FP&A Business Agility Assessment For today’s FP&A organizations,business agility is a business imperative. There’s a huge opportunity for companies that achieve it – and those who don’t will struggle. We’ve developed 14 questions to help FP&A teams like yours understand their current capacity to support agility in their organizations. This assessment digs into your practices, capabilities, and business partnerships to discover your agility credentials and improvement opportunities. In only 7 minutes, answering these 14 simple questions could benefit your organization for years to come. Let's Go! What you'll get: A clear breakdown of your agility score and rating – have you adopted best practices? Actionable improvement steps: your strengths, weaknesses and opportunity areas. An extensive, personalized agility report based on your results, with an action plan and guide to your future roadmap. All terms, provisions, and agreements set forth in the Workday Website Terms of Use (“Terms of Use”) are hereby incorporated herein by reference with the same force and effect as though fully set forth herein. “Materials,” as defined in the Terms of Use, shall also include “The Business Agility Assessment.” 1. How does your FP&A team spend most of its time? Select one: We're mainly managing spreadsheets and updating reports. We collect and consolidate data and support senior leaders with reports. We provide guidance, analysis, and review for financial and operational performance across the business. We’re a major source of strategic insight and guidance for the business. Previous Step Next 2. How frequently does your organization plan and forecast? Select one: What plan? We don't update our annual plan. We create quarterly and monthly forecasts and analyze variances from the annual plan. We update our plan of record with monthly, weekly, or rolling forecasts. Previous Step Next 3. How often do you use insights drawn from nonfinancial data to inform your plans and forecasts? Select one: Never. We don't have that capability. Every 12 months, during our annual planning process. Every quarter. Every week/month. Previous Step Next 4. How often are finance and operational teams aligned on KPI data and analysis? Select one: Never. We either don’t review KPIs cross-functionally or we argue about whose numbers are right. Sometimes it's hard to reach a consensus. Often, but finance usually has to reconcile. Always. We share a single source of truth. Previous Step Next 5. How quickly can you update financial statements or test scenarios in response to change? Select one: 2 weeks A few days A day A few minutes Previous Step Next 6. How does FP&A partner with the rest of the business? Select one: We struggle to get other departments to collaborate with us. We talk at the end of the month to close the books. We meet semi-regularly to answer questions and review results. We’re an active guide and strategic resource for business leaders and budget owners. Previous Step Next 7. How easy is it for you to run what-if scenarios? Select one: We can’t run any. It would take a lot of work (and even more spreadsheets). We can run them by flexing a few dimensions and KPI assumptions. It’s quick and easy across multiple dimensions and drivers. Previous Step Next 8. How much time do you spend during budgeting and forecasting cycles reconciling data between people and systems? Select one: Over 2 weeks Over a week Over a day None. It's automatic. Previous Step Next 9. How much visibility do you have into the planning process as it’s happening across the business? Select one: None at all. We plan in isolation. We have a common process, but no visibility into the status of other teams. We follow a structured planning process and calendar, but it requires a lot of project management. We have full visibility into the process and everyone is engaged. Previous Step Next 10. How aligned is operational planning and reporting to strategic objectives? Select one: Operational planning and reporting are completely isolated from strategic objectives. Operational plans are based on strategy, but it’s hard to roll up performance insights into strategic discussions. Operational planning is connected to and loosely aligned with objectives. Everyone's plan is aligned to financial and strategic objectives. Previous Step Next 11. How is your planning supported by technology? Select one: We use spreadsheets to create the plan every cycle. We use spreadsheets to create the plan and have additional tools for financial reporting or analysis. We have a dedicated system, but it's mostly used by finance and requires IT involvement or administration. We have a shared environment where business users can input into plans and pull reports on the fly. Previous Step Next 12. How quickly can you course-correct when you see performance deviate from your plan? Select one: It's like turning the Titanic—by the time we see problems it's too late. We're in reactive mode. We identify problems during formal reporting cycles and manually surface the drivers/root causes. We periodically analyze dips in operational performance and respond before formal reporting cycles. We're continuously monitoring performance, identifying issues, and forming responses. Previous Step Next 13. A bit about you. What Industry do you work in? (Select one) : Choose your industry Aerospace & Defence Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing Banking Financial Services Business Professional, & Technical Services Construction, Architecture & Engineering Education Energy & Utilities Government Healthcare & Social Assistance Hospitality, Gaming, Hotel, Restaurants Insurance Insurance Manufacturing Mining, Oil & Gas Extraction Nonprofits, Charities, Foundations Pharmaceuticals, Biotech, Chemicals Publishing, Media, Advertising Real Estate, Leasing & Rental Retail Software Technology Transportation & Shipping Waste Management, Recycling Environment Wholesale Other Previous Step Next 14. How many people are in your business? Select range: 10,000+ Previous Step Next Your agility rating is: Download your