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Depending on the company, often it's similar. Each month you have your standard reports and meetings, each quarter, you go through a forecast update; and each year, you develop a budget. From my experience, the finance department speaks with their business partners more, and we have our thumbs on the business more - at least in the BUs. But this is industry and company dependent. I don’t do a lot of technical analysis because I support a G&A function, but our R&D team does some cool stuff.
I work for a medical manufacturing company with ~$3-4B in revenue with a ~$5.1B market cap. Before diving in, I’ll caveat this is anecdotal based on my experience.
The most critical skills for my job are (1) networking/interpersonal communication, (2) data analysis, and (3) organization. I've elaborated below.
(1) My whole job is partnering with the leaders of the function I support; therefore, it’s imperative I have good relationships with my business partners and their teams. Their problems are my problems. And this is the same with presenting to the group - I need to speak and communicate in a way they understand. My group is full of STEM people, but they don’t know finance, so I still need to be clear.
(2) I don't perform anything complex, and I don't build models (at least not your regular three-statement models). However, my job requires me to compare our actual results to our latest forecast, annual budget, and PY results. For example, it’s not enough to say supplies are up 15% versus AOP because our QA sample costs are higher. I have to ask, why is that? Is inflation higher? Has the plant increased volume? Are we performing more testing? These help provide context and craft the story for our leaders. This is all data analysis, and I perform it for every leader and cost center I support each month and quarter.
(3) I support roughly ten leaders across a global function. Within this group, we have roughly 40-45 cost centers, and we generate ~$80M in expenses (for some people, this is big, and for others, it's a drop in the hat. Again, it's all dependent on company size). This requires a lot of organization. Without organization, you can't deliver your promised results in the promised time frame. I have to track a lot of info, and I’m not someone who can do it in my head - this took a LONG time to understand and fix.
The better I do at these three things, the easier my boss’s job will be and the more successful I will be. Some days I win at all three, and some days I lose at all three. I just try my best.
I do find it rewarding. Not every day or week, or month, but overall I feel I provide an excellent service to my function, and I feel I make their lives easier. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to feel valued in my finance chain, but I feel very valued by my business partners. In addition, my finance is short-staffed and overworked, so I work with my boss’s boss - the guy overseeing our largest plants. I feel seen and valued by him. I’m working a TON right now - some by necessity and some by choice, and he sees it.
I do like it more than being an accountant/CPA, but I recognize our accounting team is super important. We rely on each other. I may do a rotation at some point because I think the skills round each other off. But for now, FP&A is fantastic for me.
Most fp&a will involve some accounting like what you’re doing now except with additional tasks like budgeting and forecasting. It’s repetitive and will get boring. If you want something a bit fast pace and variety then big4 or MM firms will provide that.
How is the culture at Vanguard overall? Boring? Room to move up? Salary good?
Thank you for sharing your point of view.
Oh no! I'm actually planning to apply. Is it safe to assume that the other roles are boring as well?
Not at all. There are exciting things happening at the company but personally I find the accounting side of things boring.