Recent content list (scroll down)

Most of what’s been written about Agile assumes that the methodology can be adapted to any organisation. But our analysis found that some companies are better suited to Agile than others. 

More finance chiefs talk about sustainability on earnings calls, provide disclosures

Organizations need to think creatively when using technology to unlock new insights.

Most of the time, we focus on removing as much uncertainty as possible in the attempt to provide the single “best” answer to the question we’ve been asked. However, when uncertainty is unusually high, we can serve ourselves and our sponsors better if we embrace the uncertainty instead of trying to fully contain it.

Trust, we instinctively realize, is a precious quality that binds relationships, and nowhere more so than in business ecosystems. It’s foundational, but also fragile because all the participants in an ecosystem must learn to work with, and rely on, each other, knowing that no external force compels them to do so. Mutual trust, as much as mutual interest, binds business ecosystems.

Amid increasingly volatile business environments, companies must learn to harness technology to efficiently generate accurate forecasts.

Companies that transition to a new risk playbook will be in a stronger position to win the future consumer. There are three key areas to get right.

To compete today, companies need to be data-driven. But for mainstream, legacy companies, that’s easier said than done. Despite a decade of investment and the adoption of Chief Data Officers, this survey of Fortune 1000 senior executives finds that many companies are still struggling against not just legacy tech, but embedded cultures that are resistant to new ways of doing things — over 90 percent of companies surveyed reported culture was their biggest barrier.

As corporations have become more aware of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) related opportunities, there has also been a surge of interest around Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), as organizations have turned to their employees for information that could help them build more robust employee strategies.

What could your business achieve if your large capital projects were 30 to 50 percent faster and cheaper? The opportunity is more real than you think.

Lockdown hit many factories hard. Yet some P&G plants increased production with fewer staff, and actively helped their local communities.

Deliberation is an admirable and essential leadership quality that undoubtedly produces better outcomes. But there comes a point in decision making where helpful contemplation turns into overthinking. To stop the cycle of thinking too much and drive towards better, faster decisions you can: put aside perfectionism, right-size the problem, leverage the underestimated power of intuition, limit the drain of decision fatigue, and construct creative constraints.

With businesses navigating closures and safe reopenings, this year has forced business leaders to get creative. For many, this has meant modifying in-person interactions to accommodate safety guidelines, or otherwise moving these meetings to a digital platform.

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony offers the perfect musical backdrop for today’s banking industry. The composer characterized the opening notes as “fate knocking on the door,” a fitting description of how banking executives may feel when facing the daunting prospect of an accelerating digital transformation and the need to modernize core systems.

Most financial institutions capture a fraction of potential value from profitability insights. The time is right to retire that paradigm.

A top down approach to building company culture no longer works for several reasons. For one, Covid-19 has upended how leaders interact with employees and how coworkers connect with each other. Next, company culture has grown in importance, thanks to recent high-profile crises at big name companies. A new culture-building approach is already in place at some organizations, one in which everyone in the organization is responsible for it.

Freeing up cash on the balance sheet may be hard, but companies such as Johnson Controls are finding ways to establish a sustainable cash culture.

CFOs want FP&A to become stewards of value creation, not just keep score.