A shift away from traditional finance duties due to new technologies has provided opportunities for finance team members to focus on other areas of the business. One of these areas, financial planning and analysis (FP&A), requires the ability to process data but also leverage new tools and technologies to create actionable insights for other parts of the company.
The increased need CFOs have for personnel with FP&A skills has resulted in an uptick in budget allocations toward upskilling employees for FP&A functions.
According to data from the Association for Financial Professionals’ FP&A benchmarking survey of FP&A/ finance practitioners, CFOs are more likely to allocate upskilling dollars to their FP&A teams now than in years past. Report findings indicated that 42% of FP&A practitioners had their organizations cover some or all of the costs for their upskilling, up 10 percentage points in six years.
Organizational Involvement
While many employees have demanded upskilling in technology and financial literacy, FP&A practitioners are receiving more support from their employers than in past years when it comes to improving their skills in general.
Nearly four in 10 (39%) survey respondents said their company has a culture of investing in employees, up nine percentage points since 2018. Just over a quarter (26%) said employers provide training during work hours, alongside more than a fifth (22%) who said their employers assisted them in mapping the skills they needed; a rise by four and 10 percentage points, respectively, within the same time period.
Nearly 78% of respondents said their employers have trained them on technology and data, the most popular type of professional development training. Just under half (45%) reported receiving training on business knowledge, the second most common area.
The areas for which FP&A practitioners saw opportunities for improvement differed slightly from the training they received. Nearly four in 10 (37%) said technology and data management skills were areas they could improve on. Half said either finance or business knowledge (25% each), and 6% saw an opportunity to improve their accounting skills.
FP&A Talent Source
It’s clear why most FP&A practitioners don’t want any more accounting training: nearly 59% said former accountants fill their FP&A analyst and manager roles. All other finance positions combined ranked second (54%), reinforcing the idea that pursuing finance with an accounting background is a good launching point for a corporate finance career.
Regardless of where FP&A talent originates, sometimes FP&A team members get drawn back into areas outside of FP&A. Two-thirds (66%) of respondents have at least one area of work in finance outside of FP&A. For example, over half (53%) said they still do accounting-related tasks. And more than one-fourth (42%) were still performing treasury-related tasks in addition to their FP&A duties.
FP&A Returns to the Office
Opportunities for growth and upskilling may come with an in-person commitment to the office, according to AFP’s survey. Alongside technology training, many FP&A practitioners report their work environment is different from two years ago. Only 14% said they are full-time remote, a figure that tallied 33% in 2022. Instead, FP&A practitioners are now much more likely to have some type of commitment to come into the office.
Smaller companies were likelier to have their FP&A staff return to the office. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents working in a small-size company reported a return to the office, compared with 39% of those in midsize companies and 37% in large companies.
The AFP survey was conducted in August and September of 2023. It generated responses from 691 FP&A/ finance practitioners from organizations of varying sizes and around the globe, of which 347 completed the survey in its entirety. Their responses form the basis of this report.