Gone are the days when FP&A professionals had the luxury of being one-dimensional.
At least, according to Katherine Regele, FP&A manager at Coca-Cola Consolidated, who spoke at Excelerate Finance 2025.
“I’ve worked at multiple different companies and across multiple different industries, and what I’ve noticed is a transition from an FP&A professional being a reactive report-generator—that’s not enough anymore. You need to dig deeper and go beyond,” she says. “I’ve seen my role evolve from the number-cruncher to being a strategic business partner, and helping teams understand how their small piece of the organization fits into the larger puzzle.”
Simply put, the role of FP&A professionals has changed. Finance leaders play a critical part in helping the rest of the business navigate periods of volatility. They read between the lines, providing insight about what’s ahead—and how to contend with it.
"I’ve seen my role evolve from the number-cruncher to being a strategic business partner, and helping teams understand how their small piece of the organization fits into the larger puzzle.”
Katherine Regele, FP&A Manager, Coca-Cola Consolidated
With that in mind, the next generation of FP&A pros needs to develop a broad range of disciplines, becoming organizational Swiss army knives that can blend both technical know-how and soft skills. The evolving role of finance teams demands a broader set of skills, many of which are cultivated on the job rather than taught in accounting courses.
The skills you’ll need include data storytelling, business partnering, and working with AI tools, among others. Read on to get advice from seasoned finance veterans about where to focus your energy if you hope to excel as an FP&A professional in 2025.
To meet the evolving needs of businesses, these are the seven skills that will pay dividends as an FP&A professional.
“Different people in different departments ingest data differently. Building a rapport and understanding what it is that they want or need is key in building trust.”
Eugene Fedorinov, Senior Manager, Finance Database & Budget Analysis, Arizona Cardinals
Not everyone speaks “finance,” which is why FP&A professionals must learn to tailor their message to resonate with teams such as Sales, Operations and Human Resources. Each organizational spoke has its own point of view of the business, and finance teams that can translate the data into actionable insights for each team will prove themselves indispensable.
“Different people in different departments ingest data differently,” says Eugene Fedorinov, Senior Manager, Finance Database & Budget Analysis at the Arizona Cardinals of the NFL, who also spoke at Excelerate Finance 2025. “Sometimes people don’t want to be overwhelmed by all the data, and some people love to look at it. Building a rapport and understanding what it is that they want or need is key in building trust.”
This foundation of trust is the best way to lay the groundwork for effective business partnering as well.
It’s imperative for FP&A professionals to continuously learn and build proficiency in the new systems that are guiding their industry. And these days it goes far beyond Excel. It’s increasingly beneficial for FP&A professionals to get comfortable with tools like Power BI, Microsoft Fabric and Power Automate—all of which can help you automate manual tasks and strengthen data connections.
“Technology is the key piece,” Eugene says. “I started out in capital markets, and then technology upended that entire industry—I actually had to pivot because of technology, and that’s how I got into finance, and later, FP&A specifically,” he says.
Becoming more tech-savvy is especially important for finance teams to truly own their data.
Having a strong grasp of your tech stack can help your finance team develop a sense of self-sufficiency, rely less on IT (and eat up fewer of IT’s resources), and overall, streamline your processes and become more efficient.
Although there are many tools available, finance teams may not want to stray too far from Excel, which many are most familiar with.
Vena’s State of Strategic Finance 2025 report, too, finds that 89% of finance teams rely on Excel even with other planning software on hand. So it makes sense to lean into your team’s strengths, as it’s unlikely that Excel will be mothballed any time soon.
As such, you can continue to use Excel as the launching pad for all of your other FP&A activity. Microsoft is also continuously introducing powerful new features into Excel, such as the integration of Python and the introduction of AI insights through Microsoft Copilot.
Looking for courses to help you build up your Excel skills? Check out our blog.
Visuals are an aspect of financial reporting that shouldn’t be overlooked. Finance leaders can strategically leverage financial dashboards to help lift other areas of an organization.
