The Eyes and Ears of the Business
FP&A consolidates financial reporting for a business while planning for future years through budgeting and forecasting. These tasks are often performed in Excel but can be time-intensive and prone to inefficiencies. Streamlining FP&A processes improves accuracy and empowers leaders to make informed decisions.
At a Fortune 100 company with over 100,000 employees, Tony was brought in to rescue a headcount Operating Expense planning project. The initiative, a CFO-level priority, involved forecasting over $25B in operating expenses. While past forecasts were accurate at the top level, lower-level forecasts often deviated by more than 10% from actuals.
Despite joining the project nine months behind schedule, Tony quickly developed a headcount forecasting model. The model incorporated hiring assumptions and backtesting, achieving an accuracy within 1%, compared to the previous 10%+ variance. This provided leaders across the organization with better tools to manage budgets and meet forecasting targets, driving significant impact at all levels.
While working for a leading cloud provider, Tony was tasked with automating the production of the Income Statement, including Capex and Working Capital. The organization had annual revenue exceeding $100B, costs over $80B, and Capex surpassing $50B.
Tony built a backend to integrate data from multiple systems containing trillions of records. This data was consolidated and mapped into a simplified front-end application, enabling users to generate full income statements for both Actuals and Planning scenarios. Additionally, the system allowed users to create complex Excel files directly from the cloud using Python, reducing a multi-hour manual process (previously reliant on just 1–2 experts) to an on-demand, automated workflow.
Understanding changes in operating margin requires a detailed margin bridge that ties granular period and line-item differences to top-level results. This process is typically complex, requiring expertise, multiple Excel files, and integration with legacy financials systems.
Tony developed an automated system that could generate a margin bridge within seconds. This replaced the manual, time-consuming process previously managed by a single expert. The tool simplified and accelerated margin bridging, making it accessible to a broader audience including senior executives to assess the company’s financial performance.