The Ledger

Who Knew FP&A Could Be…..Fun?!

“Technology is eliminating grunt work and boosting the value of financial planning and analysis.”

As with many corporate processes, technology is driving fundamental changes in FP&A. Thanks to a new generation of tools, the drudgery factor is lessening and practitioners are spending more of their time doing actual planning and analysis. This new business environment drives a greater need for strategic input. More than half of the work in FP&A used to be full of data-driven and monotonous tasks, but thanks to new tools, the role encompasses a plethora of strategic activities, from budgeting and forecasting to management reporting, and business-decision guidance.

Read More at CFO Magazine >

Redesigning Models Using the Plan-Do-Check-Act Principle

In many large global companies, people complain about growing organizational complexity with lots of silos, scattered accountabilities, which leads to inadequate decision-making and steering capabilities. Steering means setting targets, and entering an area of closed-loop thinking and acting. Commonly we see a “Plan-Do-Check-Act” closed loop established as steering model principle. Data comes at us faster than we can make sense of it, and redesigning a steering model can give us the insights we are lacking.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

The Benefits of a Steering Model Redesign

Every executive team beginning to map out a transformational strategy needs to translate that strategy into concrete activities. And once executed as operational processes, that strategy can be determined to be effective only if the impact can be measured. For the CFO, this means instituting a steering model that maps directly to the transformation being undertaken.A “steering model,” in short, is a framework for operationalizing corporate strategies and objectives into measurable targets.

Read more at The Digitalist by SAP >

Strong Strategies Require Balance

“Successful strategy execution calls for skillful orchestration of sometimes opposing forces and competing needs.”

Putting a strategy into practice can be very difficult. The main obstacle to executing strategy is the failure to balance the tensions that characterize the execution effort. Getting strategy done well often calls for trade-offs between delivering short-term results and implementing foundational changes that require time. Yet companies that can achieve a balance between opposing forces are far more likely to realize successful strategies that endure.

Read More at The Harvard Business Review >