Brilliant Advice from 3 FP&A Experts for a Better Budget

Zachary Rial, Senior Director Finance and Strategy at Peek; David Fortin, CPA (ex-FP&A at Ubisoft) and Carolina Lago, Managing Director at Tactical Financial, bring inspiration for budget season.

1. Zachary Rial: Make it Useful

“All models are wrong, but some are useful"- George Box.

"We are gonna be wrong the minute we hit publish on something", says Rial. "But what we can do is at least make what we publish very useful and ensure it teaches us about the business."

Secondly, make it practical so that people really understand what it means to the business overall. "Particularly at a startup, I want to maximize our enterprise value" he adds. "But with my operational side I say ‘Let’s break it down to what that means an individual sales rep is going to have to do to be able to attain that. What did an individual sales rep do last year and the year before that? And when you break it down and make it very applicable to what they need to do. "

Then you have to communicate.

Then communicate again.

2. David Fortin - Don’t stay in the Weeds

David Fortin, ex-FP&A leader at games giant Ubisoft says: "You can spend days and days and days on your Excel to be so perfect and just go through numbers, but at the end of the day, your assumptions don't make any sense. They're not backed by things that  are actually gonna happen through assumptions."

And (once again) communicate.

"I really love talking to the sales rep and, and making thing really simple. I like to explain the concepts and make it easier for them and saying, 'Hey, you did $5 million on this client last year, you can do seven this year because X, Y, Z".

3. Make it logical + add  value

Make sure what you are putting in the budget is logical, says Lago. Just try to go back to the logic of it (and make sure it makes sense).

Secondly, make  sure you're bringing value (“some people just fill up the lines”).

“What's important is that you gather all the information that actually brings value to the company" says Lago. "What needs to be on the budget, on the side of the expenses and costs and also on the side of the revenue. This is what really brings value to the company and is the core of the budget. Only then get to the small stuff and the stuff that doesn't really move the needle."

Catch the full clinic here.

FP&A Today 🎧

For the Love of FP&A: Christian Wattig

Only our second ever returning guest, Christian Wattig , a veteran former leader of FP&A at P&G, Unilever, and Squarespace, reveals new skills he has learnt as he created the recently-launched 8 week Wharton Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Certificate Program, one of the most comprehensive FP&A training courses on the market. He tells Glenn Hopper about top highlights from his career, new strategy, and analysis, and how he sees the future of the profession.

• The common bond between FP&A educators such as Christian and former host Paul Barnhurst and Glenn
• FP&A at multinational consumer goods companies P&G and Unilever 
• Startup FP&A vs Big FP&A
• Creating FP&A Prep  to the  new Wharton (University of Pennsylvania FP&A) 8 week Online Course 
• Two great books I recommend The CFO Lens, Ravi Kumar, and Future Ready by Steve Morlidge and Steve Player 
• Two Fascinating FP&A Things I hadn’t come across in 14 years previously: Business Driver Tree Analysis + Differences-in-Differences Analysis 
• BI, financial analysis and data science vs FP&A

Meme of the week

Gen Z Finance bringing the Rizz