Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Manager – Financial Planning & Analysis

🎯 Role Definition

The Manager, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) leads the planning, forecasting and reporting processes, builds robust financial models and provides strategic insights to support executive decision-making. This role manages the monthly close deliverables for performance reporting, owns budgeting and rolling forecasts, drives margin and cost optimization initiatives, and leads a small team of financial analysts. The FP&A Manager partners with cross-functional stakeholders (Sales, Operations, Product, HR) to translate business plans into measurable financial outcomes and to improve financial systems, automation and data-driven processes.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Financial Analyst (corporate FP&A or business unit)
Finance Manager or Commercial Finance Analyst
Financial Reporting Analyst with strong modeling experience

Advancement To:

Director of FP&A
Head of FP&A / Senior Finance Leader
Vice President, Finance / Corporate Finance Leader
Chief Financial Officer (for high-growth trajectories)

Lateral Moves:

Corporate Development (M&A) Manager
Business Analytics or Data & Insights Manager
Strategic Finance / Revenue Operations Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead the annual budgeting process and quarterly/rolling forecasting cycles, coordinating inputs from business partners, reconciling assumptions, and delivering consolidated corporate forecasts to the executive team and Board.
Build, maintain and enhance complex financial models (driver-based and scenario-based) to quantify business outcomes, evaluate strategic initiatives, and support investment decisions and go-to-market planning.
Drive monthly and quarterly financial close activities for FP&A, prepare management reporting packages, variance analyses versus budget and prior periods, and narrative explanations for senior leadership.
Develop and own KPIs and operational metrics for the business, design dashboards and scorecards that translate raw financial data into actionable insights for commercial, product and operations leaders.
Partner with Sales and Revenue Operations to forecast revenue, analyze sales pipeline conversion, quota attainment, pricing impacts and revenue recognition patterns to improve predictability and accuracy.
Conduct in-depth profitability and margin analyses by product, SKU, channel and customer segment to identify cost-saving opportunities and revenue optimization levers.
Lead long-range strategic planning and multi-year financial models to support corporate strategy, capacity planning, capital allocation and resource prioritization.
Provide ad-hoc financial analysis and decision support for strategic projects such as new product launches, pricing strategy, territory expansion, and partnership or vendor negotiations.
Manage annual capital expenditure (CapEx) planning, perform ROI and payback analyses, and monitor capital spend versus plan to ensure alignment with financial targets.
Oversee cost management initiatives, benchmarking exercises, and headcount planning to optimize operating expenses while maintaining service levels and growth priorities.
Own executive and board-level reporting deliverables including board books, investor decks, monthly CFO reviews and board meeting presentations with clear, polished narratives.
Drive financial systems and process improvements — lead FP&A tool implementations or reconfigurations (Anaplan, Adaptive Insights, Hyperion), streamline workflows, and automate repetitive tasks to increase efficiency and data integrity.
Collaborate closely with Accounting to reconcile actuals, validate month-end adjustments, ensure GAAP/IFRS compliance, and support external audit requests and internal control documentation.
Supervise, mentor and develop a team of financial analysts: set objectives, review deliverables, coach on modeling best practices, and recruit top talent to scale the FP&A function.
Lead cross-functional financial reviews and monthly business performance meetings with stakeholders to align on priorities, surface risks and escalate critical issues for action.
Conduct scenario planning and sensitivity analyses to model business impacts under different market, pricing or cost assumptions and provide recommendations to mitigate downside risk.
Support M&A activities and strategic partnerships by conducting target/company diligence, preparing integration financial models, and quantifying synergies and incremental value.
Serve as the finance business partner to senior leaders, translating financial results into operational insights, challenging assumptions, and driving accountability for financial outcomes across the organization.
Maintain detailed documentation of financial models, reporting logic, assumptions and data sources to ensure reproducibility and knowledge transfer across the team.
Present complex financial information succinctly to non-finance executives, tailoring storytelling to audiences and enabling data-driven strategy and resource allocation decisions.
Monitor industry and macroeconomic trends, competitive dynamics and regulatory changes to incorporate market intelligence into forecasts and strategic recommendations.
Establish governance over financial metrics, definitions and reporting cadence to ensure consistency, reduce reconciliation effort and improve stakeholder trust in FP&A outputs.
Manage vendor relationships and third-party analytics resources (BI consultancies, FP&A implementation partners) and oversee deliverable quality, timelines and contract compliance.
Identify process bottlenecks in forecasting and reporting cycles; design and implement continuous improvement initiatives that accelerate close cycles and reduce manual interventions.

