Forward-Looking FP&A by the New Year

December 8, 2021

Of all the finance and accounting functions in an organization, one of the most rapidly growing is Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A). As defined by Gartner, “Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) is a set of four activities that support an organization’s financial health: planning and budgeting, integrated financial planning, management and performance reporting, and forecasting and modeling.”

This is a critical, forward-looking function for leadership to understand where the organization is going. Still, according to information from Gartner, “only 3% of companies have strategic, operational and financial planning processes that are fully aligned and integrated.”

We understand, based on the statistics, that many organizations are living in somewhat of a FP&A desert. To navigate your way to more of an oasis, ask yourselves some important questions:

How do we budget, plan for scenarios, forecast, and reforecast in real time?
How does our current FP&A process speak to our accounting and finance software?
How long does it take us to handle the budgeting and forecasting process?
How are key stakeholders kept perpetually informed of the financials they are responsible for?

More than likely, your answer to most of these questions revolves around Excel or some spreadsheet tool. This approach does not scale, and if your organization has even one model that supports your budget or plan numbers, you’ve probably already outgrown it. When organizations encounter this challenge, they are often paralyzed because they don’t know where to start and they immediately worry about learning curve and implementation timeline for a true FP&A tool.

Rest assured, choosing the right FP&A tool doesn’t have to be an enormous undertaking. In fact, no exaggeration – there are many FP&A tools that you can get up and running in a week or less. We’ve reported on some of those tools in past articles. Since then, we’ve embarked on a partnership with yet another stellar FP&A tool, AppComputing.

Like our other recommended solutions, AppComputing can give you Enterprise-level FP&A capabilities at an excellent value. Being largely software-agnostic, you don’t need to take the leap into a new accounting software if your organization isn’t ready to do so. It’s the latest addition to our tools intended to meet your organization where you are now. It can be up and running in days, and is extremely easy to use. For more information, check out this datasheet comparing AppComputing to Excel. We’re also offering a 30-day free trial of the solution! Be sure to put “GRF” in the Notes section when you sign up for your free trial here.

GRF’s Accounting Technology Services team can support you with questions or setup of one of these featured FP&A tools.