This is the fourth and final installment in a series of blog posts based on Vena's ongoing "Women in Finance" video series. Each post corresponds with a different interview with a woman in financial leadership.
Watch Episode 4 below.
When Larysa Melnychuk was 17, still living in her native Ukraine, she decided to pursue an education in physics. Looking back now, though, she thinks she was always destined to end up on her current path, in financial planning and analysis (FP&A).
"I started [my studies in] physics of materials for six years. It's a numerical discipline," Larysa says. "And then, when a lot of things started to happen in the former Soviet Union in Ukraine where I lived, there were amazing opportunities to study economical disciplines: management and marketing and finance."
She ended up becoming a business trainer, worked for the first investment fund in Ukraine and was a teacher of organizational behavior for an American MBA program. And all of that experience led her to the United Kingdom, where she became a British-qualified accountant--and began actively pursuing a career in FP&A.
It was her love of finance and curiosity around FP&A's constant evolution that in turn led her to found her own company, the FP&A Trends Group, nine years ago. She's currently the CEO, as well as Managing Director of the International FP&A Board.
"I knew it was my mission to look at the latest trends and developments in modern FP&A, to understand what are the best practices and to set the trends with so many people around the globe," Larysa says. She was interviewed by Wendy Braithwaite, Chief Financial Planning & Orchestration Officer at Microsoft Canada, for Vena's fourth Women in Finance video, "Navigating the Future of Finance."
And as someone who studies FP&A and its evolving trends for a living, Larysa understands the roles that are shaping finance today--and those that will continue to reshape it in the future. They're the five roles that those starting out in modern finance will follow to financial leadership success.
Let's look at each of them--and how to turn them into leadership success.
Key Takeaways:
"There are, generally speaking from our research, five top FP&A roles," Larysa says. "There are three technical [roles) and also two soft [roles]." Together, these roles promise to reshape the future of finance and build FP&A's position as a strategic business partner integral to every organization. A mix of new and old, these are the positions Larysa and her team identified:
The first role is one you're probably already well familiar with. "[It] is our classical one. Analyst. And it's something that is easy for us because if you are an accountant, if you are a finance FP&A professional, you are an analyst," Larysa says.
Analysts are the backbone of corporate FP&A now and promise to continue to be the same in the future of finance. Because--unlike traditional accountants--they're forward thinkers. That means they don't just look back at past performance, but analyze your business data, track its financials and forecast the future. In doing so, they drive budgeting, lead planning and determine the key metrics that judge performance--all of which fuel organizational direction and business goals.
2. The FP&A Data Scientist
"[The] emerging roles that are happening at the moment are multifunctional roles--they're in between different functions," Larysa says. "What we really need at the moment, because the quality of the data continues to be one of the biggest problems, are those bridges between the data science world--people that are specializing in data--and finance. The problem that exists at the moment is that they speak different languages and they're not connected with each other."
That's where the FP&A data scientist fits in. A specialized role, it's "not a classical data scientist with a university degree in data science," Laryssa says. Rather, this is someone who can bring a better understanding to the data through a finance lens, ensuring that you're using the best data and properly filling the holes that exist in your ongoing planning. In doing so, they're able to enable better financial insights overall.
For organizations looking to stay competitive and agile in today's market--and finance teams that want to be strong business partners--that's a critical skill to have. Data, after all, will only continue to play more and more of a role even as finance evolves.
Next up? The FP&A architect. "This is the bridge between finance and IT. But not only this. It's also modeling, and it's also understanding the infrastructure of different systems or ecosystems that are required for FP&A."
The FP&A architect empowers finance departments to take full advantage of the technology on offer, including analytics platforms and driver-based planning models. With the right person driving them, these technologies can help teams identify new trends, build out more accurate forecasts and stay agile to market changes.
This is critical for organizations looking to stay competitive as the market continues to evolve. And they'll be even more of an advantage in the future, as the use of technology continues to grow and machine learning, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies start to play an even bigger role.
While the last three positions were more technical, soft skills will be just as important in the future finance team. And that's where the storyteller comes in. The storyteller already drives FP&A's strategic business partnering and will continue to play a growing role in how finance partners interact with the rest of the business and influence strategic planning overall.
That's because storytellers take the data that finance relies on and communicate it to leadership and the rest of the organization in a way that makes it easy to digest and understand. The best ones out there know how to apply the elements of good storytelling to communicate finance's message powerfully even to non-financial employees. Technology like data visualization helps.
And while this is a critical skill today, it will continue to be even more so in the future, as businesses rely on FP&A more and more to provide a story that every department can get behind.
Another soft skill that will become more and more important in the future is the influencer. The influencer helps guide the direction of the business, working with leadership to build toward change and present new opportunities for revenue growth.
But that kind of influence needs to be earned, and the influencer requires a range of soft skills to build the respect they need to do that. That includes communication and collaboration, problem solving and empathy. Those kinds of skills, and the relationships the influencers develop with them, will help them better understand the needs of the business so that they can start to recognize what it requires to thrive.
If these are the roles that will drive FP&A in the future, then it makes sense for young finance professionals to begin developing these specialized skills now. But depending on the role you choose to pursue and the industry or business you work in, excelling within your finance team--and following that success to leadership positions--might take a little extra too. So if that's what you're hoping to do, consider whether you want to develop an "I-shaped," "T-shaped" or "X-shaped" set of skills.
Think about the way an "I" is shaped and you'll have an idea what drives I-shaped individuals. These are team members focused on developing skills in one single area of interest. And that focus means they're able to build a depth of knowledge and experience that stands out. This kind of specialized skill set will be necessary, especially if you want to excel in any of the three technical roles above and become a subject-matter expert. But to truly build your leadership potential, you often need knowledge that expands across disciplines too--so you might want to consider adding to that skill set. That's where T-shaped skill development comes in.
The T-Shaped Individual
The T-shaped individual still has that depth of knowledge in a specific area--think about the vertical line at the base of a "T," which looks very similar to an "I." But there's a little something else as well. Those could be soft skills--communication and collaboration skills, for instance, are very valuable when they're added to a more technical base. But a storyteller with some of the data skills of an FP&A data scientist could also be incredibly valuable to a finance team.
The X-shaped employee has developed skills in a variety of areas, which means they can easily move from one part of the finance team--or the business as a whole--to another. They also usually have the soft skills needed to bring people together from throughout the organization, to collaborate and get consensus on organizational plans. In other words, they are well-rounded. And that's a position that seems well-suited to roles such as the influencer, which depends on that ability to move around seamlessly from one area of the organization to another. It's also useful for a finance leader, who benefits from a clear understanding of each role on the finance team--and the organization as a whole.
So what path will you pursue towards finance success? And how will you follow the future of finance toward a position you excel in? No matter the role you choose--and whether you hope to develop an I-shaped, T-shaped or X-shaped set of skills--the truth is, finance is always evolving. And you'll need to evolve with it if you plan to stay on the leadership track
But if you do, you can help reshape the future of finance too--just like Larysa has.
Want to learn more? Watch Vena's newest Women in Finance video, "Navigating the Future of Finance" with Larysa Melnychuk, Founder and CEO of the FP&A Trends Group and Managing Director of the International FP&A Board.
As Senior Director of Content and Communications, Jonathan Paul leads content strategy and execution at Vena, overseeing the development of owned media and content experiences that help finance professionals fuel business health, as well as their personal and professional growth. When he's not dreaming up new ways to offer audiences value through content creation, Jonathan loves to lose himself in an immersive video game with a solid narrative, lose golf balls pretending to be good at golf and lose time dreaming about time travel.
