
Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A): A Complete Guide
Introduction – As the name suggests, Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) covers all of the organization’s planning, forecasting, budgeting, and other analytical activities. This supports the company’s overall growth and maintains its financial health and performance. To compete and thrive in the dynamic market environment, businesses must streamline operations and develop a resilient business strategy. Financial planning analysts are expected to provide data-driven insights to help the organization make informed decisions for the future. Financial planning and analysis is a continuous process of collecting data and then analyzing it. The changing dynamics and volatility of the market make the process of FP&A more complex, as a larger amount of data needs to be analyzed. This is the sole reason some organizations have been branching out dedicated FP&A departments to carry out the financial forecasting and analysis process. The steps involved in this process are: Data Collection- The first and foremost step of the FP&A process is to collect the data. This data can be gathered with the help of historical data, financial statements, forecasts, budgets, etc. This process can be time-consuming as different types of data should be collected, so businesses are turning to AI-powered solutions and automating the process