customized report for a question-by-question breakdown tailored to your responses, complete with practical next steps to start forging a high-value partnership with the business. Supporting business agility isn’t easy—it wouldn’t be such a powerful differentiator if it was. The good news about being at the start of your agility journey is that there are lots of quick-wins lying around for the taking – and we can help you find them. With a few strategic conversations and some small process and behavioral changes, you can make a big impact in a small space of time. Download your customized report for a question-by-question breakdown tailored to your responses, complete with practical next steps to further strengthen your partnership with the business. You’re supporting business agility in some powerful ways already—now it’s time to focus in on the key areas that have the most impact. You’re ready to start adopting some more ambitious and sophisticated processes and capabilities. With the right focus and execution over the next 6-12 months, you can radically accelerate your ability to help the business predict and respond to change. Download your customized report for a question-by-question breakdown tailored to your answers, complete with practical steps to start developing some truly differentiating capabilities. Great job! You’re near the front of the pack. Now it’s time to accelerate your efforts and fulfill FP&A’s ultimate goal: to drive business agility throughout the whole organization, and act as a continuous engine of true strategic insight for the business. But remember: agility is a moving target. Today’s bleeding edge is tomorrow’s table stakes. You need to be constantly striving towards a real-time understanding of your business performance and predictive insight into the factors truly driving your business. Get Your Results Your industry benchmarks Proficiency level relative to comparable Adaptive Insights customer benchmarks 0% Process strategy Your process strategy score is 0% #### than average. 0% Process frequency Your process frequency score is 0% #### than average. 0% Process speed Your process speed score is 0% #### than average. 0% Data and systems Your data and systems score is 0% #### than average. 0% Collaboration Your collaboration score is 0% #### than average. We have identified key practical steps that could accelerate your business agility. Download your customized report to get the details. All terms, provisions, and agreements set forth in the Workday Website Terms of Use (“Terms of Use”) are hereby incorporated herein by reference with the same force and effect as though fully set forth herein. “Materials,” as defined in the Terms of Use, shall also include “The Business Agility Assessment.” FP&A Business Agility Assessment Final report for Name / Apr 20th, 2021 Your agility rating: The guide to becoming a strategic partner to the business Average Workday Adaptive Planning customer Your score To win big (and stay successful) in today’s accelerated competitive environment, businesses need to be agile. This report is about why (and how) FP&A teams can lead that charge. Business agility means the organization can continuously anticipate fast-moving change and coordinate a precision-engineered response across all corners of the organization. And without a systematic approach, that’s not easy. In fact, it’s almost impossible. To deliver agility to the business, FP&A needs to unlock its strategic potential. That doesn’t just mean adopting new practices within your team (though that’s a big part of our recommendations below). It’s also about leadership—about acting as a trusted partner and advisor to the whole business and driving behavioral change everywhere.That’s why this report isn’t just a list of tips and tricks. It’s a guide on how to build ownership, accountability, and buy-in to agile planning throughout the business. The good news is that you can start small. The recommendations below are based on your assessment responses. The result is your agility roadmap — the immediate improvement opportunities around your culture, habits, processes, technology, data, and more. Pick a few key areas, and try to secure some quick wins to build confidence in your journey towards agility. Your industry benchmarks Proficiency level relative to comparable Adaptive Insights customer benchmarks 0% Process strategy Your process strategy score is 0% #### than average. 0% Process frequency Your process frequency score is 0% #### than average. 0% Process speed Your process speed score is 0% #### than average. 0% Data and systems Your data and systems score is 0% #### than average. 0% Collaboration Your collaboration score is 0% #### than average. Save your full results. Save as PDF Your Results 1. Your FP&A team’s primary function in the business You said: Strategic FP&A teams like yours have automated much of the workload and are now doubling down on generating business insights that drive faster, better decisions. A good next step might be to assess your skill matrix and start evaluating how to develop future-facing capabilities in areas like AI, predictive analytics, and other new technologies. The first step to becoming a more strategic FP&A team is to free up time to focus on more strategic work. And that can’t happen if you’re bogged down maintaining spreadsheets and consolidating data. Put simply, your first goal should be to put the "A" back in "FP&A!" Automate as many of the manual tasks as possible and spend more time analyzing and offering strategic guidance to the business. Start by speaking to leaders about where you can add the most value and expand the scope from there. Practical steps Engage in strategic conversations/offsite planning sessions to find out how finance can provide better insights, faster (e.g., using a new technology to improve a process or to help meet company goals). Pick one area that has been problematic in the past or partner with a team or group that is open to trying new technology and run a pilot program. Practical steps Speak to operational and company leaders more frequently in order to discover their challenges. Find an operational area or project that finance can quickly address. Communicate your wins (and misses) outward to establish a new feedback loop. Elevate the scope of your reporting from backward- to forward-looking. After measurement, ask “So-what?” and then suggest follow-up actions. 