Key Goals for FP&A Managers (with Examples)

At Firmbase, we work with a lot of FP&A teams and managers who rely on our platform to centralize data from a variety of sources and collect it in a way that’s easy to analyze. We hear from many of them that they value the platform because of the way it makes business insights easier to gather and understand, as well as more accurate. This makes their recommendations more relevant and actionable. In other words, it helps them achieve their goals.

In this article, we’ll explore why FP&A managers find setting clear, measurable, achievable goals to be so important, and share some of the key goals we hear mentioned most often by FP&A managers, with examples of how they relate to them in their organizations.

Why FP&A Goals and Objectives Matter

The role of an FP&A team is to be grounded in an accurate understanding of the financial reality of the organization, and to use that foundation to make predictions and forecasts about how internal and external factors will influence the business.

With this kind of financial planning and analysis, the organization can make the right data-driven decisions in the short-term, and work according to a long-term strategy that will support its broader objectives and aims.

Since FP&A work is so important to understanding the current health of the business and ensuring the company is set for future success, and ready to avoid or mitigate potential risks, it’s crucial for FP&A managers to set clear goals and objectives that enable them to fulfill this vital organizational role.

FP&A Goals and Objectives Examples

The specific FP&A goals and objectives that are most appropriate for any given team or company should be a reflection of the organization’s context, position, growth stage and priorities. However, there are certain types of goals that are relevant to many FP&A teams, and which increase their impact in an organization. It’s these kinds of FP&A goals and objectives examples that we’ll focus on here.

Often, goals will be broken down into 3 year (or even 5 year) vision, for projects that are strategic and planned to take place in many stages, annual goals, and quarterly or even monthly objectives. In all cases, teams should have measurable milestones they are aiming to reach at designated points in time.

Planning Measurable Milestones

For instance, a common goal we see at Firmbase is that managers come to us with a goal of looking to choose and integrate a new FP&A system which will empower them and their team to incorporate more data, from diverse sources, into their long-range financial planning, continuous financial health tracking, and annual budgeting. Often they will want to ensure that this tool helps extend their reach and respect beyond the finance function in the organization.

This kind of plan is something the manager might be thinking of over a three year period. But it will be broken down into sections. For instance:

Determining key features and capabilities

Analyzing available options

Getting buy-in from relevant stakeholders

Signing a contract

Successful integration

Successful training for different members of the team

All that is before even getting to the milestones around what they want to use the tool for and how they want to achieve their longer term objectives. In each case, they will evolve a sense of what success looks like in terms of content, quality and timeframe.

This is just one example of an objective we see frequently, to illustrate what a process of achievement might look like. The same process, of course, applies equally to any goal, whether around revenue planning, financial modeling, revenue forecasting, reducing budget variance etc.

Build and Leverage Cross-functional Relationships

We’re starting with building and leveraging cross-functional relationships because this is both a goal itself that ought to come with milestones attached, and also an essential basis for the successful achievement of many other FP&A goals.

FP&A is not a function that can or should operate in isolation from the rest of the business. Not only is being able to pull and work with data from across the organization crucial, but in order to have impact FP&A managers will need to be seen as a key partner by other business units.

It doesn’t matter how good your analysis or recommendations are, if no one wants to listen to them. Examples of some milestones for building and leveraging cross-functional relationships might be:

Determine which areas of the business currently have the strongest relationships with you or your team members, which have the weakest, which you might want to invest more or less into – and then build out steps to make those changes.

Consider which team members – including yourself – would bring greatest value to the team by investing in relationships with specific departments or individuals.

If some relationships are currently getting more time than is justified, work out a tactful but honest, staggered approach to reducing the touchpoints you have.

Analyze how you can best show value cross-functionally, making colleagues’ lives easier. This will make you and your team trusted partners and far more effective long-term.

Work out achievable milestones for how to deepen the relevant relationships. This might include things like quarterly report sessions, monthly updates, regularly scheduled informal catch up coffee sessions, etc.

Ensure Team Goals Align With and Support Company Goals

An FP&A manager should build their own objectives, and those for their team, on the priorities expressed by the CFO and the leadership team.

It’s easiest to see this when considering the mid-term perspective of annual goals, because company priorities are usually clearest at this level, but the same point is true in both shorter and longer term.

For example, an FP&A manager might want to focus on:

Identifying cost savings, if the business needs to reduce costs.

Reducing budget versus actual variance, if the lack of predictability is becoming acute at the company or becoming more problematic as it grows.

Identifying which existing customers are most valuable to the business, to support meaningful growth and enable customer success to use their efforts most effectively.

Identifying the most valuable sales or marketing campaigns, or business development channels, if expansion is a priority for the company.

What an FP&A manager is most focused on may need to adapt to changing business needs and priorities. Showing willingness to do this, even if it means adapting plans and strategies, is an important element of demonstrating that the FP&A function sees itself as an integral part of the business.

Explore Possibilities for Increasing Efficiencies or Automation

A common goal for an FP&A manager, especially in the current climate in which efficiency is a priority for many organizations, is to explore ways to make both their team and the organization as a whole more efficient.

As part of long-term digital transformation efforts, automation is often a part of this process. This trend is increasing as many companies become aware that by removing the burden of repetitive manual tasks from employees they can make more productive and effective use of their human resources.

Examples of goals that fall within this category might be:

Investigate areas of the business that are particularly reliant on manual tasks, determine the cost to the company, and compare company norms to external benchmarks.