Secondary Functions

Provide rapid-response ad-hoc analyses for leadership requests (what-if scenarios, one-off deep dives, special projects) with clear deliverables and executable recommendations.
Design and deploy self-service dashboards and visualizations (Power BI, Tableau) to empower business stakeholders while ensuring single source of truth for financial metrics.
Support system implementations and data integrations between ERP, CRM and FP&A tools; translate business requirements into technical specs and coordinate with IT/data teams.
Train cross-functional partners on financial processes, forecasting methodologies and interpretation of dashboards to improve accuracy of inputs and adoption of FP&A tools.
Act as escalation point for data quality issues; collaborate with data engineering and accounting to correct source data and improve lineage and controls.
Maintain and continuously update process documentation, templates and best practices to ensure an auditable and scalable FP&A organization.
Participate in internal audit, compliance and SOX readiness activities related to financial reporting, controls and forecasts.
Assist in preparing materials for external stakeholders as needed (investors, lenders) and support data requests in fundraising or credit review processes.
Contribute to recruitment, onboarding and ongoing development programs to build FP&A capability across the organization.
Lead periodic retrospectives on forecasting accuracy, identify root causes of variances and implement corrective actions to improve model performance.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Advanced financial modeling and valuation skills: discounted cash flow (DCF), driver-based forecasting, scenario and sensitivity analysis.
Deep FP&A proficiency: budgeting, rolling forecasts, variance analysis, KPI design, management reporting and board-level presentation preparation.
Expert Excel skills (pivot tables, complex formulas, Power Query, VBA/macros) and comfort building large, auditable financial models.
Experience with FP&A and planning systems such as Anaplan, Adaptive Insights, Oracle Hyperion, Host Analytics or similar.
Strong SQL capability to extract, transform and validate financial and operational data from data warehouses.
Hands-on experience with BI and visualization tools (Power BI, Tableau, Looker) to design dashboards and automated reports.
Working knowledge of ERP systems (NetSuite, Oracle, SAP) and general ledger structures to reconcile financials and support close processes.
Familiarity with accounting standards (GAAP or IFRS) and month-end close mechanics; ability to liaise effectively with accounting teams.
Experience with corporate finance disciplines: capital budgeting, cost accounting, pricing analysis and M&A modeling.
Basic programming or scripting knowledge (Python or R) is a plus for automation, data cleansing and advanced analytics.
Strong data governance and controls mindset: documentation, version control, audit trail creation and validation procedures.

Soft Skills

Strategic thinker with strong commercial acumen and the ability to translate data into strategic recommendations that drive business outcomes.
Excellent stakeholder management — builds credibility with senior leaders and cross-functional partners and influences decisions without direct authority.
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; able to present complex financial information in a clear, concise and compelling manner.
Proven leadership and people management skills: coaching, performance management and developing high-performing analysts.
High attention to detail and commitment to producing accurate, auditable financial deliverables under tight deadlines.
Problem-solving orientation with comfort in ambiguity and ability to prioritize competing requests effectively.
Collaborative team player who fosters cross-functional alignment and drives consensus across diverse business units.
Time management and project management skills: manage multiple workstreams, deadlines and prioritized initiatives concurrently.
Continuous improvement mindset: drives process automation, simplification and adoption of best practices across FP&A.
Ethical judgement and strong sense of financial stewardship and confidentiality.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business Administration or related quantitative field.

Preferred Education:

MBA, Master's in Finance, or professional certification (CPA, CFA, CMA) preferred.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Finance
Accounting
Economics
Business Administration
Data Analytics / Applied Statistics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 6 – 10 years of progressive finance experience with 2+ years in a leadership or supervisory capacity in FP&A or corporate finance.

Preferred:

8+ years of FP&A, corporate finance or management reporting experience.
Demonstrated experience implementing or operating modern planning tools (Anaplan, Adaptive, Hyperion).
Prior experience in fast-growing or matrixed organizations, SaaS/technology, manufacturing or consumer sectors is advantageous.
Track record of partnering with senior leadership, presenting to executive/board audiences and driving measurable financial improvements.