FP&A support — on demand
Extra hands when you need them
The platform and its setup make up the offer; the support comes in addition. Some groups take none of it, others lean on it through a ramp-up — both are common, and it is decided with you.
The examples
What is usually asked for in FP&A support
Requests almost always look like one of these two examples. The first is short and common, the second covers a ramp-up. They are taken separately or together, and sized separately.
First example
First-level support
The most common, and the lightest: a few days on top of the deployment, run alongside your teams. It delegates nothing — it finishes installing the chain around the platform.
- Excel add-in and PowerPoint add-in installed
- Reporting book built, and your own templates interfaced
- Monthly process settled, and responsibilities allocated
- Data quality and consistency checked, reported errors investigated, and fixes applied
- Accounting, operational, and management data reconciled, with discrepancies and root causes identified
- Transformation and enrichment rules adjusted at import
- A short-term action plan written up, to be carried out by your teams
Second example
Support in producing the monthly reporting
Working alongside your teams and your key users, and under their responsibility, the production of the monthly reporting is outsourced to EPMind’s Finance and FP&A experts, for as long as the ramp-up lasts.
- Support to your teams in preparing and building the monthly reporting
- Imports tracked, along with the corrections to make before loading into the platform
- The collection and approval process tracked, the sources of error identified, and the corrective actions followed through with the local and central contributors
- Analyses and business commentary written up
- Additional target outputs adjusted and monthly deliverables prepared: Excel templates, PowerPoint reports
- Where needed, EPMind’s configuration taken further to make the monthly reporting easier to build
What it does not replace
Your teams keep the judgment calls: business rules, commentary, close decisions. What is delegated is the execution, not responsibility for the figures.
How to tell whether you need it
The question is not whether your teams are capable of it — they are, that is the condition the deployment runs in. The question is whether they have the time.
Often useful
A finance team already at capacity on the closes, a scope that has just doubled, a finance function in transition, or a timeline imposed by a shareholder. In those cases, the support brings in expert time over a bounded period, to relieve the teams and move the project forward.
Often useless
A structured management accounting team, with time available to run the project and any additional work it brings, contacts identified and available to be called on — accounting, consolidation, IT —, and data sources identified and accessible. In that case, outside support is neither required nor even desirable: the teams have everything in hand to make the tool and the new processes fully their own.
What level of support fits your organization?
It follows from your organization and your deadlines. One conversation is enough to place it.