3 Areas where you need to challenge the status quo in FP&A
People tend to do things the way they have always been done.
Given our busy lives, we all experience inertia at times - especially when things are going “ok”. Often, it takes a real emergency to rethink how we do things - say, a missed deadline because compiling a report took too long.
Then, we wish we had challenged the status quo sooner.
These are three areas in FP&A where I often see opportunities to rethink how we do things:
1) Report creation
Do you copy/paste numbers from one file to another one? Do you spend a lot of time cleaning or reformatting data? Do you spend more time than you would like looking for wrong numbers because the process is too manual?
2) Month End Close
Does it take you hours to get the prior month's actuals from the Accounting system in the format you need it? Do you struggle to tie out numbers between different systems? Do you have to chase and repeatedly follow up with your cross-functional business partners about inputs for variance analysis?
3) Planning / Forecasting
Do you spend more time updating the forecast than discussing results and resulting risks and opportunities with your business partners? Do you have so many last-minute iterations during annual planning that you feel you don’t have time for anything else besides updating slides?
If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, then it’s time for you to take a step back to think outside the box and challenge the status quo.
If you’d like to learn more about FP&A, I offer help in three ways:
1️⃣ Subscribe to my free newsletter “FP&A Tuesday” here.
2️⃣ Listen to 75 bite-sized mini lessons and get FP&A advice on the go.
3️⃣ Join my live online course FP&A Bootcamp to master FP&A in two weeks.
