A huge thank you to the FP&A team at General Mills for hosting the May 16-17th meeting of NeuGroup for Heads of FP&A at their Minneapolis headquarters. Thank you to all the peer group members who joined us for dinner and a day full of fascinating discussions, as well as NeuGroup’s very own Andrew Podolsky, Nilly Essaides, and Courtney Royer for making this an exciting and successful event.
The #1 topic arising from the session on our projects and priorities was how to transition from a pure P&L focus to building a cash culture, as margins tighten across industries. The challenge for many members is instilling cash discipline and improving and aligning cash forecasting with treasury. The driver of change is often internal; however, members report rising pressure from analysts on free cashflow.
At #2: How FP&A can support revenue growth. While cost cutting may be prevalent, “you cannot cut you way into growth,” one of our members said. She shared the details of her company’s 26-week V.I.P project that included small-group meetings of top leaders and five FP&A staff to identify priority investment initiatives. The next step was embarking a ZBB-like hunt to uncover expenses that can be relocated to fund strategic growth.
Also top of mind: How to achieve future state Finance Org by rearchitecting the finance tech stack and optimizing the operating model by standing up SSC and coe operations. Even more important – What steps can finance executives take to prepare their teams so they can work in new ways and close data analytics capability gaps while improving collaboration with business partners.
Other key themes:
- Leveraging new technologies like AI and ml to enhance forecasting accuracy and bolster analytics capabilities.
- The role of finance in supporting the company’s sustainability goals.
- Data governance and visibility.
- FP&A collaboration with treasury, tax and other areas in the finance organization in order to provide optimal support to key decision makers.
