This article comes from the panel discussion, ‘Navigating uncertainties in financial forecasting - Insights, Challenges, and Strategies’, at our 2024 San Jose FP&A Summit. 

Let's face it: In today's volatile business world, accurately forecasting financial performance is becoming both more essential and more difficult by the day. 

Unpredictable curveballs and uncertainties can knock even the most carefully crafted forecasts way off course before you know it.

Luckily, in this article, we’ll dive into some of the expert insights our recent panel of seasoned finance pros shared on navigating the challenges of financial forecasting.

The panel featured some serious heavy-hitters: 

  • Gabriela Gutierrez, Founder of Stealth Startup
  • Chidi Nwosu, Director of Value Added Services FP&A at Visa
  • Jenifer Grocock, VP of Corporate Finance at Teradata
  • Harout Sahakian, Director of FP&A at Airgas 

With decades of combined experience under their belts across a diverse range of industries, this panel brought invaluable perspectives to the table on key topics like leveraging data, scenario planning, implementing forecasting models, and managing risks.

So, let’s dissect!

Leveraging data for accurate forecasting

In this era of data, utilizing information effectively has become absolutely critical for accurate financial forecasting. 

As Gabriela Gutierrez put it, 

"Every company needs to establish a data pipeline process and partner closely with technical teams to truly understand what the data is telling you." 

She stressed the importance of clean data and smoothly integrating different data sources into your financial models.

Chidi Nwosu wholeheartedly agreed, underlining the need to know your business's core drivers inside and out. 

"It's really important to know the business if you're in FP&A. For example, at Visa, the biggest driver is authorizations – billions of transactions happening globally. By analyzing data around authorizations, spending patterns, and external factors (like the economy and weather), we can gain valuable insights."

Jenifer Grocock shared how, at Teradata, they created a "financial data warehouse" - a centralized database for clean, consistent financial data collected from various systems across the company. She explained, 

"The most important thing about data is ensuring it's clean and that various systems have the same data." 

Harout Sahakian, whose team handles dashboard building and automation, cautioned against letting reports and dashboards get out of hand: 

"You can be overloaded with how many you have. Focus on the ones that business leaders need, then free up capacity to take you to the next level with data management."