My Favourite Analysis Tool

Hello and welcome...?to our weekly newsletter, where we share 3 things weekly to help you become a great FBP.

This week those 3 things are:

- My Favourite Analysis Tool

- FBP Accelerator: Expert Program

• Client Wins

And don't forget, theFBPteam is here to help you develop a highly engaged and commercially?strong?finance team that other functions want to work with.... book in a call to see if we can help at...

www.calendly.com/andrewjepson

My Favourite Analysis Tool

Do some analysis, find some insights and make some recommendations.

It's what every finance person is trying to do (once month ends, forecasts and budgets are done)

The problem is those comments are way too broad and if you aren't careful you end up trying to boil the ocean and never heating anything up.

15 years ago I was introduced to a tool which helps bypass that. A sort of "metal detector" to point you to the place where there might be some metal.

The metal in this case being something interesting to drill down further on.?

Its called Volume Price Mix Analysis.

For literally any rolled up number in your financials, say, Sales, Gross Margin, even an overhead line like salaries you can do a VPM analysis on it. Then go digging further on the bits that seem interesting.

I used to use this all of the time on sales and picked it apart across three sales channels and 72 different products.?

All automated at the click of a button.?

All I needed was sales dollars broken down into those channels and products and the sales units (or unit measure) and voila. The variance to budget and/or last year by each of those 216 elements, due to volume, price or mix.

Anything big - we dug into the commercial reasons for it. If it was good do more of it, if it wasn't do less of it.?

Now there are literally dozens of way to do this. And lots have their pros and cons. You don't have to worry about that though as I have the best method I know in a template.

Just type "Y" in the comments below and I will forward it to you

Why is this the best method?

Because it gives you a relevant answer around mix. Most of the other formulas give a vague calculation for mix which makes no sense and you risk a room full of people asking "what's mix, that makes no sense".

You can literally do this on any line of the P&L as long as you can break the total down into smaller segments and have a volume metric.

HINT: What is mix you ask. Positive mix is when the?things higher than the average get bigger or the things smaller than the average get smaller - pulling the average up.

And negative mix is when the things higher than the average get smaller or the things lower than the average get bigger - pulling the average down.

FBP: Expert starts 16th October

Our final public program launched last week and the level of interest has been completely overwhelming.

This program is for the advanced business partner. That person who thinks they know what business partnering is and has made some inroads into being effective with non finance, but still isn't quite there.

We will show you all of the relationship building, influencing and presenting skills and techniques we learnt. And still apply today.

So easy to learn you can start improving yourself before you next pay review meeting.

So what's included:

Workshop 1: Relationships and Questioning

Workshop 2: Influence & Persuasive Techniques

Workshop 3: Communication Styles

Workshop 4: Managing Stakeholders

Workshop 5: Advanced Influence

Workshop 6: Storytelling for Finance?

Workshop 7: Presentations (Basic)

Workshop 8: Presentations (Advanced)

Each workshop runs for 2 hours and will be hosted directly by me in a small cohort of other super FBPs (that's you).

Over 20 hours of CPD and endless peer group support.

All you have to do is signup

But be quick, we are already half subscribed for this one and it will be 2025 before we run this again

For further details just go to www.financebusinesspartnering.com

Upcoming FBP Programs & Clients?

FBP Bootcamp - Wednesday 25th September

This week we ran our August bootcamp and for those that missed it, well September isn't far away for your next chance

We will take you through the 5 things great FBPs are doing well to be great FBPs.

Get these 5 things right and you will be on your way to being better.

Get them wrong....and you won't

To sign up just click on this link

Recent Client?Wins?

One of NZ's Biggest Retailers

Last week we started our FBP Expert program with one of New Zealand's largest retailers.

In conjunction with CAANZ this?high performing group of Senior Business Analysts are working through twelve workshops to totally transform the way they work with non finance.

And I dont even have to jump on a plane to deliver it. Which?is a bit of a downer because I love New Zealand!

Nonetheless 2 workshops in and this group is extremely eager to learn, engaged and showing great signs already.

NZ Workplace Healthcare Provider

The kiwis are proving to have a large appetite for this FBP stuff as we recently secured some work with one of their local workplace healthcare providers

This program is a bit of our flagship program but with a larger focus on leadership and team.?

Almost 12 months of talks on this one, I am really looking forward to working closely over the remainder of the year and into Q1 2025 with this group.

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If FBP development is high on your agenda for the remainder of 2024 please contact us immediately.

We are almost fully booked for 2024.....but don't worry 2025 isn't going anywhere

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?? I own and run the global finance training company theFBPteam

?? We don’t help finance teams report performance, we help them improve performance

?? Sign up to my newsletter FBP Made Easy (oh wait you have if you are reading this)

?? Or join our FREE monthly FBP Bootcamp

Because once the robots arrive, the only thing left will be business partnering