As someone who is currently in the assessment and designing phase of a new role, this topic is top-of-mind for me.

What should I do with ______?

Key word: “should”

It’s a tricky word because there is no right answer to how to staff your FP&A team.

There’s a lot you need to consider:

And translating this into specific roles can be a work of art especially considering your current team’s capabilities and experience level.

So I’ve found it easier to design around key capabilities before fitting that to specific roles.

Here’s a few key FP&A capabilities I keep coming back to as I’m designing my current team:

Let’s explore them…

Often in a smaller team, this is simply the CFO, Head of Finance, VP of Finance, or Director of Finance.

In a larger organization (like the ones I work in), you find that that volume of work increases with the complexity of the business.

Lot’s of stakeholders, lot’s of initiatives, lot’s of room for miscommunication.

And at the end of the day our job in FP&A is ensure the entire business is sync’d up and moving in the right direction.

Which is why I stack my executive support team with a few good people.

And on this team, here’s what I’m looking for:

To be completely honest, these are the kinds of FP&A employees that are future CFOs.

And it’s the executive support role that helps me build the full-year forecast calendar and down to the day when we’re going through plan submissions.

They can sit in leadership meetings with little context, listen to the complex business problem, and quickly action that into a takeaway.

And they are excellent at telling stories about the business with data and insights produced by themselves or the rest of the team.

Honestly, this is the most AI-resistant role in FP&A (in my opinion).

I use the term “functionality” very intently.

This is the kind of FP&A talent that can build the forecast model and infrastructure that is needed for both efficiency and effectiveness.

It’s one thing to build an efficient model that doesn’t give you the right level of detail.

It’s another thing to build an effective model that can be leveraged by the whole team and is break-proof.

I also value this role to be able to build side-models for forecast drivers like: sales pipeline, customer retention, etc.

We need to measure how we forecast, so it’s important to build side-models that are logical for the business while also tying back to our financial modeling.

Also, my forecast talent needs to have an opinion about the forecast they are producing. And I need to know what I can trust or not.

No forecast is perfect, and this talent can help me see our blind spots.

I always say that our role in FP&A is both scorekeeper and coach.

While those first 2 roles are all about coaching…

My reporting & measurement roles are all about scorekeeping.

These roles are a great balance of 1) listening to where the business is going and 2) designing their data/reporting infrastructure to reflect that direction.

This skillset is tricky to nail.

Why?

Because the best reporting talent are empathetic listeners.

But the best measurement talent can smell the B.S. and push back on the business where appropriate.

When you find a great reporting and measurement talent, hold on tight to them. Because the best ones are a perfect blend of technical capabilities and business savvy.

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