Welcome to The Brief, where we curate the latest in strategic finance for you. Stay current with FP&A trends, thought leadership, and technology. 

How to Improve Budget Owner Accountability: Guide for FP&A  

"How can I get stakeholders to be more responsible?" Quy Dong, head of Customer Success at Stratify and a former finance business partner, has answers.

Learn how FP&A can help cost center leaders take ownership of their budget, manage their spending, and support the business's strategic goals.

What Does Your CEO Need From the FP&A Team?

Leading a company doesn’t have to be a solitary journey. Successful CEOs rely on their finance leader as a trusted partner and advisor. 

With experience as a CEO and CFO, I wrote this blog to shine the spotlight on the unique responsibility of the FP&A team. They provide the data, insights, and clarity that's needed to help CEOs to navigate a lonely and noisy role. 

Fast Track Strategic Finance: 5 Immediate Wins with Modern FP&A Software 

As your business gets more complex, financial planning software automates time-consuming steps of modeling and reconciling data and will streamline your planning.

This frees you up to finally achieve strategic finance goals like business partnership and detailed analysis.  

 What We Bookmarked:

• Formula 1 chief appalled to find team using Excel to manage 20,000 car parts. "When you start tracking thousands of components throughout your organization, moving around an Excel spreadsheet is useless."
  Source: Kevin Purdy for Ars Technica 
  
• The FP&A Guide to Driver-based Models and Plans from AFP covers how to incorporate driver-based modeling into your plans so you can connect your business drivers with financial outcomes. 
  Source: Association for Finance Professionals 
• FP&A educator Christian Wattig shared this story of being in the hot seat during his first financial model presentation for P&G, with a $100 million investment on the table. It's a great example of the importance of being able to adjust models on the fly.
  Source: Christian Wattig on LinkedIn
• 42% of FP&A pros say their employer pays for the cost of upskilling their teams, according to new research. More orgs see the value of highly skilled finance teams and they're investing for the future. 
  Source: Adam Zaki for CFO.com

Headcount Reconciliation in Stratify 

Seamlessly connect data from your HRIS system with reporting and planning activities in Stratify. Quickly reconcile new hires, terminations, backfills, and add new positions.

Why you will love this feature.

Eliminate manual data wrangling and have fewer meetings; always be on the same page with HR and Recruiting. Additionally, you'll improve forecast accuracy.