AN INSIDER VIEW

Intertek’s Olga Corbett tackles the

trends and challenges of FP&A

THE PRACTISE BEHIND THE THEORY

A top to bottom examination of all
the key FP&A topics

CFO GUIDE TO
FP&A TRENDS
IN

2019
NAVIGATING UNFAMILIAR WATERS
How the transformational role of FP&A
has affected two companies

ROADMAP TO IMPLEMENTATION
Conclusions, advice, and KPIs
from industry experts
 INTRODUCTION
TO FP&A

Warren Buffett once said, “someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone
planted a tree a long time ago”, and when it comes to financial planning and analysis
(FP&A), this phrase rings loudly for those currently enjoying the shade, while their
competitors struggle in the heat of the sun.

The process that was once a back-office function has been transformed into a vital
strategic advisor and the impact of FP&A is being keenly felt by those companies
that have successfully implemented it.

With that in mind the CFO team have created this Guide to FP&A Trends in 2019
featuring insights, case studies, and reflections from a wide variety of notable industry
figures.

Inside, we speak with members of finance teams from Zipcar, Intertek, Mitsubishi,
and many more, to learn the insider view on trends and challenges that FP&A has
presented, as well as two case studies on its successful implementation.

There’s also a focus on how FP&A can support rapid decision-making and flexible
planning, the impact of data science on the finance function, transforming your FP&A
function with AI, and how FP&A is being transformed from a back-office function to a
strategic advisor.

In addition, readers can also get the latest insights from the world’s leading FP&A
professionals and earn up to 14 CPE course credits.

POSITIVES OF SUCCESSFUL NEGATIVES OF POOR

FP&A IMPLEMENTATION FP&A IMPLEMENTATION

• Ensures financial and operational • Drain on time and money

goals are both achieved • Neither financial nor operational
• Drives business value goals are achieved
• Drives business strategy • Potential for departments to
• Ensures each department is aware work at odds with each other
of achieving strategy • Business strategy will suffer
• Optimal resource allocation
• Aligns strategic and financial
initiatives
 12 STEPS
TOWARDS THE SUCCESSFUL
IMPLEMENTATION OF FP&A

Translate your business strategy Capture individual goals, track

1 7
into actionable plans that should achievement, calculate rewards
support both long- and short-term and hold people accountable for
planning. delivering financial results.

Identify the resources needed to

meet plan results and integrate them
2 into the budget that also supports the
use of non-financial data.
Capture and track KPIs and hold
8 people accountable for delivering
operational results.

Detail how plans will mirror financial

3 9
Develop measures to identify what
progress and keep a track of the
drives success in the business.
progress.

Understand the story behind the Utilise predictive modelling

4 numbers. What are the business
reasons behind the key variances?
10 capability to develop and establish
targets for the drivers.

Don’t be afraid to take action if Establish initiatives and ideas to

you’re falling behind projected goals.
5 Re-forecasting, support scenario
planning and what-if analysis can all
be utilised to model key changes.
11 help achieve these targets, which
could integrate with a project
management system.
Ensure extensive reporting

6 Align and capture financial and

operational goals. 12 capabilities are in place to analyse
the end results and integrate them
with company incentives.
 THE PRACTISE
BEHIND THE THEORY

According to a recent survey by business forecasters Prophix, FP&A leaders realize that
they need to work to deliver FP&A excellence at their companies and as many as 79%
of companies reported that an upgrade in FP&A technology would empower them to
deliver better results. 

However, unlocking the true value of FP&A means having the ability to drive a quick
and flexible decision-making process, but surprisingly 40% of companies reported
having only basic or very basic reporting and analytical tools. 

FP&A is transforming, moving from a back-office function to becoming a strategic

advisor, and to unlock this potential there are a minefield of elements and KPIs to
address along the route. To help unpick these key topics, your CFO guide has assembled
a panel of experts to discuss the potentially transformational role of FP&A.

Ryan Wilber Chris Caswell Olga Corbett

Director of Finance CFO & COO Director of Financial
Bed Bath & Beyond Clarks* Planning and Analysis
Intertek
 HOW FP&A CAN SUPPORT RAPID
DECISION-MAKING AND FLEXIBLE PLANNING

How can FP&A drive the outcomes businesses want, rather than just predicting them?

