In order to help businesses navigate challenges in financial planning during these uncertain times, each week we’re bringing you curated information and materials to help you respond. This week’s articles highlight news in financial planning as well as what experts are saying on the matter:
1. Deloitte: Reinventing FP&A for the Pandemic and Beyond
This issue of CFO Insights explores a few key questions—and addresses the very real possibility that the fallout from the pandemic may create even greater expectations of FP&A and both alter and expand its responsibilities. In fact, whatever lessons can be gleaned from the pandemic’s toll could better prepare FP&A functions and their leaders for an unpredictable future.
2. CFODIVE: To Succeed Post-COVID, CFOs Need an Attitude Adjustment
As business leaders across the globe explore the safest and smartest path towards post-pandemic recovery, one thing is clear: the workplace as we know it is gone. We can expect to hear countless references to a “before” and an “after,” and can see clear distinctions in everything from traffic patterns to in-office setups. But not all changes will be as obvious as a six-foot distance between workstations or a meeting room full of masked employees. Less tangible, but equally important, are the changes that happen quietly; the subtle but widespread attitude and perspective transformations that ultimately prove the most powerful in redefining business after COVID-19. It’s time we reevaluate what comes first.
3. CFO.com: Better Scenario Planning Positions Companies to Benefit From Disruption
If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that corporate scenario planning may need to account for events that executives may have never even dreamed about. While many may have planned for a variety of systemic shocks, how many had as an option a global pandemic shutting down workplaces, closing national borders, and throwing the economy immediately into a deep decline?
4. Workday Adaptive Planning: Zero-based budgeting for FP&A professionals
Many businesses are shifting into recovery mode after the economic sideswipe caused by COVID-19. While it’s too soon to divine the lasting implications of this pandemic, most organizational leaders anticipate there will be echoes well beyond 2020.
With these shifts in play, some companies may find that traditional budgeting approaches no longer work as well as they once did. Under normal circumstances, budgeting from a prior period is reasonable. But if this period will barely resemble the last, that may be a less helpful option. The same goes for top-down efforts targeting a specific percentage for reductions. Does across-the-board reductions, with every department cutting 10% or so, even make sense when some expenses have all but disappeared?
5. Deloitte: Moving Target: What it Takes for Annual Planning to Hit the Mark
As finance leaders prepare to embark on the annual planning process, they may want to push a new issue to the top of their agendas: the annual planning process.
The unprecedented events of recent months—the COVID-19 pandemic that few, if any, corporate financial plans foresaw—have clarified the need for infusing the conventional planning process with greater agility. As many CFOs have likely learned, businesses need the capability to revise their plans and adjust their assumptions to accommodate the impact of real-world events.
Thanks for checking in this week! We’ll be back next Thursday with more updates in financial planning. In the meantime, subscribe to our blog to get our posts directly in your inbox.