Survey: Bigger Investment in FP&A Technology Yields Greater Efficiencies

AFP FP&A Benchmarking Survey Results Reveal the More Companies Spend on Technology, the Less Time Spent on Routine Tasks.

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Association for Financial Professionals

Oct 04, 2016, 10:17 ET

BETHESDA, Md., Oct. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The 2016 Association for Financial Professionals' FP&A Benchmarking Survey uncovered a gap between where FP&A is today and where it wants to be. But the survey of 255 FP&A practitioners did suggest a path forward to closing the gap: investing in FP&A systems.

Among the findings:

2016 AFP Financial Planning & Analysis Benchmarking Survey: FP&A, a Function in Transition

FP&A functions at companies with larger technology budgets spend less time on grunt work and more time on real analysis. FP&A staff spent an average of 384 FTE days performing routine tasks in companies that dedicate less than 10 percent of their budget to technology. In contrast, companies that spent between 10 to 20 percent on systems cut that number by more than half. Companies that spent 20 to 49 percent reduced that number to just over 62 days.
Predictive analytics is a functionality many of today's FP&A teams see as the next big step forward. Though only 18 percent of companies are fully enabled to use predictive analytics today, half of survey respondents expect their organizations to have such capability in the future.
Nearly a third (29 percent) of survey respondents have access to integrated data across enterprise sources as well as some external data, and they run both historic analysis as well as predictive algorithms. The majority of survey respondents believe that for their companies to be competitive, they will need access to real-time structured and unstructured data.

As FP&A departments close the gap between today's traditional function and a more robust analytics group of the future, nearly 50 percent have switched to forward-looking forecasting techniques like driver-based modeling and rolling forecasting.

"Greater investment in technology liberates FP&A staff to do what they were hired to do, and what their organizations need them to do; namely, conduct robust analysis and forecasting to better inform their company's strategic decisions," said Jim Kaitz, president and chief executive of AFP.

ABOUT AFP®

Headquartered outside Washington, D.C., the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) is the professional society that represents finance executives globally. AFP established and administers the Certified Treasury Professional and Certified Corporate FP&A Professional credentials, which set standards of excellence in finance. The quarterly AFP Corporate Cash Indicators serve as a bellwether of economic growth. The AFP Annual Conference is the largest networking event for corporate finance professionals in the world.

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SOURCE Association for Financial Professionals