2. Your planning and forecasting frequency You said: Strategic FP&A teams like yours have automated much of the workload and are now doubling down on generating business insights that drive faster, better decisions. A good next step might be to assess your skill matrix and start evaluating how to develop future-facing capabilities in areas like AI, predictive analytics, and other new technologies. Speed is a critical part of agility. Strategic insights need to be timely to be valuable. Quality analysis isn’t useful if the business doesn’t have time to respond effectively. To consistently equip senior stakeholders with timely, accurate information (including financial summaries and recommendations), you need to automate most of the data collection, consolidation, and processing to support fast, quality decision-making. Practical steps Engage in strategic conversations/offsite planning sessions to find out how finance can provide better insights, faster (e.g., using a new technology to improve a process or to help meet company goals). Pick one area that has been problematic in the past or partner with a team or group that is open to trying new technology and run a pilot program. Practical steps Implement a dedicated reporting system—with drill-down and collaborative capabilities – as soon as possible (i.e., stop reporting with spreadsheets). Automate the data flow feeding that system (ideally from financial and nonfinancial sources). Include key performance measures from nonfinance stakeholders to improve the scope and quality of your updates. Standardize financials so they can be generated quickly (within a specified number of hours). Take your planning and forecasting to the next level by reading 5 Steps to Getting Your Business on Board With Rolling Forecasts. Discover more 3. Your use of nonfinancial data in planning and forecasting You said: To achieve deeply coordinated agility throughout the organization, you need to develop a holistic model of the business based on operational, transactional, and financial data. This means helping business leaders understand how their actions, strategies, and operational KPIs connect to wider business initiatives. Financial data is just one dimension of business performance. Transactional and operational data from operational units can provide valuable insights beyond costs and revenue. Try measuring KPIs in areas like customer experience, website performance, brand reputation, and process efficiency. They have a direct impact on business performance and can paint a much clearer picture of your strategic posture and overall performance. Practical steps Help operational teams refine their KPIs based on the holistic business context. Expand the volume (and sources) of actionable, operational data within your planning. Incorporate operational data within your modeling and scenario planning. Practical steps Ask operational teams about their systems, KPIs, and how they model, define, and access the data used to measure them. Prioritize one or two models or KPIs that impact wider organizational goals. Integrate nonfinancial systems with financial data so everyone can report and model in one place. Don’t boil the ocean. Start with high-impact data (like average profit margin or marketing qualified leads). 4. The time needed to update financial reports and provide guidance for decision-makers You said: There’s always room to improve the speed, accuracy, and scope of the reporting requests you can respond to. Truly strategic FP&A teams respond to fewer base-level, ad hoc requests—they’ve made much of the reporting process self-service, so they can focus more on value-generating activities. This comes back to redefining the finance function in the business. Over time you need to maneuver away from administrative middleman so you can become a strategic advisor. Speed is a critical part of agility. Strategic insights need to be timely to be valuable. Quality analysis isn’t useful if the business doesn’t have time to respond effectively. To consistently equip senior stakeholders with timely, accurate information (including financial summaries and recommendations), you need to automate most of the data collection, consolidation, and processing to support fast, quality decision-making. Practical steps Improve the strategic value of financials by including in-context nonfinance data in regular reporting. Broaden finance and departmental participation for faster, better recommendations and guidance. Eliminate finance as a bottleneck by driving self-service, base-level financials. Practical steps Implement a dedicated reporting system—with drill-down and collaborative capabilities – as soon as possible (i.e., stop reporting with spreadsheets). Automate the data flow feeding that system (ideally from financial and nonfinancial sources). Include key performance measures from nonfinance stakeholders to improve the scope and quality of your updates. Standardize financials so they can be generated quickly (within a specified number of hours). 