Collaboration between financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and business and operations teams when forecasting and planning is greater in organisations within Asia Pacific than those in North America and multinationals, said the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) recently when releasing results of a survey.
The survey — the 2021 AFP xP&A Survey and underwritten by Jedox — generated 300 responses from corporate finance practitioners in April 2021.
FP&A is actively and effectively collaborating with its business and operations counterparts, and higher collaboration scores correlate to higher overall extended planning and analysis (xP&A) scores, AFP pointed out.
The survey also scored responses to each question based on levels of xP&A attainment; xP&A scores were then calculated for the FP&A profession overall and for the three geographies, AFP added.
The vision of xP&A is to increase the frequency and accuracy of forecasting by unifying, integrating, and aligning the planning and forecasting activities throughout the entire value chain, said AFP.
In addition, business and operations teams in Asia Pacific are able to understand or make decisions independently based on the finance and operations connection, representing the successful use of xP&A as it provides business insight into the financial impact of operating decisions, AFP noted.
Other survey highlights
- Multinationals have the highest overall xP&A score, while organisations based in APAC and North America (US and Canada) tied.
- All geographies struggle equally with the effort to obtain data from nonfinancial sources. Compiling disparate operational data and relating them to the general ledger is key to unlocking the value of xP&A.
- The ability of business and operations teams in APAC to understand or make decisions independently is on par with those in North America. Further implementation of xP&A tools and methods is expected to raise this score.
