Thursday, August 31, 2017

Challenges for FP&A in the world of Big Data

Big Data is the new buzz word nowadays. Its all about analytics and data. But analytics is nothing new in  finance. Finance has always been about data, numbers, trends  and analysis . In other words, finance has always been trying to tell a story from the numbers.

These numbers have been static and based on a set of accounts , statements and records  for a certain numbers of years or months . These are then used to develop insights into trends so as to predict the future performance . Additional variables of market performance , survey insights, currency expectations , consumer sentiment and economic indicators etc are  added to help understand the impact of such factors as well as improve the forecast of future performance.  This is a static way of doing financial planning and analysis.

The difference today is that the amount of data being generated  and recorded is growing immensely and dynamically. Data was always being created but today their is a way  that we can record and make it available very quickly and in some circumstances  instantly.  Financial planning and analysis faces a huge challenge in how to incorporate this changing data into the traditional cycles of annual budgeting, monthly forecasting  and even long range planning.  Here are the 5 main challenges that I believe faces traditional FP&A:

1) Incorporate existing / legacy ERP systems with dynamically changing data/ information
2) Change current processes for budgeting and  forecasting
3) Make data managers and data scientists part of traditional finance functions
4) Compliance / GAAP/ IFRS - Finance  still has to be the gatekeeper
5) Training and change management


 What are the other challenges that you foresee  that corporations are facing / will face  in this area? 

Who, What and Why ?

My name is Geetanjali Tandon. I  have  15+ years of experience in corporate finance specifically in Financial Planning and Analysis  in various companies/ industries. 

I love numbers ..yes I am one of those people. I love working with numbers  but I am not engineer or a scientist . I am in finance and what I love most about it is that numbers tell a story . I work with numbers everyday and mostly am trying to figure out what is the story  behind the numbers - the " So what ". Even in a simple profit & loss statement we have a story  about how a company is performing.  So ofcourse with so much more data available I am really excited about the changes that we are seeing in the world of finance. 

This blog is all about Big Data and FP&A specifically i.e. How is big data changing the world of financial planning and analytics. I will bring together my experiences in the world of corporate finance  along with challenges we face everyday to talk about possible solutions, changes and impacts we can foresee.   This blog is for anyone  who works in finance   and deals with budgeting, forecasting, creating what if scenarios, developing financial impacts models  etc. This blog is also for the people from IT who are   in world of capturing, recording  and making this data available to the users - to help them understand the  issues/ problems of the users within finance . And of course this blog is for anyone who likes numbers , is excited about the changes happening in the corporate world  and wants to discuss solutions. 

Please read the blog posts and leave your comments and feedback.  Please share anything that you would like to discuss further and ofcourse tell me about issues/ challenges that you facing regarding the the transition/ transformations taking place in your companies. 

A little bit more about myself : 

Linkedin Profile: