Go beyond your technical finance job by becoming a real Finance Business Partner. I'll share in each newsletter my knowledge about financial storytelling and business partnering.
FP&A Stories - Finance is not Accounting
Hello Reader 👋I hope you're fine and that you had the opportunity to take some time for you in the last weeks. I've been a bit absent from the newsletter last week because I was delivering the first wave of my new training: "Finance for Non-Finance". This training bridges a gap in today's offer: these courses generally try to transform business into accountants. In this edition, I'll explain you why this must be done differently 👇 So take a coffee, sit down, and read FP&A Stories like 30K others This week in FP&A Stories 📒 Finance is not accounting for Business People 📒 Finance is not accounting for Business PeopleHow many "Non-Finance" colleagues have told you they wanted to become Accountants? I don't know about yours, but in my 17 years of experience, I can tell you ZERO business colleagues have told me that. However, when observing the offer of "Finance for Non-Finance" courses, online or in-person, I could not help but see a curriculum aiming at transmitting accounting knowledge to them. But when you have a conversation with business people, they never ever use these principles, simply because they never work together with Finance in these activities. So even though Accounting is the base of our work, we must let go and accept that it's our internal kitchen and focus on equipping them with the knowledge and skills they need to collaborate effectively with our finance teams. And there are 4 Finance roles in which I see business people collaborating with use 1️⃣ Reporting It's as simple as that: they receive reporting and they must understand what's behind it. And when you have jargon like Revenues, COGS, OPEX, CAPEX, ... no wonder why people feel lost with it. So, the goal here is to make sure they understand very simply what's behind those terms. Surprisingly enough, there was a lot of interest in the difference between CAPEX and OPEX. 2️⃣ Analysis It's not just about reading reports; it's about interpreting them. And what better to interpret a report than our finance techniques like horizontal analysis, vertical analysis, ratios, .... This helps them identifying trends, spotting anomalies, and understanding what numbers require further investigation. 3️⃣ Budgeting and Forecasting Budgeting and forecasting shouldn't be confined to the finance department. Involving non-finance staff in these processes ensures that assumptions are grounded in operational realities. They learn how to participate effectively in budget discussions and forecasts, bringing in their unique perspectives and expertise. This collaboration results in more accurate and achievable financial plans 4️⃣ Decision-making The final goal of Finance: enable informed decision-making! And even though many decisions are made with gut feelings, you can influence that instinct with financial literacy. A good way to do so is to use business cases mixing operational drivers with financial outcome.
All these are key elements of how business can participate to business cases.
Conclusion
Don't try to deliver all you know to your non-finance colleagues. I'm sure they care about what you do and your expertise but it's simply too much for them.
Focus on what they can actually do in and with Finance
That will be good for them
That will be good for you
That's a wrap for this week See you next week! PS: Whenever you're ready to develop your financial storytelling skills and become the visible face of finance, join the Financial Storytelling Program |
FP&A Stories
Go beyond your technical finance job by becoming a real Finance Business Partner. I'll share in each newsletter my knowledge about financial storytelling and business partnering.
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