Chris Caswell: One of the things that we did across finance
was we became more of a business partner than a financial
reporting tool, both in accounting and FP&A. One of the
things that we identified was that we had sales organisations
making decisions on returns from wholesale customers and
basically taking back all of the returns, without worrying
about the cost of those returns. So, to remedy this we were
able to learn the true all-in-cost of returns on our company
versus different additional discounts that we could give
(end of season) to our wholesale customers to make the
net P&L better.
Olga Corbett: In my experience – and I know organizations
are changing – FP&A is still focused on very technical
questions that don’t necessarily require or imply dynamic
changes and dynamic predictions. I think that, in general,
our role should be in our ability to understand the business
well and to be able to make quick decisions and
dynamically predict and evaluate the results without going
to technical accounting.
In general, the way that it is accomplished is the way in
which our role is defined of supporting dynamic decision
making and flexible planning, as opposed to simply
counting the books. I think sometimes that we might see
that there isn’t enough information, or way too much and
then we don’t know what metric we want to use to make
a quick predicting decision. Forward indicators can help us
quickly understand which direction the business is trending
and importantly if it is supporting or violating certain
criteria and detailing which direction the business wants to
proceed.
So, to conclude, I think there are three important factors.
A: Making sure that the business understands that FP&A is
able to make quick decisions. B: It is predicting the focus
on the technical accounting and more on the what
are the rules of thumb that quickly tell us which way the
business is trending. C: In relation to business and finance
my experience has been working directly with the business
partners so that I can understand, fully, the correlation
between finance and business. I also understand first-hand
the impact of the business as a result and I think that this
has helped me to make quick evaluations.

How does FP&A, in that instance, identify the problem to ensure that it doesn’t happen
again?
Chris Caswell: It broke down all the different components of cost and revenue and then we were better able to identify
the most beneficial path forward.

[Business forecasters Prophix found that forty-four percent (44%) of companies take longer than five business days to complete a
forecast. The modern driver-based forecasting models that are implemented through flexible systems are essential ingredients for quick
re-forecasting processes. Process simplification is the key and it must be different from the traditional process of detailed planning and
forecasting to the general ledger level. Unfortunately in many companies, the forecasting process continues to be too detailed, static,
judgmental and biased]

TIME TO FORECAST PROCESS

3-4 DAYS 30%
5-10 DAYS 19%
10-20 DAYS 15%
1-2 DAYS 15%
20-30 DAYS 7%
< 1 DAY 7%
N/A 5%
> 30 DAYS 3%
 THE IMPACT OF
DATA SCIENCE ON THE
FINANCE FUNCTION

Data science can help a company stand out from the crowd, but does its implementation
always bring results?

Ryan Wilber: I would say that it does not. I think that in the
current environment where data is everything, I have run
into situations where data is overanalyzed, or the wrong
pieces of data are analyzed, and it’s analyzed incorrectly.
Data science is an extremely powerful tool, but you have
to go back to fundamentals of what the data is trying to tell
you. And, what type of answers are you seeking from it. So,
even with all the data in the world you can get the wrong
conclusions and give the wrong message, and by following
that misleading data you can really lead a business down
the wrong path.
department. I think that the recognition today is greater
than before.
[Business forecasters Prophix found in a recent survey
that only 41% of companies report that most decisions
are based on data. The rest of the organizations are still
using traditional “judgmental” decision-making processes.
This problem is very much caused by an unwillingness to
change a traditional and engrained culture of target
settings and budget negotiations]

Olga Corbett: I think that data science is more technical

in the way in which we analyze the data, as we have DATA-DRIVEN DECISIONS
more data today and data science than ever before. It
has provided us with better tools to deal with the data in
41%
37%
a more intelligent manner. In fact, I don’t see how FP&A
can continue to be successful and can actually add
value without data science. It’s a combination of both,
of learning the tools that can allow us to more freely and
independently navigate in a big data environment, but it
also provides us with additional tools beyond the simple
step analysis. I think that data science is critical for a
successful FP&A function. It certainly is, in my mind, directly
correlating to what we are brought along to contribute 16%
in an organization. It’s not often we are actually able to

