Which business decisions should your FP&A team support?
Demand for analytic-driven decision making across the business has continuously increased. As more departments build analytic capabilities, finance analytics governance becomes unclear. There is an increased burden on the finance teams to deliver analytics to support business decisions and also support their financial planning, budgeting and forecasting exercise.
Finance analytics teams are stretched, overworked and always in a crisis mode with a low morale.
Ask questions to assess your capabilities:
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What role should finance analytics play in supporting business decisions?
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How much time is spent by the finance team supporting business decisions Vs doing finance analytics?
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How clean and mature is your data?
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How do the best finance teams support analytics?
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Are you leveraging technology ? Automated ?
Harness Data
Good data is hard to create and manage in the long run. Employ dedicated resources to manage accurate data, within and across systems. Financial Analysts never find the time or have data expertise to maintain data. Build a simple and effective process to create and maintain enterprise wide core data.
Leverage Technology
Leveraging technology starts with having credible data and best business processes built around it no matter what tools you use. Find ways to harness the best data models and design and automate using self-service tools to answer common business questions.
Prioritize Projects
In the finance department of a medium sized company as many as 75 different projects were in progress - ranging from specialized projects within treasury to enterprise wide analytic transformations - causing vagueness, cost overruns and stretching resources thin. Organize and prioritize your data and IT projects - between the ones that are building new capabilities and daily operations, segregating further between finance and business needs.