5. The alignment between finance and operational teams on KPI data and analysis You said: When every department shares a single planning vision and a single source of truth, you can automate the reconciliation process. After all, manual data aggregation—whether a download, import, ingest, or otherwise—increases the likelihood of errors and inaccuracy. Enabling users to engage more frequently with the process—to collaborate, share data, and discover new insights and opportunities for improvement—is more difficult when information is siloed. Strategic FP&A teams need to build a single, cross-functional agreement about business-critical KPIs and the data that impacts them. And that’s about people as much as data and technology. It's critical to build a single environment and drive accurate, current, consistent data everywhere, but you also need to break down silos and build consensus and participation around a single data reconciliation and reporting process. Practical steps Drive reports from a single system and ensure that system is the only source cited during interdepartmental meetings. Validate data between systems and other departmental sources regularly to maintain trust in the new integrated data environment. Increase automation wherever possible to minimize human error. Practical steps Consolidate all pertinent planning data into one dataset, in one place, with the same definitions. Collaborate with each functional team on the data (and systems) to be integrated and the reporting conventions to follow. Build an integrated framework that allows easy ingestion from multiple sources and enable intuitive easy-to-use access for users. Validate data and troubleshoot variances between systems. Diagnose and improve your financial reporting by reading Your Top 4 Reporting Challenges. Discover more 6. What-if scenarios You said: Mature scenario planning doesn’t mean more scenarios in more dimensions. It means running scenarios that deliver more valuable insight—scenarios that focus on key business drivers. These drivers should be those that dictate results and outcomes—that can be honed to improve the accuracy of the output over time. Enabling self-service functionality empowers nonfinance users to quickly and easily run their own scenarios, which makes this process easier. By leveraging unique perspectives and operational data, organization-wide planning is more effective. What-if scenarios are a critical tool for FP&A teams to drive more agility throughout the organization—through testing new models and assumptions, finding and mitigating risks, and seizing opportunities before the competition. However, the outputs are only as good as the inputs. High-value insights depend on clean, current, accessible data from a broad range of sources. And that depends on an intuitive, easy-to-use interface within a tool that supports a high rate of change. Practical steps Capture actuals data with enough granularity to identify more subtle trends. Refine your model’s logic and complexity to flex your operational drivers and reveal their financial significance. Evaluate new technology and methods to improve both the speed and functionality of modeling. Train people on best practices to ensure data and models are used consistently through self-service functionality. Practical steps Transition from modeling in spreadsheets to a more scalable, less error-prone and dedicated modeling system. Create an integration process that ensures clean, granular data from across the business. Align your current model with your key operational drivers. Train people on best practices to ensure data and models are used consistently. 7. FP&A’s partnership with wider business functions You said: The best FP&A partnerships are grounded in helpful inquisitiveness. You should be actively nurturing input from external stakeholders and cultivating a role as a trusted advisor for every strategic discussion happening across the business. It’s much easier to be viewed as a strategic resource, when you’re demonstrably identifying new opportunities to add value to every team you work with. Good business partnership isn’t administrative—it’s creative. Parachuting into different departments to close the books every month won’t cut it. Strategic FP&A teams need to embed, invest, and accelerate real behavioral change that ultimately leads to autonomy. Start small. Simply checking in with operational and regional heads more frequently and actively listening to their needs is a great first step. You’ll see far more success collaborating on a new process together rather than mandating one from above. Practical steps Keep planning at the top of the strategic agenda. Anticipate and discuss new business challenges with senior stakeholders and figure out how to include them in your reporting and planning. Move finance’s value beyond planning by proactively circulating helpful content and competitive information outside of regularly scheduled meetings. Practical steps Find the people most critical to your business goals across all regions and departments. Meet regularly with operational teams, budget owners, and leaders to get a full view of their needs and goals. Focus on adding specific value relevant to each situation—even if that’s just clarifying next actions. 8. The work hours per planning cycle spent reconciling data between people and systems You said: Data is always evolving—new types, volumes, and sources are inevitable. Even a fully-automated and integrated process will quickly become outdated if it’s not proactively maintained and updated. But FP&A shouldn’t become administrators of this lifecycle. Instead, you should enable operational teams to keep their own systems and applications integrated with the wider reconciliation process. Data reconciliation is low-value work that eats up the time you should be spending generating insights. You should be automating wherever you can. But even if that’s not an option, there are still ways to reduce risk and inefficiency. Practical steps Guide functional teams toward integration autonomy. Move to a single planning environment to leverage the Power of One. Practical steps Build integrations between your core operational and reporting systems wherever possible to reduce manual handling. Normalize data during the collection process through formalized templates. Educate different contributors on a standardized process. 