4% 3%
do it, because even if there is an objective for FP&A to do
exactly that, often the confusion is that FP&A should do a
response to an ad-hoc request that day, and it simply does
not give us enough time to develop the platform. It does Most Half Of Moderate Every Very Few
take some time, in the beginning, to develop a platform for Decisions Decisions Amount Of Decision Decisions
Are Data- Data-Based Data-Based Data-Based Data-Based
an organization to understand what the new relationships Based Decisions
are, and in many cases, data science is limited to the IT

Financial specialists often work with semi-structured or unstructured data and it’s a challenge
to process it manually. So, how does data science help extract real intelligence from data?

Ryan Wilber: Absolutely. We use data science every day
as it’s fundamental in our ability to forecast. It also provides
insights on whatever we’re looking at. We’re crunching
hundreds of thousands of rows of data every day to give
us outputs that drive decisions on the logistics side of the
house, and we do that across all areas of the business. The
fact that I can put real, clean, accurate data in the hands
of multiple users within the organization has made our
analytical ability 20 to 30 times better than it was in the past.
The insights that we get from it and our ability to adapt as
a company too issues or opportunities is just mindboggling
today compared to where it was.
Chris Caswell: I think that we are still heavily manual, but
I think that we are better at being manual than we were
two to three years ago, and now we are in the process
of identifying how to use automation and the tools more
advantageously. I think that the greatest impact is breaking
down functional communication within the company, and
by doing so we become part of the strategic conversation
rather than the beginning part of the process, so we are
really part of the business strategic discussions.
 TRANSFORMING FP&A FUNCTION WITH
AI, MACHINE LEARNING AND
ADVANCED PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS

Being competitive often means raising engagement through high-quality, personalized

relationships with their customers. How does AI help to achieve this?

Ryan Wilber: We use predictive analytics to look at FX, as we Pakistan and China. We do use AI for macroeconomic
do a lot of manufacturing in Asia. We look at commodity and microeconomic variables and this is where we see
prices, primarily in cotton, which is a main input for us, the trends going, and that can definitely influence our buy
and then we also look at things like labour rates in India, strategy.

Transforming the FP&A function with AI, machine learning and advanced predictive
analytics is a key part of finance transformation. But, to achieve this FP&A must help create
a culture where the finance team spends more time analyzing data than gathering it. How
can this culture shift be achieved seamlessly?

Chris Caswell: Two years ago, when I came into Clarks
the culture was one of the first things which we tackled.
We looked at the culture and process, side-by-side, and
we achieved this by thinking about how we are a service
provider of the organisation and thinking of ways to help
the sales team or the marketing team, instead of thinking
of them as if they report to us, or we report the results to
them. So, how did we help them achieve their goals? As
a company, we will succeed or fail together, so first we
needed to stop thinking of ourselves as separate entities
instead of something other than one company, as it is a
bad mindset.
Olga Corbett: Throughout my career, I think that on the
one hand FP&A is considered a luxury in the true sense
of analyzing business, as it’s considered a bit more of a
sophisticated, nicer type of function as the day-to-day
activities are gone, such as technical accounting, helping
partners close the books, and understand the variances,
which is a very technical, super myopic focus. That has been
the fundamental problem with FP&A being leveraged, as
understanding the fundamental drivers to the business,
the impact, strategically and transactionally, are the best
solutions for an organization to function.
Nobody can do it for us, it comes back to the finance
group itself, and the leadership team. It’s the CFO usually
who needs to define what role they would like us to
play and whether they just want us to be an extension
of accounting or called something else. I have seen this
can support technical functions, but ultimately is more
strategic and more analytical. With a combination of data
science and being able to leverage the new information,
it is truly an opportunity for us to deliver. If professionals
within the organisation can more clearly understand
what our purpose is, we are able to successfully focus our
activities. In my experience, usually the groups are very
analytical and are dictated by their organization, which
often doesn’t allow us to deliver the things that we may
have talked about.
[A Prophix survey found only 28% of companies report they
are leveraging FP&A analytics to prescribe what actions
should be taken to improve company results. The lack
of investments in modern analytical tools and traditional
static planning models leave many organizations stuck in
the 20th century. Transformational change must occur at
the outset to affect forward-looking analytics]
ANALYTICS MATURITY
LEADING
ADVANCED BASIC
3%
14% 13%
DEVELOPING
DEFINED

