New gig FP&A - What should I know before I start? + potential paths

"Loki777"

The term "FP&A" is way too broad. What is your actual role? Or are you in a rotational program?

I came in as an FPA Analyst, I interned here last year so all of my interviews were more of a get to know with some light explanation of what was going to happen. I'll be support two of our internal businesses with forecasting budgeting data analysis, etc. Hope that helps!

"Matilda"

FP&A is indeed a broad term. Can you please specify a lil' more? Thanks.

check my reply to Loki777

Thanks for posting!

"MBA_Junkie"

as the others have said, fp&a is a really broad term.
do you know which business unit you would be assigned to? When you start try to gain operational knowledge about the BU, stuff like how long does it take for an order to be delivered by the supplier. What is the BU's workhorse product and corresponding drivers of its sales, sensitivity of sales to external factors, etc. In other words, I do not think analytics is really that difficult, especially when you are starting out... but knowing what each of the items on your spreadsheet mean would help you get to accurate results.

fp&a means your work will at some point tie into the real world. This is different from "pure" finance in the sense that there is a definite right and wrong answer.

Thanks! Yes, one of the units BUs I actually worked in last summer but all I've seen up to this point have been some metrics and variance to see if we are over or under forecast. Still taking baby steps, but in terms of analytics it is pretty basic up to this point