Analyze financial processes in all departments to uncover current inefficiencies and create training on improved methods or processes.

Evaluate the annual budgeting process to see if it can be more efficient or streamlined, or more standardized across the company.

Establish the accuracy of forecasting and predictions within the organization to see if repeated or glaring gaps are causing inefficiencies. If this is the case, a supplementary goal would be working on solutions for this.

Examine whether aspects of FP&A work can be automated and what benefits doing so might have.

Ensure Data Silos Do Not Impede Effective Financial Planning

Data silos are another area many FP&A managers are becoming aware of and sensitive to, because they can get in the way of building an accurate, up-to-date understanding of the organization’s financial reality.

Data silos are very common in companies of all sizes, because few businesses realize the necessity of centralizing and standardizing data when they begin to evolve their data storage or evaluation systems and frameworks. Usually it develops organically into a patchwork of systems which interact with each other sporadically and sometimes with variable success.

Some goals around this area might be:

Explore whether the organization has a map of what data stores it has, what data is in each, how it is used, and how it interacts with other data sources and stores. If not, consider what might be required to create one, who would be best positioned to make it, and how it could be used in the organization.

Analyze whether financial planning has been adversely affected in the past by data silos, and if so, where the issues were and how they might be solved.

Evaluate which existing systems are best placed to act as a single source of truth for your team, and whether you need additional tools or platforms to supplement or improve this effort.

Ensure each team member is confident in accessing and leveraging all the systems they need in order to find and employ the data they need for their work. If there are weaknesses, determine the training and timing needed to support improvement and what confidence should look like.

Do You Need More External Data Sources?

As the role of FP&A teams grows more complex and impacted by such diverse factors as supply chains, climate, geopolitical events, shifting customer behaviors, economic factors and more, many FP&A managers are finding the need to include more external data sources in their evaluations in order to improve their forecasting accuracy.

This may not be something you need at this time, but setting a goal of analyzing whether that has changed on a regular basis (such as quarterly, biannually, or annually) can be worthwhile, so that it does not get pushed down the list and ignored until it becomes problematic.

For instance, you might want to consider:

Are there industry benchmarking sources that you want to integrate into your own systems?

Are there reports that are consistently valuable that a team member could be responsible for analyzing and summarizing?

Do your existing platforms have additional features or plugins that you could use to give you useful external data?

Are there conferences or events that may be valuable for understanding necessary context to inform your internal data?

Run Scenario Planning

Things change quickly, and even predictions that are well grounded in data can only do their best with what’s available at the time.

To help mitigate against the confusion or paralysis that can be caused within organizations when plans have to change quickly to adapt to changing circumstances, FP&A teams sometimes embrace scenario planning.

This is when more than one possible scenario is considered and planned for, usually ranging from optimistic, to pessimistic, to most likely. Examples of goals around shifting towards scenario planning include:

Evaluating which areas of financial planning scenario planning is most likely to be relevant for.

Training team members as necessary in how to engage in scenario planning.

Explaining the range of relevant scenarios as appropriate to the impacted stakeholders or departments, and encouraging them to build in flexibility or hedging as necessary.

Reflecting back on previous instances of scenario planning within your organization and evaluating whether there are any patterns relating to which outcomes were closest to reality, and whether there are lessons learned that could improve future accuracy.

Leverage AI, Don’t Feel Threatened By It

It’s sometimes an elephant in the room in finance (and other) departments, but technology is evolving quickly and hiding from the changes it brings won’t be possible for long.

Gartner predicted in 2023 that “more than 40% of finance roles will be new or significantly reshaped due to finance technology through 2025” and had recommendations for how to use AI for business impact, not just in a technical sense.

FP&A managers can have a huge influence on how well their team adapts to the changes brought by AI by creating an environment in which employees are encouraged to look for ways to expand their abilities, role or insights through AI tools or training. Viewing these innovations as valuable for efficiency and expansion, rather than a threat, is key.

Some goals related to this might be:

Setting time aside to research how AI is impacting your industry, FP&A, and your current priorities. There’s no shame in starting from scratch, if that’s the position you’re in. You might not have been fresh to a topic like this in a while, but this is new to everyone and this is the perfect time to learn.

Networking with peers in other companies to discuss how they are adapting to, or considering, these new opportunities and challenges.

Attending relevant events, conferences or meetups.

Exploring possible technologies to integrate into and accelerate your efforts.

Ensure you check in periodically with other departments to see how they are leveraging AI, and evaluate whether this is relevant for your department or work in some way.

Tailor FP&A Goals and Objectives Examples to Your Needs

With all of these goals, FP&A managers need to ensure that they are tailoring their efforts to their team, company, and culture. Something that works well in one company may need adapting before it works in another.

Of course, while managers are responsible for guiding objectives and ensuring milestones are met, many of the efforts outlined in this article are not solely the responsibility of the manager. FP&A managers should ensure that team members have clarity on departmental goals and the role they should play in achieving them, as well as autonomy to make success possible.

FP&A managers are also responsible for making sure that team members understand the importance of tracking and reporting their successes, which managers can then ensure are shared inter-departmentally as appropriate.

If possible, sharing examples of the impact on the organization is ideal, because it makes your achievements feel relevant for other business functions as well. With setting goals, achieving goals, and sharing achievements, the more grounded in data and specificity you can be, the better.

Learn how Firmbase helps FP&A teams create budgets, run forecasts & analyze important financial insights.