How can you upskill in Data Analytics to transform your FP&A Department?

FP&A works on a jigsaw puzzle of major core financial statements and structure systems of the company. They need to be able to look around five years back and five years forward to identify abnormalities and trends, do balance sheet analytics, and conduct cost analysis to answer complex questions around how and where the company is making profit, how the firm behaves, who should be hired and where they should be placed as related to cost profiles, etc.

Of course, legacy FP&A Deparments have multiple Excel files in place to do all of this and this has worked for many years, but there are some major flows like the fact that data analysis is limited to 10 million rows of data or that some files live only in one computer.

FP&A must drive profitable business decisions. As companies increase investments in advanced analytics, CFOs and their FP&A leaders are well positioned to provide precise forecasts and actionable insights to support quick and accurate decision making.

However, dispersed organizational data and outdated, non-standardized reporting processes mean financial planning and analysis teams often fail to provide clear, decision-ready insights that businesses need to drive growth. Additionally, analysis by Gartner shows only 3% of companies have strategic…