happen, in more successful organisations than those who 42%

have not leveraged FP&A. In addition, there is redundancy 28%
under the organization, as there are a high level of groups
overlapping what they do, and this is a bit of a redundancy
of resource and sometimes can lead to territorial conflict.
So, who does what and who owns what? I think that there
is a lack of activity or understanding or ownership. This goes
back to the definition of what FP&A does and how it still
 HOW FP&A IS BEING TRANSFORMED
FROM A BACK-OFFICE FUNCTION
TO A STRATEGIC ADVISOR

What has been the impact of transforming FP&A from a back-office function to a strategic
advisor?

Ryan Wilber: Up until about four years ago there was no
FP&A function on the B2B Concept side of the business. The
guy who started it all before he sold to Bed Bath & Beyond
said to me, “if I could go back in time, one thing I’d have
done early on in my business is hire a finance professional”.
He saw the pros of having analytics and someone analyzing
the company from a numbers perspective. And, I think that
really speaks volumes for why FP&A is relevant and why you
need it outside of public traded companies.
situations where the idea that you must watch every penny
can strangle a business strategically. You have to spend
money, sometimes you have to grow and if you’re in a
company with a silo mentality and FP&A is not talking to
sales departments, strategy, sourcing and supply then you
can have a major disconnect between what the FP&A
team is doing and what is best for the business. Instead, for
the process to succeed you have to be engaged in the
business; you have to be out there talking to people.

At the end of the day we are shepherds of margin and

we look out for the business in that regard. I have seen

The transformation of taking FP&A from a back-office function to a strategic advisor seems
to be a major upheaval for many organizations big and small. Should we fear?

Chris Caswell: Fear? No, I think that what we have done
well is that we have shown our value through the example
I gave, as well as some other things and now it is our
organization, the rest of the business leadership team and
from the top down, requesting how to be involved. A lot
more decisions are made from the beginning to the middle
and to the end. By delivering value you get invited to a
lot more conversations, so it becomes a lot of momentum
moving the organization forward.

How can FP&A ensure that company’s plans have the necessary resources to be executed
properly?

Chris Caswell: I think that it is a matter of communication.

We are continually connected to the business partner.
What we have done poorly a long time ago is that often you
MOST IMPORTANT DRIVER
come in, you give the budget, you give the target then you IMPACTING ANALYTIC MATURITY
go away and then at the end of the month or quarter you

31% 30%
come back in. But, it’s more of a continuous conversation
now and every time that we are about to enter into a big
transaction, or make a quick sale or quick discount, the
finance team is wholly involved in the conversation, so that
we are able to be strategic and thoughtful about how we
20%
do it, when we do it, and if there is a better way to do. As a
result, we are constantly modelling out the impact on our 17%
profit and loss, from the business forward and all aspects,
before we enter into something - so that we are on the
front end.

[Prophix’s survey revealed that when asked what would 3%

type of improvement would have the most impact on
FP&A analytics maturity, 30% of respondents reported Upgrade Increase Process Upgrade Other
upgrading technology, and 30% reported increased Technology Collaboration Improvement Skills
collaboration across departments, which is driven by
accountability]

*Chris Caswell was employed as CFO & COO at Clarks at the time of going to press, but has since moved on to another position.
 AN INSIDER VIEW

As the world of financial planning and analysis continues to move, evolve and
develop with the latest practises and trends, CFOs across the country deal with
a variety of ideas and challenges as they drive the strategic advisor.

Faced with the challenge of transforming of transforming FP&A from a back-

office function into the driving strategic force, interpreting the strategical
innovation and applying it to your business can seem like a challenge, but
Director of Financial Planning and Analysis at Intertek, Olga Corbett, believes
she has the answers.

But, how do you harvest the right data for FP&A applications? What qualities do
competent FP&A professionals need? And, what problems has the process’s
implementation thrown up? With all these questions and more on the tip of our
tongue, we caught up with Olga to discover the insider view on the trends and
challenges of implementing FP&A facing so many CFOs.

