Why FP&A Teams Need More Than Good People to Succeed
Only 11% of organizations have fully integrated their strategic, financial, and operational planning. That means the vast majority of finance teams are still stitching plans together from disconnected systems, reconciling spreadsheets, and spending more time collecting data than interpreting it.
In a recent FP&A Trends webinar, sponsored by Unit4, I sat down with Mariya Guttoh, Director of FP&A and Treasury at PayJoy, and Julián Scutari, a seasoned FP&A leader with experience at ITT, Kimberly-Clark, and SC Johnson, to explore what Integrated FP&A actually looks like in practice. The conversation covered AI-era skill sets, cultural dynamics, and the operating model shifts that make or break integration efforts.
One theme kept surfacing: capable people aren't enough. The architecture underneath them has to support the way they need to work.
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The Accountability Gap Keeps Growing
Finance has always been asked to explain numbers it didn't produce. But that tension is getting sharper. As AI generates more forecasts and recommendations across the business, FP&A teams are increasingly accountable for outputs they had no hand in building.
Maria shared a telling example. A data science team built a headcount forecast model and presented it to the CFO. The response? The numbers were rejected on the spot. Not because the model was flawed, but because the team used a different definition of headcount than finance had always reported. Two weeks of rework followed, all for a conversation that could have taken 20 minutes if finance had been involved from the start.
The takeaway is clear. FP&A can no longer sit at the end of the process, waiting to explain what happened. The function needs to move upstream, shaping definitions and assumptions before they get locked into models.
Good Intentions Break Down Without the Right Foundation
Julián reinforced this with some sobering data: between 70 and 95% of all transformations fail, and organizations that put the human factor at the center are 12 times more likely to improve performance. His core point was that Integrated FP&A is not a software installation or a project. It's a management system. An operating model.
That distinction matters. Too many organizations treat integration as a technology rollout. They buy a platform, rename some roles, and expect collaboration to happen organically. But without trust, role clarity, aligned incentives, and visible leadership behavior, the system won't stick.
When the webinar audience was polled on what they most need to advance FP&A integration, 35% said harmonizing organizational processes, 31% said leadership support, 20% said skills, and only 15% pointed to technology.
So if technology isn't the primary blocker, why does it still matter so much?
Because even with the most capable people, even with the best intent in the world, collaboration breaks down fast if the operating model and technology beneath it aren't designed to support it.
What Sits Underneath Successful FP&A Teams
Across most organizations, FP&A is held together through manual effort. Data gets extracted from core systems. Spreadsheets get passed around. Too much time goes into reconciling rather than interpreting. And when AI enters the finance conversation, it can't fix a weak foundation. It simply amplifies whatever architecture already exists.
True integration isn't about connectors or interfaces that pass files between systems. It's about planning data, logic, workflows, and roles all existing in one coherent environment, ideally as close to the ERP as possible, or better yet, as a natural extension of it.
The benefits show up in practical ways: a shared data structure across all functions, one consistent calculation engine, coordinated workflows, and a single governed version of the truth that everyone plans from.
This is also where AI becomes genuinely powerful. When planning is truly integrated with core operational data, AI works on real signals across the platform, not on transformed extracts or assumptions layered on top of each other.
What This Looks Like in Practice
One example from a public sector organization brought this to life during the webinar. The team unified workforce planning, service demand forecasting, and financial planning into a single FP&A environment, closely aligned with the ERP.
The results changed how teams worked together. HR adjusted workforce plans, and the cost and capacity impact was immediately visible. No reconciliation layer. No multiple rounds of approvals. Service teams updated demand assumptions in the same environment. Operational leaders adjusted delivery constraints. All changes flowed straight through into financial outcomes using shared logic.
The FP&A team stopped rebuilding models and chasing updates. Instead, they managed a small number of governed scenarios linked to the original data. In leadership sessions, "what if" questions were explored live. Trade-offs were clear. Decisions got made in the room, with the focus on choices and outcomes rather than the mechanics of how the data got there.
The Distance Between Insight and Decision
The formula I outlined during the session was simple: integrated technology creates shared understanding, which leads to better decisions. When everyone's plans are built on the same foundations, conversations change. Workforce teams see the immediate impact of cost or capacity changes. Service leaders see how demand assumptions affect outcomes. The debate moves from "whose numbers are right?" to "what are we going to do about this?"
There's a human benefit here too. When complexity drops, cognitive load drops with it. Analysts spend more time thinking and less time reconciling. In today's uncertain environments, the ability to explore options quickly, often supported by AI, becomes a real advantage.
The session closed with a clear perspective: If planning is fragmented, the organization behaves that way, AI included. If planning is integrated, especially close to your ERP, the same people operate with more context, less friction, and a much bigger impact.
Three Things to Take Away
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Integrated FP&A is an operating model, not a project. Projects end. An operating model evolves with your organization and becomes a repeatable way of making better decisions together.
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People need the right platform to do their best work. Trust, clarity, and leadership behavior matter enormously. But they only translate into results when the technology removes friction rather than creating it.
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The closer FP&A sits to your ERP, the shorter the distance between insight and action. Shared data, governed workflows, and a single version of the truth mean your teams spend less time reconciling and more time shaping outcomes.
If your finance team is still pulling data from multiple sources, managing parallel spreadsheets, or making decisions on stale numbers, there's a better path forward. And it starts with connecting FP&A to the operational reality already sitting in your ERP.
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