FP & A VS Finance Business Partner

Recently, we debated the roles and titles of business[1]supporting finance managers, whether to call them FP&A Managers or Finance Business Partners. It sounds philosophical; however, we started to expect more from our finance colleagues and see them as a one-stop-shop where GMs or Commercial Directors seek answers to their questions.

As appealing as it sounds, delivering the answers or results can become exceedingly overwhelming. In the never-ending world of automation, integrating systems and bringing in BOTs to replace FTE employees, it is getting increasingly demanding from the ones who try to tell stories about numbers and bring them to life. Storytelling has always been the compelling part of the FP&A job, and it is becoming more important in a data-driven world and a skill differentiator.

During the early 2000s, the FP&A manager’s job was to collect volumes, prices and costs and come up with a P&L analysis. We had to analyse promotions and value creation from gross to net analysis, with minimal data either from market research agencies, such as Nielsen/Kantar, or again minimal EPOS data from some retailer partners. As a result, the incoming data was limited, with a time lag and the world being straightforward. Even though consumers and sales channels were less sophisticated, it was easy to estimate the consumption, trends and financials even under the hyperinflationary environment in the developing market. Excel is used for analysis and graphs, and some basic dashboards were introduced for KPI monitoring.

Consumers have evolved and become very sophisticated; their needs have changed along with their expectations, and they have become impatiently service oriented. They start prioritising convenience above all—most preferably at their fingertips, through mobiles and tablets. Sales channels started focusing on meeting consumer demands and moving towards online sales, trying to predict consumer expectations/behaviors/trends. All of a sudden, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies that ended up with loads of data were unable to analyse it all, and there was a massive burden on the Supply Chains, such as not enough warehouses, transportation became a bottleneck, wrong predictions ended up at wrong inventories, service level issues and unhappy consumers becoming disloyal and shopping around for quick satisfaction. Nowadays, it is all about Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (AI/ML) technologies used for forecasting and analysis, interactive data visualisations tailored for different users in the corporate hierarchy.

As a result, the role of the FP&A has evolved into finance business partnering, building trust, aligning cross-functional teams, driving quick decision-making at relevant levels, such as follows:

- Becoming the link between the customer-facing sales department,
- Trying to become super agile supply chain and manufacturing departments to deliver OTIF great quality products,
- Supporting the market by analysing the trends and consumer behaviors based on real-time data,
- Trying to cope and beat the raw material inflation, which has not been seen in developed economies for decades, through cost-saving initiatives and efficiencies, along with procurement, and
- Trying to increase the required price without impacting consumer consumption.

Obviously, this was all supported via the IT systems and a plethora of data behind the scenes. As the BOTs have replaced the FTEs doing mainly the repetitive tasks, for the remaining talented employees, “Story Telling” has become a distinctive strength combining the roles of analyst, data scientist, and influencer underneath, providing clear insights, leveraging storytelling with clarity and impact to influence decision making and creating value for the business.

The winners in the ever-changing and evolving world will be the ones who can link the dots with other departments, derive conclusions on the prompt data analysis and make recommendations to drive the business forward at light speed without blinking. So please fasten your seat belts and enjoy the ride while we continue driving into the uncomfortable and unknown.