FP&A Core Responsibilities

The six core domains of modern financial planning and analysis, from long-range strategy to rapid decision support.

Legend

Cadence

Recurring
One-off

Likely AI lift from

Rapid Data automation
What-if / scenario modeling
Deep diagnostic insights

Prioritization

Strong candidate activity for AI based automation / augmentation

Strategic & Long-Term Planning

Define the multi-year financial trajectory and investment posture that supports corporate strategy.

  • Build an integrated 3-5+ year financial model (revenue/ARR, expenses, cash, capital needs).
  • Consolidate business-unit inputs and translate strategy into multi-year targets (growth, margin, cash).
  • Define and govern long-term drivers and assumptions (e.g., pricing, retention, seat growth, cloud unit costs).
  • Run multi-year scenario planning and sensitivity analysis around market and strategy assumptions.
  • Assess capital requirements and investment capacity (runway, burn, hiring pace, capital needs).

Annual Budgeting & Resource Allocation

Convert strategy into a one-year operating plan and allocate dollars and headcount to execute it.

  • Design and manage the annual budget process (calendar, guidance, templates, stakeholder alignment).
  • Build department-level budget models (headcount, comp, opex/capex, and usage-based costs where relevant).
  • Consolidate budgets and perform tie-outs and reconciliations across systems (GL, HR, CRM/planning tool).
  • Facilitate resource trade-offs and prioritization (ROI comparisons, constraints, portfolio balancing).
  • Produce budget narrative and approval materials (bridges, risks, mitigation options, exec/board-ready story).

Rolling Forecasting & Scenario Modeling

Continuously refresh the outlook and quantify impacts of changing business drivers through scenarios and decisions.

  • Maintain a rolling, driver-based forecast using the latest actuals and leading indicators.
  • Ingest actuals and evaluate trend signals (pipeline, retention, usage, cloud unit costs, hiring fill rates).
  • Perform forecast variance and accuracy analysis; recalibrate assumptions and drivers to reduce error and bias.
  • Run what-if, sensitivity, and contingency scenarios (base/best/worst, stress tests, management action cases).
  • Execute trigger-based reforecasting and rapid replans when key assumptions break (pipeline, churn, cost shocks).

Management Reporting & Performance Analysis

Deliver recurring visibility into results and explain performance drivers versus plan for leaders to act on.

  • Produce management reporting packages (P&L, dashboards, KPI scorecards, segment cuts).
  • Conduct variance analysis with driver attribution and executive-ready bridges to explain plan-to-actual deltas.
  • Maintain KPI definitions and metric governance (definitions, source-of-truth, calculation logic, refresh cadence).
  • Perform trend, cohort, and segmentation analysis (product/region/segment/channel) to surface actionable insights.
  • Craft the performance narrative (what happened, why, so what, now what) for executives and boards.

Business Partnering & Decision Support

Provide decision-grade analytics and recommendations that help functions make better trade-offs and investments.

  • Build business cases and ROI models for initiatives and investments (tools, programs, hiring, build-vs-buy).
  • Analyze pricing, packaging, and discounting impacts (ARR, margin, retention, adoption, competitive scenarios).
  • Evaluate unit economics and profitability (CAC/LTV, payback, contribution margin) by segment/cohort/channel.
  • Support headcount and capacity planning with functional leaders (coverage models, productivity, ramp, throughput).
  • Partner in operating reviews (QBR/MBR) to frame options, quantify trade-offs, and recommend actions.

Ad Hoc Analysis & Special Projects

Deliver high-impact one-off analyses and models that inform urgent decisions and strategic initiatives.

  • Lead rapid diagnostic deep dives into anomalies (expense spikes, churn drivers, pipeline quality, cloud cost anomalies).
  • Build M&A and strategic transaction models (valuation support, synergy ranges, integration economics, downside cases).
  • Conduct competitive benchmarking and peer analysis (growth efficiency, margin structure, unit economics comparisons).
  • Perform post-mortems vs original business cases (results vs plan, root causes, corrective actions, lessons learned).
  • Support CFO/board special requests (bridges, narratives, rapid scenario packs, bespoke performance cut-throughs).