OLGA CORBETT, DIRECTOR OF FINANCIAL PLANNING AND ANALYSIS AT INTERTEK

Olga is currently the Finance Director with Intertek, a multinational inspection, product
testing and certification company headquartered in London. Olga has extensive
experience as a Finance Business Partner supporting many Executive Vice Presidents,
company officers and cross-functional leaders in aspects of financial performance analysis
and business development.

In my mind, the first challenge to address is that
unlike many other disciplines such as accounting,
engineering, sales or customer service – the FP&A
role in my experience is not as clearly defined and varies
from traditional accounting to advanced data analytics
and business consulting. The scope and sophistication
of the FP&A role certainly is a function of the size and
complexity of a business. How a most relevant and
effective FP&A model is recognized and implemented, is
in my mind directly related to a CFO or Finance Leader’s
own experience, their ability and commitment to define
the role of the FP&A group within their organization, as well
as a willingness to go against a long-standing structure or
territorial claims on certain aspects of the role.
FP&A demands organizational time and resources and
returns a negative ROI, which I think is putting smaller
companies off implementation. And, this is probably
relevant for larger companies as well. It is still more
traditional to view finance as rather technical accounting,
AP/AR, or taxes. This again is about the recognition of
what FP&A can deliver incrementally besides duplicating
traditional accounting functions. To get our business
partners to adopt and recognize what we incrementally
produce is no less than demonstrating that we equally or
sometimes more deeply understand and can impact the
business, customer/supplier dynamics, technology and
any other factors driving the business. With the continued
advances of data analytics and deep learning, I believe
FP&A is perfectly positioned to become a liaison between
business operations and technical data science to help
make sense of short-term and long-term aspects of
business management. Budgeting, forecasting or long-
range plan process must transform to take advantage
of the incredible data environment today. The growing
problem of having too much data, too many metrics
sometimes conflicting with each other, understanding
how to leverage this wealth of information intelligently
is where FP&A can clearly demonstrate its role for the
business partners and data scientists.
Building a talent pool of competent FP&A professionals is
now a priority for many companies implementing FP&A,
so harvesting the right data for FP&A applications has
become an increasing priority. Traditionally, we all ask
for MBA and desired CPA, a background dealing with
technical accounting, traditional variance analysis,
budgeting and board presentations. None of these
descriptors are anything more than a type of “need
to have” to satisfy some rather functional or regulatory
requirements and often simply duplicate what traditionally
accounting or controllers would support. With the
extensive presence of online career networks, identifying
candidates with the right skill set is a relatively clear path.
The most critical prerequisite is defining that skillset which
stems from a finance leader vision of what the most
effective FP&A team is brought along to deliver as well as
their ability to look beyond the traditional role postings and
accepted parameters. Acknowledging FP&A as a critical
business advisory role in today’s environment requires
a combination of technical finance, data engineering,
operational analytics and business development for a
new value add FP&A organization.
I have heard suggestion that the FP&A switch from a back-
office function to a strategic advisor means that companies
are left with employees whose skill set is no longer
relevant, but I don’t think this is necessarily true. I think the
fundamentals of financial analytics, budgeting and long-
range planning are not going anywhere. If anything, the
increasing complexity of systems and business structures
requires the same highly technical analytical skills. With
the addition of this enormous amount of data, metrics
and people across an organization all trying to make
sense out of it and quickly make good decisions.
This goes back to the definition of the FP&A
role in the organization and enterprise
wide recognition of FP&A far more
than technical accounting. I don’t
see the current development to
be much of a sea change for
the FP&A role – but with the
increasing data complexity,
I believe there will be an
expansion of professional
capabilities to make the FP&A
function more productive
and self-sufficient.
What is vital though to the
successful implementation of
FP&A is the right business culture.
I think the biggest challenge
today still is simply the recognition
by our business partners of what
value we contribute besides creating a
lot of reports and metrics. There still is too
much vagueness about the value add besides
technical accounting. This is on the FP&A itself to prove
quickly and consistently our value contribution that can be
equally adopted by other organizations. The role of a CFO
in an organization is to help define and drive the adoption
of the FP&A as a business advisory leader. The complexity
of the current business and analytical environment are a
perfect context to do that.
One trend that has been in practise for a long time is
rolling forecasts. I think the popularity has increased
with the increasingly complicated corporate reporting
requirements – whether due to stock markets, board
meetings or executive decision making. I think the model
itself is not going anywhere, but it is rather a question about
accuracy and sophistication of these forecasts. Back to
the point about the big data and enormous number of KPIs
and perspectives, a much bigger challenge is how these
various metrics can be tied together and whether we can
identify higher quality forward looking indicators to predict
the future rather than continue to rely predominantly on
the typical “trend is your friend” school.
To extend the discussion around data science, deep
learning, or AI (artificial intelligence) is in early stages and
hopefully on track to gain more adoption in the corporate
finance world. Like transactional analytics, AI will provide
an extremely powerful way of mining quantitative
and qualitative data and help improve our models for
understanding the relationships between various business
drivers. With the onslaught of data, we all have
experienced a great disproportion of time
spent on data gathering, aggregating
and processing vs time spent
analyzing and implementing. While
many organizations are still in the
early stages of improving the
data processing platforms,
most recognize and are in
the process of implementing
systems and procedures to
free up more time for value
added analytics. Finally,
as a strategic business
advisor, FP&A teams have
gone beyond simply data
crunching and analysis, and
also facilitate the development
of data presentation – from
sleek dashboards to detailed
reports, aimed to present complex
information in a most actionable way
for their business partners.
On the other hand, against all the efforts to improve
the value-added activities for FP&A, the aspects of
simply data quality, distractions from earnings releases
calendars, increasing audit activities, non-strategic
management reporting requests especially those of ad
hoc one-time nature continue to remain a serious factor
for FP&A productivity. Additionally, as it relates to new
data driven and AI models, the sheer range of metrics and
data has made the adoption of the new data science in
day-to-day decision making or even forecasting/
budgeting processes a challenge, despite general
acknowledgement for the need of it.
 NAVIGATING UNFAMILIAR
WATERS: A CASE STUDY

