Industry Report: CFO’s Look To FP&A Teams to Develop New Approaches to Support Business Growth More Strategically

A new report today from ICit Business Intelligence, a market leader in financial and operational planning and Workday UK platinum partner, has provided insights into the role that Financial, Planning and Analysis (FP&A) plays in businesses today and the value it delivers to business stability and growth. The findings highlight how inefficiencies with forecasting and modelling within finance teams are impacting organisations’ ability to stabilise, maintain or grow.

The new report, titled Strengthening the Role of FP&A During Economic Uncertainty, surveyed 264 UK Senior Finance Decision Makers, looking specifically at planning and budgeting, integrated financial planning, management and performance reporting, and forecasting and modelling. It asked questions on their role, delving into how they currently support their businesses and how they could be more effective.

Too many low value tasks in FP&A

Currently, an overwhelming 81% of FP&A professionals stated that they are stuck in low value, manual tasks in their role according to the new research. In addition, three quarters (75%) of those surveyed said that they have long cycles for FP&A activity. Alongside this, despite 92% of respondents stating they have a specialist planning, budgeting and forecasting tool or technology solution in place, 1 in 4 are dissatisfied with the quality of data they are retrieving. In addition to this, four in five (80%) believe they need to improve data driven decision making.

Financial scenario modelling needs big improvements

The research also delved into how teams use technology and where it could take a different approach. When asked, 71% of finance professionals still find they have disparate and disconnected legacy systems in place that prove cumbersome to maintain and over two thirds (68%) state that their scenario modelling capability is manual and not mature.

Mark Bodger, Director at ICit Business Intelligence, commenting on the survey’s findings said: “FP&A has a critical role to play in supporting this business focus. We know from our data that almost half of the Senior Finance Decision Makers we surveyed agreed that board reporting of financial data was one of the most critical parts of their, or their teams’ job (46%) and over half (56%) said that the board reporting packs are a hugely valued and an integral part of strategic business decision making.”

He continued: “The introduction of a new technology approach has the potential to propel the entire function into a real-time provider of strategic data and key insights for business. Businesses must assess and identify where this is currently going wrong and make the changes necessary to ensure they are getting the best from their finance team – both in terms of the tasks they are performing and the value they can add with financial insights and data.”

Tim Wakeford, Vice President Financial Management Product Strategy, Workday also commented: “As we enter 2023, economic uncertainty will continue to impact business decisions. Against this backdrop, traditional planning practices can leave organisations poorly equipped to anticipate and respond to economic or market shifts – they find themselves hobbled by siloed and stale data, manual and time-consuming tasks, and a view of finance as little more than the keeper of transactional data. FP&A teams need systems that can respond to the dynamic changes in business but also minimise the impact of future disruptions. More progressive organisations are recognising legacy technology and traditional static planning are no longer suited to the moment we find ourselves in and are instead opting for a more collaborative, data-driven approach.”