may seem like an overstatement, FP&A positions are becoming incredibly popular and sought-after.

Moving into FP&A from other fields of finance, such as accounting and audit, has recently become very trendy. Internet is full of advice, courses and trainings focused on this transition.

So, what is so special about the FP&A role that it attracts that much attention and has almost become a buzzword within the finance community?

Hurricanes are among the most violent storms on our planet producing strong winds, heavy rains and floodings.

Budgeting is a type of short-term planning the goal of which is to transform strategic objectives into operational plan by allocating available resources.

Though one is a natural phenomenon and the other is a business process, budgets and hurricanes have more in common than it may be noticed at first sight.

FP&A teams do not have a crystal ball… Yet, they have to answer management’s questions about the future every day.

Being asked for advice about uncertain future outcomes is flattering, but at the same time it adds much pressure and responsibility.

To feel more comfortable and confident with estimates, FP&A teams should embrace uncertainty and incorporate it in their core activities.

Being one of the first and mandatory concepts taught in finance classes, the DCF model has recently become a subject of debates in regards of its bias towards innovation. Facing highly uncertain innovation opportunities, companies tend to use ubiquitous NPV as an easy-to-understand analytical tool that can help quantify uncertain future and assess outcomes. However, cautious estimates of the future cash flows and oversimplified application of the tool itself lead to underinvestment in innovative projects.

Budget and annual planning cycle - these words can make many people tremble. Aimed at determining firm’s short-term objectives and transforming them into operational plan by allocating available resources, annual planning exercise is mostly considered by its stakeholders to be a curse rather than a savior.

Marketing teams, being among FP&A’s counterparties, are usually considered to be the most creative people in the company. They are responsible for understanding consumers, building relationships with them and eventually getting them interested in company’s products and services. To perform these functions marketing, as a discipline, possesses a wide range of tools and techniques that can be adopted by FP&A professionals to become better business partners.

Emerging FP&A practice steps out of the shadow of other finance functions as a standalone entity and involves its own mission, goals, organization, processes, tools and skills.

This article discusses typical activities and key responsibilities of the FP&A practitioners, the range of skills required to perform these tasks, common roles and career path of the FP&A professionals and how FP&A is distinguished of other finance functions and disciplines.

Many FP&A professionals have faced the misunderstanding of the role of the FP&A function and its core activities in the company. Unfortunately, the existence and support of some of the misperceptions create a negative image of FP&A practitioners in the eyes of their colleagues and make the profession less attractive from the standpoint of graduates and young specialists. For FP&A professionals it is critical to be aware of these misconceptions to address them as soon as possible.

From a strategic standpoint, FP&A capabilities to provide business insights and drive informed decision-making can become a source of competitive advantage for the company. That is the reason why many finance and FP&A leaders are taking the steps to transform their functions.

This article describes the FP&A maturity assessment model focused on major tasks of the function and built around 3 key areas – processes, tools/systems and people.

Assessing efficiency of businesses, projects and processes, the finance function does not always set an example in terms of best productivity. There is always a room for process optimization in which lean approach can help by focusing on value maximization while minimizing efforts.

Many finance and FP&A leaders are now facing transformational projects trying to find the future shape of the FP&A organization. Comparing FP&A performance metrics (qualitative and quantitative) against the peers and best practices can be very useful when assessing the current state of FP&A, creating a vision of the future state, finding the ways to enhance existing capabilities and identifying opportunities for improvement.

Fast-changing environment of the digital age requires not only rapid adaptation of business but also of the finance function, which leads to the evolving responsibilities and roles of the finance professionals.

Young people choose their career in finance as it seems to be easy to measure success: there is a beaten path from an entry-level accountant/auditor or financial analyst to finance manager and later to CFO. But with all this professional success going with a bunch of certifications and high salary, the real question that comes up is whether it is possible to be happy at work?