How Business Partners Should Spend Their Time

How do you spend your time at work today? Have you ever tried to register your hours to the different activities you do? Most business partners I’ve talked to are not in doubt when they’re asked how they spend their time.

Almost unanimously they say that at least 2/3s of their time is spent on activities that enable business partnering (like data, reporting, and analysis). Only 1/3 of their time is spent on real business partnering activities (like sharing insights with their stakeholders, making recommendations, and driving initiatives to improve business performance).

The question is if that’s good enough? Let’s explore in this next business partnering lesson from the trenches. 

Let’s focus on what creates value 

The starting point for any business partner should be to look at what creates value. If the activities (s)he does every day are not changing conversations and improving decisions then value is not created. Consider the stark difference between the everyday of the two people below.

In what I call FBP 1.0 the business partner would be spending three days a week behind the desk working on data and reports to do some sort of analysis. On the fourth day the work is finished and the business partner sends the report and analysis in an e-mail to the business stakeholders. On the last day the business partner wonders if anyone has seen the analysis and if any different decisions are made. Probably the answer is no.

In FBP 2.0 it’s completely different. The report and most of the analysis is already prepared either from self-service BI or a Center of Excellence for Analytics. The business partner simply spends 15-30 minuntes to skim through the report and the analysis to extract the key insights.

Then into the meeting with the business stakeholders to discuss business performance. Everyone agrees something must change. They spend the next day brainstorming on potential solutions and on the third day they agree and what to do. On the fourth day things are put in motion and on the fifth day the benefits are collected.

In the second example three full days are spent on business partnering activities and the last two days even leave time for other improvement projects. Wouldn’t that be nice? 

This is a true transformation 

My experience shows that, while a stereotype, most business partners are still caught up in FBP 1.0 despite having a burning desire to move to a 2.0 model. The complication is that to get there requires a true transformation. The task can appear so daunting that you don’t get started at all.

That’s why when today I do FBP training I don’t show the 2.0 model anymore. Instead, I ask people to plan for taking the first step towards doing less work with data, reports, and analysis and spend more time on true business partnering.

Just consider this for a moment. What if in the next 90 days you could change the way you spend your time with just 5%-points? Let’s say today your time allocation is 70/30 and in 90 days you’ve changed it to 65/35. Within a year you’d be at 50/50. Along the way you’re likely to find some bigger levers to pull and clear some major roadblocks that dramatically changes your time allocation. Suddenly a 30/70 model doesn’t seem so farfetched!

Even large transformations require that you take the first step. If nothing else that’s what I want you to take away from this article. Make a commitment to change 5% in the next 90 days. Make that commitment in the comments to this article or in a share and I promise to follow up with you along the way. Let’s do this together! Are you with me?

This was the seventh article in the series “Business Partnering Lessons From The Trenches”. You can read previous articles below.

Business Partnering Lessons From The Trenches

Successful Onboarding For Finance Business Partners

A Business Partner's Love-Hate Relationship With Details

The #1 Trick To Build Relationships With Business Stakeholders

Business Partners Always Say "We" And Not "You" Or "I" And Here's Why

Here Are The Only Two Success Criteria For Business Partners

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.

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 almost 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 37.000+ followers.