Organizational readiness for FP&A is critical to the success of the function. The ideal conditions for a successful FP&A function are driven by numerous factors including (but not limited to) company size, cultural appetite, systems maturity, process maturity and growth plans. I offer the typology below as one way to think about your organization’s needs for a true FP&A function. If you think you might be ready to move beyond just closing the books, the table below might give you a sense of how you might answer the question. Most importantly, as your company stands on the precipice of transition from one level to the next in any category, it is easier to install FP&A discipline in advance of critical stages such as becoming a very large company with the opportunity for rocket ship growth. The main reason for that is cultural appetite. It is much harder to institutionalize an FP&A function in a large, undisciplined organization for the simple reason that there can be a commonly shared belief that the organization met with success without FP&A and it is therefore not needed. In reality, that’s simply great fortune.
