Don’t Be A Techie – Be A Techknow
Anders Liu-Lindberg
Leading advisor to senior Finance and FP&A leaders on creating impact through business partnering | Interim | VP Finance | Business Finance
This article is co-written by Christopher Argent and Anders Liu-Lindberg
Technology is changing the way we work and causing disruption to industries and professions. This also go for FP&A professionals who’ve seen a wide range of software been made available to them in the past decade. They’re even looking at the possibility of fully automated forecasting that is more accurate than what they could ever produce themselves.
However, it begs the question of how to respond to the changes. Should FP&A professionals become techies that know all about tech, how to create it, and how to implement in the FP&A department?
Here’s how to deal with tech
We know that being great at everything is an almost impossible task hence it doesn’t seem like a smart idea that all FP&A professionals should become techies. This would only hold true if robots could do all the work in FP&A. Then essentially the only work left would be to build and monitor the robots which techies would likely do well.
However, we don’t see that as a realistic scenario anytime soon. In fact, we’d argue that it’s much better for FP&A professionals to become techknows rather than techies. Let’s explain what we mean with that.
- First, we must understand what’s the end goal of FP&A and learn what it takes to realize this. Having defined the purpose of FP&A as “to drive the right strategic choices in the company” it would seem like a good starting point for FP&A to change the mindset to a more entrepreneurial/innovative one. That’s what’s going to drive value creation in the future.
- That said, technology would play a part in realizing this vision too, hence, it’s important that FP&A professionals understand the skills and resource gaps that exist in the company overall and in the FP&A department. Otherwise, you’ll fail on the HOW of tech because you won’t be able to implement solutions that work.
- Now it’s all about understanding the WHAT. What can automation do? What can analytics do? What can apps do? What role do all these play in making the right strategic choices? Likely you’ll come up with many uses of these technologies and get excited about how they can help you realize your vision and strategy.
- Once you understand the WHAT it’s time to get started, however, not being techies, you also need to know whom to turn to for implementation. It’s possible that you’ll have some techies in your company either in IT, BI & Analytics, or even within the FP&A department. That’s likely for larger companies and those resources you should draw on. If you don’t have these available, then look around for vendors that have this specialist knowledge and can help you with implementation.
Techknows know the WHAT of tech and they know who the real experts are to turn to. Sure, they might be able to build their own dashboards in Power BI, Tableau or the like but they shouldn’t know the HOW of implementation or coding.
Techknows free up time for work that matters
In simple terms techknows will use tech to enable them to become better business partners. That’s because they can spend more time on sharing insights with their stakeholders through which they influence their decisions.
Techies have a much harder time doing that as it’s not their core competence. At least most IT professionals would struggle with this and same with data scientists or even BI & Analytics people. And that’s okay because it’s all about focusing on your core competences rather than having to be a jack of all trades.
It’s not to say that tech doesn’t matter but rather that tech is simply an enabler to achieve better business decisions. Until robots can fully rule the world and make optimal decisions all the time then humans are still the deciding factor in decision-making. Hence, influencing decisions is the work that really matters for FP&A professionals – not doing coding or being an expert on all things tech.
So we say – become a techknow – and start using tech to your advantage while becoming a master at influencing decisions. That’s how FP&A professionals win in the future!
This was the ninth article in the series "Here's To The New Look FP&A Professional". You can the previous article(s) below.
Here's To The New Look FP&A Professional
Forget Numbers, Start Building People Relationships
First Step In Solving Any Problem Is Recognizing There Is One
EQ Trumps IQ Any Day And It's Time We Make It Count
Are You An Influencer Or Do You Take A Backseat?
FP&A Professionals, Do You Dare To Say "No"?
Model Me This. Model Me That. FP&A Can Model You Anything!
Is FP&A Listening To The Business Or Just Playing Along?
You can read a lot more articles about FP&A, Business Partnering, and Finance Transformation below. It all start's with “Introducing The Finance Transformation Nine Box” where you set the ambition for your transformation. You should join the Finance Business Partner Forum which is part of the Business Partnering Institute's online community where we will continue to discuss this topic and you can click here to follow me on Twitter.
