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 Wai Yee Tsang, Senior FP&A Consultant
The London FP&A Board met on 20 April 2023 for the 30th meeting since its establishment. The event was attended by 23 finance leaders and senior FP&A practitioners across various sectors. The representatives of GSK, State Street, Genpact, London Stock Exchange Group, ConvaTec, Colliers, FirstGroup plc, AkzoNobel and many other companies discussed practical considerations for effective FP&A Storytelling, focusing on the building blocks of the narrative, visualisation and data.
The event was sponsored by Wolters Kluwer in partnership with IWG and Michael Page.
This article summarises some key takeaways from the meeting, including insights shared by Alex Sashenkov, Head of Commercial Finance at AkzoNobel.
At the start of the meeting, participants shared their thoughts on what factors contribute to successful FP&A storytelling.
The most cited factors include:
While storytelling may become a skill differentiator for FP&A professionals, recent FP&A Trends Survey results show that only 33% of the time is spent on storytelling with data. This represented a slight fall from 35% in 2021 for over 330 respondents.
At the meeting, we dived into three building blocks of FP&A Storytelling:
The Board discussed how FP&A Storytelling could bring numbers to life and focused on the importance of the narrative.
This included capturing the following:
The narrative should also consider an emotional appeal, e.g. how you want the audience to perceive you. The participants shared the importance of socialising with key stakeholders before presenting bad news so they don't hear about this for the first time in a formal forum.
The forum highlighted the importance of collaboration with stakeholders when crafting the story. This is especially important when the FP&A team preparing the materials may not be presenting them. For example, the CFO may lead the presentation for investor meetings, and, therefore, they must be engaged throughout the process. Iterative reviews and edits may be necessary to ensure the key messages crafted are appropriate to the end audience.
To add credibility, the FP&A Board members highlighted that the output should be:
The Board further discussed how to tailor the FP&A Story to your audience:
FP&A Trends Group have identified these categories of visualisation maturity. Their specifics are briefly outlined in the figure above. After assessing where you are on this scale, you will have to choose between two options to move to the next level. These options are either to improve your FP&A storytelling skills or technology. The forum had an opportunity to listen to practical insights about storytelling with data.
Alex Sashenkov, Head of Commercial Finance at AkzoNobel, presented his practical experience on the subject. He reflected on the challenges in delivering the monthly performance review to different audiences with different backgrounds and experiences and explored how our cognitive abilities learn and process new information.
The sensory memory sees and hears the various inputs from the environment. This is then selected for attention by the working memory, which has a limited processing capacity. When a lot of text, data and visuals are presented, the message cannot be conveyed clearly as the working memory goes into cognitive overload and cannot process the information.
Alex suggested we tend to prefer reading over listening. When a slide is presented with much text, we will try to read it while listening to the presenter. It can often result in confusion. Although the presenter may have much experience and put much work into preparing the analysis and presentation, the audience cannot digest it easily. Remembering that the presenter is already familiar with the material and underlying data is important. The audience may be seeing the information for the first time. If the presentation contains too much information, the audience may be unable to filter out the key points easily.
In highlighting this blind spot, Alex shared some suggestions on how information can be presented:
In addition, Alex shared a few other techniques that might be useful when presenting complex information:
The International FP&A Board identified the top six technology trends shaping FP&A Storytelling, outlined in the picture above.
The London FP&A Board Members also discussed the role of data in FP&A.
Martin Watson, Strategic Account Director at CCH Tagetik, highlighted the sense of burden and opportunity that finance leaders feel when they think about data. It is the burden of managing an ever-increasing volume and variety of data (internal and external); and the potential insights and actions that we all know data can unlock if we manage it well.
Martin explained that many technologies help leaders gain confidence and insight into their data (and the huge advances in data/performance management in the past five years). He also suggested that the first step is to pause and understand these capabilities before getting too excited or afraid of technology.
Martin led the break-out group discussion on Data and shared the key points raised by the group on how to identify and analyse relevant data for the narrative effectively:
Through extended practical discussion, the attendees figured out the key steps for effective FP&A storytelling that involve:
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