How do your FP&A teams balance the different priorities of the CEO, CFO, and Board at your company?

I don't necessarily think we are the mediator but a lot of the time those discussions are happening at the C-Suite level that we're not always part of. We provide the framework in the context of the discussion, so the better job we can do of having good conversations with our stakeholders, the better we can help them understand from an unbiased perspective, and come to a unifying decision.

When it comes to approaching a challenge, we have to consider if there are different perspectives because there's no single answer to any problem.

I think if you have a whole team, there's some level of delegation. The CFO will manage the board and the CEO. They also will set the strategy for FP&A and delegate accordingly. Board decks are always a challenge. You have to find a way to be efficient enough that you can continue to help manage the business. This is where having good tools, and processes would be the most beneficial so that when you get a request to present data right away, you're ready and not up all night trying to figure it out. The more you can automate, the more you can have one standard source of truth for your data. I think that goes a long way in being able to manage the one-offs. The rest should really be around your agenda and calendar and having a good cadence because every quarter you will need a board deck so being able to automate and manage is helpful.

FP&A teams are often best performing when they’re structured to concurrently be at the HQ level and functional level. In other words, there’s a direct line of sight from the functional groups to the c-Suite. This means FP&A managers and directors play a pivotal role since they act the liaisons between the two.

As far as managing priorities of the CEO, CFO, and Board, they shouldn’t be markedly different. If they are, there’s a congruence issue. But by channeling FP&A into HQ and functional focuses, this should allow FP&A to be far reaching enough to address different priorities.