The Changing Role Of Finance, and FP&A In The Modern Business Environment

Christina Homburg, a New York-based finance executive, originally from Germany, and educated in England, with over a decade of international experience, specializing in commercial and corporate finance in fast-paced global settings, including Fortune 500 companies, and start-ups. As US Regional CFO at Marley Spoon, a global e-commerce company, she guided the $250m US business to EBIT profitability in two years. Now, as Global Head of M&A, Christina efficiently navigates complex acquisitions in the US, and EU markets.  

Through this article, Christina highlights the evolving role of finance teams, particularly FP&A, in the face of modern business challenges. He emphasizes the need for finance teams to transition from traditional spreadsheet-focused roles to more generative, business partnership-oriented roles.

As a finance professional, you have likely engaged in multiple discussions about AI, technology, automation, and the evolving role of the CFO. However, less attention is often given to how these changes impact traditional finance teams, particularly FP&A, in the face of modern business challenges.

As CFOs transition into more generative roles as change agents, and strategic visionaries, this shift cascades down to finance teams. The traditional focus on spreadsheets, and numbers is expanding to encompass broader business partnership, and change management within a highly complex business environment.

Finance teams now face a dichotomy within business. On one side, there’s a slowdown driven by macroeconomic uncertainty, budget cuts, and resource constraints. On the other, there’s an urgent push for expansion, ecosystem growth, and rapid technological innovation at pace. This tension, combined with a deluge of data from various sources, has made budgeting, forecasting, and strategic planning increasingly complex. FP&A teams must navigate this data-rich landscape whilst extending their scope beyond traditional analytics to drive change across multiple departments.

This evolution also brings to light several key issues: data debt from complex, and voluminous information sources, process debt as teams struggle to focus on decision-making rather than repetitive tasks, and resource debt in finding talent equipped for today’s needs, such as change management and data-driven storytelling. So, what can finance teams do in the face of so much complexity?

My experience as Head of Finance US at a global e-commerce company exemplifies this evolution and provides some good learnings for finance teams to consider. Like most companies, we were faced with significant challenges from COVID-19, macroeconomic shocks, inflation, and changing customer behavior, and as such were tasked with increasing our contribution margin by over 300 basis points. This substantial goal required innovative approaches with limited resources, under an extremely tight timeline.

Throughout this project we learnt several things. Firstly, we learned that collaborative working was key. Cross-functional cooperation led by FP&A teams, from ideation through execution, including AB testing, proved essential. We also learnt that alignment on ways of working, and a shared language across teams was key, particularly between finance, and digital. And we learnt that our FP&A team worked most effectively when they moved out of their PL silos, and worked collectively on the big picture, including non-financial data, combined with focusing on their areas of financial specialties. As such, we introduced a new way of working, a Project Management Office (PMO) governance structure to manage this complex project, providing clear frameworks, and resource allocation. This structure was crucial given the additional workload, and short timeline for results, as well as supporting the FP&A team to focus more on business partnership.

Throughout this process, we also discovered opportunities beyond our traditional P&L analysis. Firstly FP&A teams needed to consider customer-centric metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), and willingness to purchase (WTP) when evaluating pricing and product changes to name a few. We also found that customer, and cohort health, reflected in Lifetime Value (LTV), became our company’s north star, encompassing metrics like basket size, margin, cost per acquisition, and cohort behavior to govern success of initiatives, and measure company health. This was a big change as traditionally margin was the key focus of FP&A, and finance, however we recognized that this was metric was no longer broad enough.

Looking forward, and taking some of these learnings, finance teams need structures that foster closer relationships with other business units, including cross-functional ownership, and rotation of finance resources across departments. This approach can develop a holistic understanding of business issues, and enhance collaborative working. Key to this is clear alignment on ways of working across the business, and focusing on outcomes first, and foremost rather than just procedures, or processes.

Additionally, the skills, and experience needed for successful finance teams, particularly FP&A, must evolve. CFOs need to build teams that are not only curious, adaptable, and analytically strong with solid finance knowledge, but also capable of working in very different ways, such as learning SQL for report automation or developing project management skills to manage complex projects. This is particularly relevant given traditional finance certification curriculums have not changed significantly in decades, and as such do not reflect the changing business environment.

Drawing on lessons from my company, as well as common practices used in high tech companies, there are several disruptive approaches to hiring, and upskilling talent for the evolving business landscape that could be considered. One major initiative seen in high tech firms, and my own company, involves transitioning financial models to automated reporting systems, leveraging Business Intelligence (BI), and data science teams. This shift not only improves efficiency, but also requires a new set of skills from FP&A professionals. High tech companies have sighted investing in teaching analysts SQL as one disruptive approach, empowering them to directly query, and manipulate large datasets. Industry trends also show finance teams increasingly seeking candidates with data visualization skills, programming knowledge, and experience with cloud-based analytics platforms. Going a step further, some companies are even exploring non-traditional talent pools, such as hiring data scientists, or statisticians into FP&A roles to bring fresh perspectives and advanced analytical capabilities. This underlines the shift in focus around creating multidisciplinary teams that can blend financial acumen with technological proficiency to drive more insightful, and forward-looking financial analysis.

In summary, by embracing these changes and considering new, and creative methodologies, finance teams can evolve alongside CFOs, becoming integral partners in driving business strategy, and innovation. The future of FP&A lies in its ability to provide holistic, data-driven insights that balance financial performance with non-financial data, and long-term business health, moving from reporting a story to driving the narrative.