The FP&A professional’s career plan
Anders Liu-Lindberg
Leading advisor to senior Finance and FP&A leaders on creating impact through business partnering | Interim | VP Finance | Business Finance
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How does an FP&A professional navigate the journey from a financial analyst, the perfect starting point, to the goal of an FP&A leadership role and beyond? The top can seem a long way away, and as with every such target, it makes sense to break it down. As they say, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
The first task for an ambitious junior financial analyst is to develop a taste for the data and the storytelling that go hand in hand all the way through an FP&A career. Data repositories are only as good as the insights that are drawn from them. Developing reliable, unbiased, strategically relevant visualizations to support decision-making is the bread and butter of the financial analyst and the staple of the successful CFO.
This is the time to get a thorough grounding in all the available analytical tools. You need to be familiar enough with them to work efficiently and effectively, and also to help others to do so as part of both internal FP&A management and cross-functional business partnering. Increasingly this means not only Excel and its powerful suite of add-ins and macros, but also an understanding of machine learning and AI and the basis of the algorithms upon which an increasing number of day-to-day decisions rely.
From analysis to planning and beyond
With these skills digested, it’s time to move on to the role of FP&A manager. This is where analysis feeds into strong planning and forecasting processes, and business partnering appears on the menu. The FP&A manager starts to look outwards, becoming a trusted partner to business leaders and helping C-suite executives to deliver on their targets and satisfy stakeholders.
Management and communication come into the mix here, leading small functional and project teams within finance and across operational units. These skills are essential to further progression, the route to gaining the respect of peers and team members as well as of those who decide upon candidates for senior roles.
Many FP&A professionals choose to move between businesses to gain the different skills that will take them further in their careers. Exposure to diverse industry sectors and business models encourages more innovative thinking, helps to generate deeper insights for planning, and provides an experience of different business cultures, some successful, others less so.
Take it to the top
All being well, the next logical step is the Director of FP&A. This is the connection between the providers of planning and analysis and the users of decision-making information. The Director is the strong leader of the FP&A team whose responsibilities encompass developing the team members, standing their ground with top management and the board in all performance matters, and driving or leading business improvement initiatives.
The one thing that the FP&A Director does not normally have is a seat at the ultimate decision-making table. This is reserved for the VP of FP&A, but with board influence comes responsibility for the present and future FP&A function. The VP must continuously transform the function, ensuring that their teams have the right tools to succeed. They have to provide a strong voice in the finance leadership team and support the development of new leaders who will take the business forward.
And so it comes full circle. This clear potential for progression and the support that FP&A professionals give to those following them makes for an attractive career. You can eat the elephant a bite at a time - but there is more than enough to go round.
This was the sixth article in my latest series "Charting the course of a successful FP&A career". You can read the previous article(s) below.
While you await future articles you can read my latest series "Planning (as we know it) is dead!" below.
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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.
The secret sauce of FP&A transformation ?(the last article in the series "FP&A Transformation Talks")
How Finance should use its seat at the table ?(the last article in the series "The Unfair Advantage of Finance")
The ultimate guide to decision-making for finance professionals ?(the last article in a series about the decision-making process and how Finance should impact it).
The Mindset Change Checklist For Finance Professionals ?(the last article in a series about the mindset change that finance and accounting professionals should make to become business partners)
It's Time To Decide If You Want To Be A Business Partner ?(the last article in a series about the personality traits of business partners)
All Successful Business Partners Are "Leaders" ?(the last article in the series about our new capability model)
Should We Keep Talking About Business Partnering? ?(part of a 17-article series where we deep-dive into the WHY, WHAT, and HOW of business partnering by putting it on a formula)
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)
Anders Liu-Lindberg ?is the co-founder and a partner at the?Business Partnering Institute ?and the owner of the largest?group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering ?on LinkedIn with more than 10,000 members. I have ten years of experience as a business partner at the global transport and logistics company?Maersk . I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner ” and a?long-time Finance Blogger ?on LinkedIn with 90,000+ followers and 155,000+ subscribers to my blog. I am also an advisory board member at?Born Capital ?where I help identify and grow the next big thing in #CFOTech.?Finally, I'm a member of the board of directors at?PACE - Profitability Analytics Center of Excellence ?where I support the development of new analytics frameworks that can improve profitability in companies around the world.
I teach Storytelling to Finance Teams | Course Facilitator | Keynote Speaker
2 年It is important to remind people, just like you did in your newsletter, that the vertical way is not the only way Horizontal can be a nice move to learn to apply your knowledge on different situations/teams/businesses