The FP&A Trends Webinar: Mastering Analytical Transformation with FP&A Trends Maturity Model
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The FP&A Trends Webinar: Mastering Analytical Transformation with FP&A Trends Maturity Model
Click here to view details and register
By Olga Rudakova, Finance Professional and Data Skills Trainer
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” - African Proverb
If you are about to embark on a digitalisation journey, do not forget to take your employees with you. This short article explains how FP&A can help organisations avoid the three-to-five-year gap between the technology adoption level and the mindset of employees.
Many companies look at digital transformation through a technology lens – we focus on:
They set up a modern tool for real-time reporting and in-depth data analysis only to find out in a couple of weeks, that nothing has changed in their decision-making process. As a business analyst in corporations and later on as an external consultant, I have repeatedly witnessed top or middle management ignoring data insights in their decision making. Even when those insights were made readily available to them. Intuition, opinions, isolated observations, lack of critical thinking cloud our vision.
Even though understanding technology is important, no shiny real-time reporting tool can help us until we change the way we make decisions. The biggest obstacles on the way to a data-driven organisation are not technological but psychological. Cultivating an insights-driven culture is the most time-consuming and challenging step.
1. Begin to shape the culture way before the technology is in place. Done right, technology will give your employees the data they seek, not ignore.
2. Go beyond Business Intelligence (BI) tool training – focus on the skills relevant for data-driven decision making:
3. Decision-making is a process, so manage it as a process: with design, execution and monitoring quality at every stage. Establish formal processes for making important decisions in your organisation and personally follow them down to the letter.
Consider incorporating managerial techniques that dramatically improve decision-making quality and encourage reliance on data:
4. Incorporate external data in your everyday decisions. Do not rely solely on what your internal systems tell you. Stop asking your team about the gap in the budget. Use competitor data, market and industry data as a source of relevant context and objective benchmarks.
5. Be a change agent in your organisation. The FP&A team has always been the closest to data sources and most skilled in extracting relevant insights and meaning from them. Help the rest of the business acquire these skills as they are no longer a competitive advantage, but the basis for survival.
As an FP&A leader in your organisation be a gentle guide and rigid challenger. Question decisions made with you or just in your presence. Encourage reliance on financial data, not an exchange of opinions. Otherwise, your team will end up as in the famous quote from James Barksdale “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.”
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