Anyone do both FP&A and Corp Strat or Dev?
Has anyone worked in both FP&A and then transitioned into Corp Dev or Corp Strategy (or product management) as well? Is the grass really greener on the other side?
Is it fair to say > 80% of all FP&A job responsibility will focus on:
-
Back-end process improvement (systems and reporting)
-
Budgeting (usually some very simplistic elementary level modeling and meetings about a few expense lines and timing)
-
Weekly/monthly/annual forecasting to track vs plan (usually 60 minutes a pop meetings with functional teams discussing timing)
-
Updating board decks (usually consolidating data from different areas of the business, copy/paste, and leave it to the executives to tailor the story about the business)
And likewise, is it fair to say >80% of most Corp Strategy or Corp Dev responsibilities entail:
-
Working with internal executives to help identify, understand, and solve business pain points and find growth opportunities
-
Searching for strategic initiatives / acquisitions for the company to undertake
-
Modeling out price elasticity, capital allocation, and operational scenarios (also occasionally done by the finance or prod mgmt teams, but seems to be rare)
At the end of the day, I picture Corporate Strategy and Corporate Development as far more intellectually stimulating (relatively speaking) and impactful work vs FP&A. Am i offbase here? Does the excitingly steep learning curve and variety of exciting projects quickly give way to familiarity and a mundane cadence of tasks?
Yes and no. There's a degree of truth to what you're saying regarding FP&A, but you have a very poor understanding of Corporate Strategy and Corp Dev roles. There's way more overlap between the two than most people let on.
Corporate strategy will vary immensely by company, but generally the work is similar to FP&A but it will be more project based rather than focused on quarterly earnings. Your time is spent putting together gantt charts, timelines, project plans, etc. The internal executives are really the ones "identifying, understanding, and solving pain points and finding growth opportunities". Your job is to put together power point presentations for senior management summarizing their ideas. It's more intellectually stimulating in that it's less repetitive and you'll learn about different things for each product. At the junior levels, it's not any more impactful.
In corporate development, at the junior level, 80% of your time will be spent updating formats in powerpoint presentations, updating org charts, gathering diligence documents, managing a data room, editing financial models, etc. Every transaction will be different, so the work is less repetitive. At the senior levels, this is the most impactful of the 3, as it would be challenging for the teams to complete an acquisition without them or external hires, and the skillset is more unique. The important caveat is that it will likely be 2-3 years at a minimum before you add value.
Eh I feel as though you are a little off-base with your take on CD.
I don't know how many firms you've worked at in CD (and seen junior level work) so I won't consider my experience to be more or less applicable than yours... but I do quite a bit of sizing / modeling / research.
Obviously presentations and presenting is the end product of these, but generally the deals I work on are confidential and the less hands in the pot the better. As such usually the people working on the deal put together the meat of the decks. Sure, as a junior I've had to update other people's PPTs / help make them for non-confidential deals but I've also been given responsibility / co-owned a few deals / etc. Perhaps it varies firm to firm.
I included financial modeling in the description. I don't disagree that juniors do a lot of sizing / modeling / research. I left corporate development as a mid-level, but never found any of those items to be value add or particularly interesting.
I was at a large firm, where there would be at least 3-4 different levels on each deal team. You really had to be at the VP/Director level to be involved in anything critical to the transaction (e.g., negotiations, leading presentations to business heads, etc.,). If you start fresh out of college, it could be 10 years before you're leading transactions. If you're leading transactions, its a completely different experience from what I experienced.
Every experience/company is different, but having seen a few I think reformed is pretty close here.
OP definitely seems to romanticize CD vs. FP&A and some of what he says is certainly true. That being said, at the lower level both jobs are fairly mundane and at a higher level both require some knowledge of industry and strategic view.
I think CD can be great, but for all but the largest Companies I think FP&A has a clearer career path and possibly more transferable. While I agree that CD can be more interesting there is certainly much more variance as well (which can be good or bad depending on your perspective)
I think folks broadly within this thread have offered tremendous insight into what distinguishes the three. I think that CD is definitely a favourite among the folks exiting from IB due to the transferable skillsets (e.g., financial modeling; deck building; data room management, etc.). The experience that you get within a CD group will vary accordingly with the group structure, and more specifically the deal team structure. There are some infancy CD groups where the shop is involved in FP&A along with strategy, though it may not be an optimal structure.
Our group is fairly lean at ~10 professionals, so it would not be surprising to see an associate and MD being the entire deal team, with the associate having substantial involvement in all phases of the transaction process. There have been a few transactions where I've had the ability to run with, although ultimately the MD will be the one socializing to a Business Head if it gets to the point where we're seeking bid / transaction approval. I would say I've been fortunate to have been able to sit it on deal negotiations. It's not really the most glamorous setting by any means (often times it's onsite or at our external counsel's HQ, where we and Counterparty would be locked in a room to discuss certain money items to the SPA. I'm not a lawyer, but I thoroughly enjoy going through these legal agreements, as it helps you gain a more holistic understanding of the process.
Re: your point of whether one is 'better' than the other -- I'd echo what accountingbyday noted above. You'll be dealing heavily in Powerpoint and Excel (Powerpoint tends to take up more of my time these days) at the junior level. CD and CS tend to have a somewhat standardized suite of responsibilities from firm to firm, but FP&A may vary as sometimes it's used to mean a catch all role. If you can find a role within the group that is of the more strategic finance variety, where you're spending less time on the reporting and pulling figures and more on using them to make decision useful insights, then I'd argue that FP&A can be a terrific way to open up your future opportunities. You really can't go wrong with either in this event
In corporate strategy, you aren't "searching for strategic initiatives". That's the overarching idea on the wall. What you're actually doing is what reformed described - putting together slide decks, organising workshops for experts in the business and synthesising that information to higher ups so that they can make a decision. You aren't making any decisions yourself - you're a conduit for structured information and options. You're supported by consultants in the process, since they're well versed in problem structuring. It's interesting work, but it's way more "ordinary" and long-term focused than you might expect, as any executive or decision maker worth their salt won't jump the gun until every rock has been turned, which is perfectly justifiable. I've worked on many such projects and the overarching message that slips through is that "What good are these pretty slides if they lead to an ugly decision?". This is somewhat sad to
If anything, FP&A is more dynamic, since you're dealing with live data and have your hand on the business pulse on a constant basis. You're talking with various functions (sales, operations, procurement etc.) to support decision making in much more tactical manner. This also involves building business cases for new products or initiatives which are going to be launched ASAP and not via an arduous stragey process. "Tactical" is the best word to describe FP&A vis-a-vis CD and CS. If you like "tactical", then FP&A is really cool
I've seen both sides to quite some detail and am leaning more towards FP&A as a personal preference. Corporate strategy projects are a dime a dozen to be honest and are more often than not data rooms that are then poster childs for bad decisions and "pretty slides". Realistically, just a fraction of corporate strategy projects end up genuinely producing positive, sustainable value. The output of many, many projects is often times shelved only to be replaced by a newer iteration. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy corporate stragey - I did and it taught me lots of useful stuff like design thinking, storytelling/structuring and cross-functional stakeholder management.
Error tenetur qui omnis qui. Rerum nisi occaecati dolorem rem. Molestias nemo ipsum aliquam iure dolores autem dolores eum. Deserunt corporis ab saepe suscipit dignissimos quam ex suscipit.
Iste ea quaerat soluta exercitationem omnis. Ea molestiae laudantium ea. Quos saepe fugit nostrum repudiandae nam qui perspiciatis.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...