9. Your visibility into planning across the business You said: It’s one thing to get operational units planning and reporting in the same way, in the same system, but it's not enough. By reducing the time spent keeping the business on tight guard rails, the more time you'll have to generate high-value insights. Build passionate advocates for the new processes you’re establishing as you go. This helps teams want to work that way—not because they know they should, but because it demonstrably delivers the best outcomes. If you don't have visibility into the planning happening across the business, you can’t truly support and coordinate business agility. FP&A teams need to help the whole business move toward cross-functional planning transparency. But it’s also important not to get tied up in managing cross-functional alignment full time. FP&A teams need to free up as much time for value-generating analysis as possible. And that means driving better, more autonomous planning. Practical steps Move from participation in the process to enthusiastic advocacy of the process and its results. Encourage autonomy and reduce process management wherever possible. Build shared ownership by listening to (and implementing) feedback on the process. Practical steps Create a pilot cross-departmental planning process for two functional teams with clear owners, deliverables, and due dates. Procure a software system with planning workflow capabilities that’s easy to use and includes real-time updates. Start slow and ramp up. Iterate and improve the process and system with the initial department(s) before rolling it out to the broader team. 10. The alignment of your plans and reports to your strategic objectives You said: There’s no upper limit to the level of strategic guidance and value you can provide to specific areas of the business—it really comes down to how well you understand the on-the-ground operational reality. Continually help functional units understand the key metrics and KPIs that drive their true performance. Once you understand the story behind the numbers, you’re in a much better position to optimize things for the financial and strategic objectives. Every business should be aiming for a strong 1:1 alignment between strategic vision and operational reality. But that’s going to take a lot of time, energy, and resources to deliver. You’ll need to build some confidence and credibility early on to make the larger changes needed. Start by building pockets of close integration between operations and objectives. Focus on the areas that will have the most impact. Sales operations and workforce planning are good candidates because they’re tied to the resources (capital and people) needed to execute on your strategic vision. Practical steps Deepen your understanding of the operational drivers that really impact your strategic goals. Refine your targets accordingly. Expand the circle of contributors based on those findings to develop stronger goals (and ideas about how to achieve them). Stay nimble and be ready to change priorities as the situation changes (while keeping people aligned). Practical steps Socialize strategic objectives with operational plan owners as soon as they’re defined and tweak both as necessary. Identify how operational drivers across departments contribute (or obstruct) high-level objectives. Highlight performance against high-level objectives within ongoing reporting. 11. How your technology supports planning You said: Rolling out a dedicated, shared planning platform across the business is one of the greatest ways FP&A can drive business agility—so long as the tool meets certain criteria. Shared planning platforms need to: - Handle large and varied volumes of frequently changing data. - Feel intuitive and reliable to use without heavy IT or administrative requirements. - Scale effortlessly across different environments, systems, and locations. Most importantly, your planning and strategic ambitions should never be constrained by your technology. Keep your capabilities aligned with your needs as they change and grow. Spreadsheets are still a fantastically flexible tool for people across the organization to make things happen very quickly. But that versatility is also a shortcoming. There are few bigger drivers of strategic misalignment than isolated spreadsheets containing complex (possibly conflicting) plans. Eventually, FP&A teams need to guide the organization toward a more purpose-built, integrated solution—one that’s easy to use, responsive at scale, and powerful enough to support a single version of the truth across the business. Practical steps Ensure you’re engaging voices from the business as well as IT. New cloud tools should require less technical maintenance and benefit from a broader range of input. Find a solution capable of handling the data sets with the functionality to meet your planning and business needs. Practical steps Don’t underestimate the level of business change that this kind of move brings. Solicit advice from vendors or finance implementation partners about how different applications will support your model. Find a tool that’s cloud-native and can support the volume, variety, and velocity of planning data. Support your teams to get up and running on the new tool as fast as possible through internal training with support through communities and partners if needed. 12. The time needed to identify root causes and course-correct You said: Highly strategic FP&A teams don’t just help the business respond to unexpected events faster and more effectively—they actively reduce the number of unknowns and surprises altogether. In other words, highly agile businesses seldom make huge shifts in strategy. Rather, they’re constantly making micro-adjustments based on a clear picture of the horizon. This is the difference between knowing that you’re facing an earnings shortfall for the year several months ahead of close and understanding which operational levers to pull in order to address the shortfall—all without diverting resources or impacting performance elsewhere. When a business can operationalize effective responses to changing conditions, the organization is becoming agile. That’s why FP&A teams need to shift their focus from measuring past performance to forecasting and modelling the future—whether that’s drilling into cross-functional data to predict financial and operational performance, scenario planning for key events, analyzing gaps and creating response actions, or something else.