As Eugene notes, not everyone digests data the same way—while finance pros may be accustomed to looking at numbers, columns and rows, the members of the C-suite or board of directors may not be. For that reason, use visuals such as charts and graphs to help solidify their understanding of the data.
Keep in mind, too, that research shows 75% of information processed in our brains is done so via visuals. In all, 90% of the information transmitted to our brains is done so visually.
Data can be used to tell a visual story, helping provide insights and key takeaways to other areas of the business. A few quick tips? Design your visuals with clarity in mind, emphasize the most critical elements of your data, and try to group similar data points.
“I think, ultimately, our role is that we’re building a bridge between the operation and the numbers. We’re the storytellers of the data.”
Katherine Regele, FP&A Manager, Coca-Cola Consolidated
Business partnering and building bridges across the organization are as crucial as ever. The current economic environment is perhaps more complex than ever before, as businesses work to contend with novel external pressures and adapt to new technologies. That requires cross-functional problem-solving.
As discussed, finance teams can start to build trust with other areas of the business by learning to speak their language. But teams can also try dedicating specific individuals or sub-teams to partner with those areas.
“I think, ultimately, our role is that we’re building a bridge between the operation and the numbers. We’re the storytellers of the data,” says Katherine. So, use your storytelling abilities to build those bridges and relationships.
For instance, team leaders can assign a team member or two to HR, operations or go-to-market (sales and marketing). Those team members can then focus on becoming familiar with their designated arm of the organization. That helps them further gain their trust, learn those teams’ preferences and, ultimately, provide them with the data and insights they need.
This kind of intentional partnership with and shadowing of other departments is the ultimate crash course in soft-skill-building for finance teams.
While we’ve highlighted several soft skills in this guide, technical skills, like data analysis, are an important area to develop as well.
In fact, Vena’s State of Strategic Finance 2025 report found that data analysis was the biggest skill gap reported by finance leaders, cited by 28% as the biggest opportunity for development among their teams.
Since data is the backbone of a finance team’s operations—and a business’s success or failure—FP&A professionals need to slice, dice and interpret that data at a granular level. Teams that can process, digest and interpret that data quickly and efficiently, even at a line-time level, are crucial to stakeholders.
Eugene says that the Cardinals were recently able to focus on tracking line-item details, and it led to some positive results. “We were able to incorporate that functionality in Vena,” he says. “What that allowed us to do was provide additional insight as to how many people were actually spending their budgets. And that started a whole slew of new conversations within the company.”
“AI may not replace us, but an AI-enabled peer could. It’s really about staying relevant and understanding what's out there. Frankly, adopting these new skills can only make us better professionals and serve our organizations better.”
Katherine Regele, FP&A Manager, Coca-Cola Consolidated
Above all, FP&A professionals should stay curious.
FP&A teams should always be asking “why” and embracing new tools and technologies in pursuit of those answers—including AI. If you’re intimidated by AI, however, you’re not alone.
“[AI is] a new skill that I’ve had to learn, and that a lot of people need to learn,” Eugene says. But once you get a handle on AI tools, they can kick your productivity into overdrive and give you an advantage over others.
“AI may not replace us, but an AI-enabled peer could,” Katherine says. “It’s really about staying relevant and understanding what's out there. Frankly, adopting these new skills can only make us better professionals and serve our organizations better.”
Finance teams need to be more than just number-crunchers—they need to be strategic assets that have their fingerprints all over the organizational chart.
Watch “The Rise of the Multidisciplinary FP&A Pro” from Excelerate Finance 2025 on demand to learn more about the unique cross-section of skills required to support modern FP&A functions, and hear Katherine and Eugene’s tips for unlocking your own potential as a finance professional.
Hear how leaders are transforming the role of finance through the right blend of technical skills like data science and interpersonal skills like business partnering.
Watch NowSam Becker is a writer and journalist focusing on business and finance, based near New York City. He is a native of the Pacific Northwest, and a graduate of Washington State University, and has written for CNBC, Fast Company, BBC, Fortune, and others. He also works with numerous brands in the financial space to sharpen their editorial reach, including Stash, Acorns, Goldman Sachs, SoFi, Vena, and more.
