According to a recent survey from the Association for Financial Professionals, three-quarters of FP&A practitioners are questioning the accuracy of their data.
The survey—which polled more than 600 FP&A professionals across 20 industries—examines how finance teams are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on their organizations. When asked to identify the business challenges brought on by the crisis, 75% of respondents said “information uncertainty.”
As economic conditions continue to evolve, finance teams are faced with having to frequently change their plans and adjust to unfamiliar scenarios in order to help their businesses navigate the road ahead. But without access to accurate, reliable, up-to-date information, finance leaders can’t empower key stakeholders with the insights they need to make agile, educated business decisions—making it tough for them to plan confidently for today and tomorrow.
Finance-led business planning needs to be a proactive, forward-thinking process, which makes managing information uncertainty all the more important during periods of unprecedented change. With the right planning tools at their disposal, FP&A teams can achieve a holistic and accurate view of company-wide data and test their business plans against any number of potential scenarios in real time—and then use those findings to help stakeholders across the business make data-driven planning decisions going forward.
There are finance-led planning platforms, for example, that include built-in functionality for automated data consolidation, integrated workflows, audit trails and proactive cash management. With that level of access to reliable and accurate financial data, FP&A professionals can manage information uncertainty and enable agile business planning across the entire organization.
With the right tools and the right planning processes in place, finance teams can tackle the future head-on and lead their companies forward with confidence—using reliable, up-to-date data to guide their most important decisions.
Learn how Vena Agile Planning can streamline your finance-led business planning processes and alleviate information uncertainty so you can plan confidently for today and tomorrow.
Read AFP’s COVID-19 report here.