FP&A Trends: Managing Fixed Costs During Uncertainty

When looking to reduce fixed costs, Karnawat suggests investigating these expense categories:

• Payroll and benefits
• Supplier relationships
• Outsourcing
• Cost of operations and value creation
• Culture

Read more at FP&A Trends >

CFO Crisis Leadership – Open a War Room

Managing during a crisis takes on a different set of priorities, according to a six-time CFO. “The first — respond as effectively as you can to short-term needs while preserving cash and liquidity. Second, build engagement between finance and procurement teams. And third, ensure efficiency and be more responsive to quickly changing demands and shifting priorities.”

Read more at CFO Dive >

Employ Strategies to Turn Around Business Performance

“Explore strategic options under a “no-constraint rule”. Many finance business partners were not able to get the best ideas out of their key internal stakeholders because many gave strategic options vis-à-vis the resources the business had. Suggestions for turning around the operations become constrained by the resources these stakeholders thought they had or could deploy at their disposal. It’s important to encourage key stakeholders to “free their mind” and consider the turnaround strategy as if there were no resource constraints. This encourages them to think beyond the company’s financial position at that moment.” C.F. Wong, ACMA, CGMA

Read more at Financial Management >

Nine Key Traits from CFOs at Efficient Growth Companies

A recent Gartner survey of CFOs have identified nine traits CFOs should implement for better performance during a crisis including fighting scope creep, protecting costs that support competitive advantages, and using a mix of budget models to identify the activities that truly deliver value.

Read more at Gartner >

Are You Really Data-Driven?

“Being a data-driven organization takes more than great technology and quality data. Like other aspects of digital transformation, it requires the right internal processes and culture — where the business properly guides incentives and takes steps to ensure that data is driving decisions appropriately. Failing to do this can lead to data misuse, which can be costly and hard to identify.”

Read more at Harvard Business Review >

Modeling Through the Current Crisis

“Creating financial and operating models is critical to creating alignment across the enterprise, and FP&A professionals are making numerous scenarios to understand actions, impacts and options. FP&A professionals have a sober view of the duration of this crisis, with 66% creating financial models that assume the crisis will last for three quarters or more. This was consistent across companies of all revenue sizes.”

Read more at AFP Online >

Can Your Analytics Program Handle a Downturn?

“Here are two thoughts that are useful for calibrating analysis: (1) An analytics system is only as good as the analysts and the sophistication of the toolsets they employ. (2) A truly next-gen analytics program must encourage analysts to take advantage of the technology tools they now have at their disposal.”

Read more at CFO.com >

Making Better Decisions is Both Art and Science

“External factors will always have an impact, and this includes luck, as good and bad fortune can clearly be influential in determining success or failure. But a sound internal approach to decision-making will insulate the business from this, while also mitigating the stress attached to making decisions.”

Read more at CFO.com >

AFPs Eight Steps to Rolling Forecasts

With more organizations shifting from traditional budgeting to rolling forecasts, The Association for Financial Professionals has shared their list of 8 steps to help finance teams avoid missteps at every stage from goal setting to tracking performance.

Read the 8 Steps for Creating a Rolling Forecast >