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It’s no secret that FP&A teams are always busy. The scope of the role is ever-expanding, with FP&A expected to take on more of a strategic role, partnering with every department of the business to provide insight and decision support. But doing that in an ever-more complex business environment is incredibly time-consuming.
And these expectations are mounting on top of a pile of existing responsibilities: BAU tasks like budgeting, reporting, and cash flow planning all still need to happen, and take time and resources away from the strategic work. Naturally, the response to this for FP&A teams so far has been to pursue the automation of routine FP&A tasks to make more room for the internal consulting work. It’s a perfectly rational approach, but there are a few problems with this model:
Finance business partners are expensive
Hiring business partners is far more expensive than hiring analysts. Accommodating demand for internal consulting can demand budgets that simply aren’t feasible.
It doesn’t teach self-sufficiency
If FP&A is constantly providing extensive consultancy, business decision makers tend not to get any better at interpreting analysis.
Automation isn't magic
Processes can be automated to an extent, but there’s a cap on the productivity gains it can afford - there will always be some level of manual involvement required.
Introducing capability diffusion
But new Gartner research has found a better method that claims to be 3-4x more effective at making the FP&A delivery method more sustainable: which Gartner refers to as ‘capability diffusion’.
It hinges on making decision makers more autonomous, by leveraging tools like machine learning and generative AI to make technology their first port-of-call. In other words: ask AI first.
With capability diffusion, finance business partners take on more of a tutorship role: focussing on helping decision makers learn to use tools. This encourages self-sufficiency and is a far more efficient way of working.
Pigment AI
It’s this ‘ask AI first’ principle that we’ve designed Pigment AI to address. It enables FP&A teams to work faster, but also democratizes the process of planning and access to data.
We see this as a method of achieving capability diffusion, helping:
Analysts/modelers: Conduct the work you do every day faster
Rapidly find and analyze data faster than before, onboard and ramp up new users faster, and lean on Pigment AI’s best practice when it comes to planning and get answers faster.
C-Suite and the wider team: Self-serve insights and learn to navigate the platform
Quickly find and interrogate data, and focus on the details that matter - whether you’re a CRO looking to quickly understand performance vs quota across territories, or an HR lead looking to understand headcount trends. Ask questions to learn how to navigate the platform and access the data and insights within it.
Next steps
This article is an excerpt from our report, Five common traits of organizations at the forefront of AI in finance. To read the full report, click here.