The theory behind the successful implementation of FP&A is widely understood, but how it’s applied to
each individual company isn’t always so clear. Understanding the need to translate your business strategy
into actionable plans is the first step in bringing about strategic change, but how is that applied in reality?

The author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, wrote, “it is a capital mistake to theorize before one
has data” and to help offer a rounder picture of the theory behind FP&A, we spoke to two experts to learn
the data behind the theory and discover how the transformational role of FP&A has affected the Director
of Finance at Bed Bath & Beyond and the B2B Concept, Ryan Wilber, and the CFO & COO at Clarks, Chris
Caswell*.

Whether it’s how FP&A can support rapid decision-making and flexible planning, how it is being transformed
from a back-office function to a strategic advisor, or the impact of data science on the finance function,
FP&A has driven positive and dramatic change. Here’s how.

Rapid decision-making and beyond. Ryan Wilber discusses FP&A Solutions at Bed Bath &
Beyond and the B2B Concept.
A lot of what we do at Bed Bath & Beyond is very much
involved with rapid decision making and flexible planning.
The best example I can provide is when we look at our
logistics, as moving product is a huge piece of our business,
especially in the world of e-commerce. So, what we have
done from an FP&A platform - besides just setting
targets - is to set up real-time metrics. We set
up some data feeds from our partners at
FedEx and UPS where we can look on a
daily basis as to what’s moved where
and how that compares to our plan.
And, when we talk about rapid
decision-making, one of the points
we can talk about is expeditated
freight exceptions. This could be
air freight and the different modes
we’re using in relation to the end
user, and where we’re going to
deliver the product against the
closest warehouses that we can
ship from. That’s all controlled by
FP&A and run using real time metrics.
However, I think the true value of having
an FP&A team is in the boardroom, in the
meetings, interacting with business partners,
and how that translates into financial performance. I’m
of the mindset that every single decision that is made in
a business can be reflected in the financial statements.
That’s really the biggest piece in the puzzle when I think of
culture at Bed Bath & Beyond and where FP&A sits within
the business today, compared to where it may have been
10 years ago.
This has inevitably led to something of a culture shift in
our workforce. I think the shift for us has been having to
understand the process and understanding the
nomenclature, as when my team are in
meetings I always tell them that they’re
not dealing with accountants or
financial professionals, so they need
to speak their language and have
a common understanding. Finance
is not a complicated concept, as
you make money and you spend
money, but speaking in a way
you can have a non-finance
professional understand what
you’re talking about is absolutely
essential. And, that’s where you
really start to see the dividends
of FP&A’s involvement in these
different areas as it helps non-finance
staff understand what they’re working
on, and what their actions mean to the
company financially. As a result, I have
found that these different business leaders tend
to have more of a sense of ownership around the projects
they’re working on. That’s really been the shift, as being
able to speak a universal business language has helped
bring about significant change.
Ensuring non-financial managers take ownership of their
budget has been another vital part of the process at Bed
Bath & Beyond. This requires a lot of education. I have found
that when you talk about educating and influencing staff,
that takes longer. This means that you’re more of a business
partner than an authoritarian, as you’re not enforcing
something upon them. When you do this, and you work
with them to show them how you are a benefit to their work
and how they should be viewing things in a bit of a financial
light, then they tend to take ownership of it more when it’s
not forced on them, which is a real positive. So, if I’m going
to the marketing team, instead of coming with a travel
and expenses budget and a marketing spend budget,
I’ll come with questions like “where’s the team going?”
If the shoe fits. Chris Caswell explains the impact of FP&A as a strategic advisor at Clarks.
