The Ledger

Driving Execution With FP&A

More and more companies are realizing the power of planning and forecasting. While it is helpful to have a view of what could happen in the future, the best way to predict the future is to make it. Success is built on driving results rather than predicting them. The key is to attain the appropriate insight that will give finance professionals the answer to “How?” instead of “What If?” By combining FP&A with an Execution Management system, companies will gain the ability to re-invent their business processes to gain more insight into the future.

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You Have Options With Innovation

When it comes to innovation, there is no “one size fits all” approach. At its core, innovation is all about solving problems, and there are just as many ways to innovate as there are types of problems to solve. Leaders need to start treating innovation like other business disciplines- as a set of tools that are designed to accomplish specific objectives. An “Innovation Matrix” was created to help identify the right strategy to solve a problem by asking the questions, “how well can we define the problem?” and “how well can we define the skill domain(s) needed to solve it?”.

Read More at The Harvard Business Review >

Slower Innovation Can Be More Valuable

The business world today has adapted a fast culture that is often about rapid response to a new blip on the radar, leading to a win for companies who can mobilize and capitalize quickly. However, there is still a lot of value in a slow culture when it comes to innovation. Slow innovation focuses on changes that you see coming but that may not be ready to transform your business immediately.

“The major benefit of slow innovation is prescience; if you’re patient and committed, slow-innovation projects could alert you to an idea, trend, or gap in the market that would have otherwise appeared to “happen overnight.””

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Breaking Down Data Silos to Get the Full Picture

The finance function in any organization is constantly charged with tasks like budgeting, planning, forecasting, and reporting. However, many finance professionals only see bits and pieces of their data and struggle to see the full picture. The data they see usually comes from planned or projected revenue and expenditures, but they really want to see the data that tells the “how” and “why”. The solution lies in breaking down the data silos and combining data from other applications into an enterprise modeling platform.

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