How can you use cross-functional teams to support your strategic planning efforts for FP&A?

The purpose of a cross-functional team is to harness the collective intelligence and capabilities of individuals from diverse backgrounds to achieve specific objectives and drive organizational success. The scope of a cross-functional team's work is defined by the nature of the project, initiative, or problem-solving task at hand, and may vary based on the needs and priorities of the organization. The key purpose of the team are collaboration, having synergy, support innovation, and increase efficiency. Scope will be project based, strategic planning, problem solving and driving continuous improvement within the organization to optimize processes, enhance efficiency, and foster innovation across functional boundaries.

Having a complete, empowered, right skilled & accountable team whose skills complement each other helps. Having strategic, delivery focused motivational yet empathathetic managers could move the team in the right direction.

In my experience, we need to try our best to incorporate feedback from as many functional areas as possible in the FP&A area. Every functional area may contribute to unique ideas and perspective which allows better outcome in forecasting and planning. Gathering such feedback should be encouraged to avoid stereotypic decision making and contribute to dynamic discussions on analysis among the teams before making a final decision.

Cross-functional teams can be invaluable in supporting strategic planning efforts for Financial Planning & Analysis. Cross-functional teams bring together individuals from various departments such as finance, accounting, operations, sales, marketing, and IT. Each member brings a unique perspective and expertise to the table, which can enrich the strategic planning process. Considering the criticality of the purpose and scope of the cross functional team its important to choose the right team members across levels. This will help the organization to leverage the best from each individuals.

Cross functional team is integral to financial planning and analysis. Each function has a role to play for plan to succeed and it has its revenue and expenses. The key is to start with vision, goal, strategy, tactics, enabler, obstacle matrix. Where each cross functional team member shares his requirement, revenue, expenses, bottleneck, and ask. The collective one vision can be discussed and rationalised. For each benchmark can be obtained. One can look at yearly and quarterly comparison. Also can discuss innovation to bring substantial difference for the better. Cross functional team can bring in much needed fresh perspective, make the planning real and can add immensely to make it happen.

In any of the organization its very critical to establish a clear and realistic timeline and budget. Most of the failures come in achieving the desired targets of business or organization is due to unrealistic target/budget and giving too short timelines. Every budget needs to be shared with milestones in terms of numbers and timelines, e.g targets need to be broken at Monthly, Quarterly level and accordingly share with business and should be well supported by data and proper logic. It will help and give confidence to business team to achieve the milestones.

Transparent communication across teams is integral to helping us achieve our strategic FP&A goals. There are regular meetings at each level to ensure that each team is aware and aligned with each team's individual objectives, as well as "the big picture" goals that everyone should have as top of mind. We also incorporate SMART goals in to our performance review process to add precision and help prioritize goal-setting. Additionally, we conduct a SWOT analysis after the close of each fiscal year. The SWOT exercise is informed by feedback from teams within and outside of our finance group, and helps set the tone for goals going into the next fiscal year.