For me, the biggest impact of taking FP&A from a back-
office function to a strategic advisor at Clarks is that the
leadership team really want finance to be engaged. There
is a lot of thought and concern when you are pushing back
on the business and resist any change, but in fact I have
found that the leadership team really want the finance
team to be involved because they can see a great deal
of value in being able to understand the potential impact
of the decisions before they make them. And, now that we
have proven the value of FP&A they want us to be at the
table all the time!
In my experience though it’s not all about
implementing process and cold hard
facts, as people have to first trust in the
process and believe what they are
doing is right. We’re dealing with
industry professionals who have
built a career doing things a
certain way. So, building trust is
a vital part of the process, as
the reason that they want us
at the table is because they
trust what we are going to
say. Our experience at Clarks
exaggerates this, as if we had
given the team an answer
that proved to be wrong then
I probably wouldn’t have the
same answer here.
Communication is another
personable skill that is a great asset,
particularly when trying to ensure that
all Financial Managers take ownership of
their budgets. The easiest way - at least in my
experience - that a Finance Manager will try to avoid a
budget is by claiming, “that’s not mine”! They can try to
disassociate themselves from the numbers and claim, “I
don’t understand where the numbers are coming from” so
communication and transparent reporting helps solve this.
To ensure we’re on the right track, the team works with the
different sales channel teams and other budget holding
teams, then I sit with the leader of the department, and if
*Chris Caswell was employed as CFO & COO at Clarks at the time of going to press, but has since moved on to another position.
“what trade shows are we going to?” “what products are
we developing?” It generates the same results as a harder
approach, but it’s presented in a very different way, and
through that process we’re able to educate the Bed Bath
& Beyond team on how that translates into profitability.
Then they can all become the owners of their work.
Another tool we use to promote understanding is Tableau,
which business intelligence software that helps our team
see and understand their data. It’s a great visualization
and analytical tool that helps make FP&A something that
everyone can understand through the use of colors, charts
and easily digestible graphs.
they don’t understand we go deeper to provide a greater
understanding. We work with them and with that we have
frequent transparent reporting, so that every member
of the Clarks team knows where they stand. In order to
achieve this, we always need to communicate, both with
the president and the leadership, on a monthly basis so
that they can see where they are trending.
At Clarks I believe it has been less about the implementation
of FP&A, as it’s really been more of a transformation. To me
it’s not really just about the change that FP&A has brought,
as at Clarks we really transformed the overall finance
function by breaking down, within finance, the
functional silos. Finance is one team, which
in our world at FP&A encompasses FP&A,
accounting, business partnering,
strategy, tax, treasury, and
procurement, and from there we
move the process forward and
also incorporate some more
traditional operations such
as inventory, merchandising
planning, supply chain,
logistics etc. - but to the front
facing business. We are out
front of the business as ideas
are discussed and my teams
are on different scenarios of
likely outcomes before we make
final decisions. When doing this it’s
important to remember that we are
not a department that know, rather
we are a more of a thoughtful business
partner who is trying to think strategically
with the rest of leadership team and bring
forward ideas. Once we get to that point it is okay
for us to say no, and I often do, however a bit of us needs
to know that we are working with them to find solutions. We
try to find solutions with them and offer solutions, not just
shooting things down, which has been very a constructive
part of the process.
 YOUR ROADMAP TO
IMPLEMENTATION
Having read the views, opinions, and insights from a selection of FP&A industry
figures, the challenge, benefits, and trends of implementation have become
a little clearer.