4 Steps For Business Partners To Make An Immediate Impact (part of an eight-article series where I share lessons from the business partner trenches)
Why Did You Become A Business Partner - Ranu Sharma
Your Journey To Successful Business Partnering Explained
How To Create Value Through Business Partnering
Everyone Can Adopt A Business Partnering Mindset (part of a six-article series about FP&A Business Partnering)
From Business Partner To Working Within The Business (part of an article series where I interview finance professionals about their careers in FP&A and Business Partnering)
Is Your Product Optimized For Value Creation? (part of a toolbox series where we look at what tools FP&A professionals should leverage to drive value creation)
How Business Partners Turn Analysis To Insight (part of case study series where I interview business partners about how they drive value creation using real cases)
The Future Of FP&A: Two Ways To Take The Reins
What Is The Accounting Profession Paradox?
What Defines A Finance Master?
The New Career Path For Finance Professionals
How Finance People Can Be More Successful
The CFOs Roadmap To Transforming Finance
How To Become A Finance Business Partner
Financial Analyst vs. Finance Business Partner
Finance Business Partner Is A Bullshit Job
How Business Partners Keep A Plan On Track
Anders Liu-Lindberg is a Senior Finance Business Partner at Maersk supporting our largest product and I have more than 10 years of experience working with Finance at Maersk both in Denmark and abroad. I am also the co-founder of the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 8,000 members. My main goal at Maersk is to show how to be successful with business partnering and drive value creation as a trusted partner. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with 40.000+ followers.
Corporate/M&A Lawyer | Managing Partner at Integriti Law | Consultant at KLME Law
5 年Good one! This is applicable to all industries including legal.
It depends how we define 'techie'. Some decades ago, if you could work with a text editor (let's say Microsoft Word), you would be considered a techie. At that time, the manager would delegate this type of job to his/her secretary. Some time afterwards, one that could work with Power BI would be considered a techie, so dashboards (and data queries) were considered typical tasks for BI people. Now it is becoming a standard for controllers to be able to produce their own dashboards in Power BI. So we are all becoming techies :) With the ease of today's RPA tools (for example UiPath), learning to automate is as easy as building a dashboard in Power BI. There is one thing in the post I disagree with: ' ... they can spend more time on sharing insights with their stakeholders through which they influence their decision. Techies have a much harder time doing that as it’s not their core competence.' Just because one can program computers, it does not mean that one lacks the soft skills needed to work with stakeholders. Actually, anyone familiar with the Agile approach knows that working with stakeholders (understanding their needs, communicating with them, agreeing on the best way forward) is a core competence needed when developing software solutions. So a techie can be also be a good business partner, just like a FP&A specialist. Many projects in FP&A get delayed just because the IT human resources are scarce. Expanding his/her tech know-how (for example learning VBA, PowerShell, Python or UiPath) enables the finance business partner to do a better/more efficient job. From my experience, there is a lot of potential here which can be addressed without transforming oneself in a real programmer. A special topic in this discussion is Data Science. For example, if the finance business partner understands the details of how Machine Learning works (for example, what is the difference between different machine learning methods), the quality of the analysis increases. We are moving from Descriptive Analitics (just explaining what happened in the past) to Predictive Analytics (what will probably happen in the future - here is where Machine Learning comes in) and even further, to Prescriptive Analytics (where Machine Learning can tell what will happen when certain decisions are made). This is the very substance of achieving better business decisions. I fully agree that being a techknow can help a lot fulfilling the finance business partner role. Becoming a techie can help even more. And what today is considered techie, tomorrow will be considered normal office work. Just like soft skills, tech skills are to be considered when talking about improving oneself. Which one should be prioritised depends on the specific situation.?
INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR
5 年wonderful insight sir Anders. ...
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5 年No I don’t think FP&A professionals should be full blown techies - after all they are not computer scientists. However FP&A professionals should be working very closely with the BI team - they are the experts in the ETL( extract, transform & load) world of big data. They are the experts in Alteryx, R programming & SQL language etc FP&A should be working with BI to create, implement & translate data into meaningful, accurate dashboards that would aid decision making on Revenue, Costs etc. These dashboards can deep dive into the ERP systems and create user friendly automated dashboards that can assist non finance employees & the wider finance community. FP&A professionals should have a working knowledge of e.g Tableau, PowerBI . These softwares can integrate with SAP, Oracle, Adaptive Insights etc Yes I do see the possibility of fully automating the forecast process with these new technologies which is a good thing as it means less time spent on being a number cruncher and more time spent with the business & understanding their goals/ objectives and create meaningful comments to support the forecast process. #FutureOfFinance #FInancialAnalytics
I lead a forward-thinking, innovative leadership community dedicated to revolutionising the finance function in the digital era. Its members are catalysts for change within the profession, whom we connect & celebrate!
5 年Great to work with you again Anders Liu-Lindberg!