However, the wealth of information isn’t always immediately digestible, so with

that in mind our experts have offered bite-size advice and reflections to get
you started on the road to a transformational business strategy.

ADVICE

Olga Corbett, Nick Fisher, Ryan Wilber, Chris Caswell,

Director of Financial CFO, Betteridge Director of Finance, Bed CFO & COO, Clarks*
Planning and Analysis, Bath & Beyond
Intertek

Have a clear vision of the
FP&A role and their mission
in the organization. Go
beyond your experience
which for some of us
may have been limited
to financial accounting.
Don’t be afraid to claim
formally a role as a
strategic business advisor
and demand an adoption
by your business partners.
Before going on this
campaign, have a clear
understanding what skillset
and systems you need to
be relevant quickly and
stay relevant, and be able
to deliver consistently solid
actionable wins.
Not to under-invest in Make sure that you
FP&A by assuming the understand change
accounting and FP&A management.
functions are the same Communicate everything
thing. FP&A can’t exist that’s going on within
without accounting, and the organization. I think
although they work hand- that you are going to
in-hand, they serve very experience push-back
distinct roles within the from some people that
organization. might view FP&A as a
watchdog and you do
not want everyone’s
first experience with
the FP&A team to be
that, as they need to
understand that they’re
a business partner. And
that the communication
and overall message is
one of real positivity and
that everyone’s going to
benefit from it.
It is the culture of the
team and constant
communication as you
go forward so that people
stay aligned. At the very
beginning there is general
alignment, everyone
agrees to the budget,
everyone understand their
piece. And constantly
giving updates throughout
the process so that people
feel engaged. Finance
needs to be connected
to the results. The sales
and marketing and other
leaders/owners need
to feel accountable
and part of the actual
numbers.

*Chris Caswell was employed as CFO & COO at Clarks at the time of going to press, but has since moved on to another position.
 PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Measure actionable and transferrable decision points the FP&A team has developed
for your business partners in the last 30 days that they can implement to deliver
incremental revenue or profits.
Olga Corbett

Whether or not the business unit and functional leaders are inviting their FP&A
counterparts to a seat at the table when making key decisions. The currency of an
FP&A professional is influence, which is built on credibility. A seat at the table is one very
important indicator to ensure the FP&A capability is being valued in the organization. 
Nick Fisher

The operating process or the net income.

Chris Caswell

CONCLUSIONS

Olga Corbett

A successful FP&A adoption requires a clear vision by the finance leader as well as
the organization of what the FP&A role is designed to provide. It requires converting
disbelievers by demonstrating our ability to provide incremental actionable results
beyond just closing the books or stating the obvious with a typical variance analysis.
In our current phase of big data and AI adoption, FP&A has a unique opportunity
to demonstrate a superior capability of analyzing the data and developing forward
looking prediction and business management tools, easy and effective for their
business partners to rely on. This will also allow our function to expand and attract
professionals far beyond traditional finance and help both groups expand their
skillset on the job.

Nick Fisher

A well-developed FP&A capability is what enables a CFO to become an organizational

catalyst and strategic partner.  It focuses and aligns the organization around enterprise
priorities, instils accountability through regular measurement of performance, and
enhances decision making through the power of data, information and insight.

*Chris Caswell was employed as CFO & COO at Clarks at the time of going to press, but has since moved on to another position.
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