Finance Business Partner (FBP) are finance professionals that collaborate with other company divisions to provide financial data, tools, analysis, and insight to executives, challenging their thinking, assisting them in making better decisions, and driving business strategy. Articles discusses on Finance Business Partner skills & responsibilities, and how finance business partner create value?

What is Finance Business Partner?

FBPs are financial or accounting specialists who assist the company in tracking financial performance and providing financial information, forecasts, and analysis to aid decision-making and strategy development. Finance Business Partner both help and challenge the company to ensure that its plans are always in line with its financial objectives.

What are the key traits of an effective Finance Business Partners?

The following are the top five qualities that FBPs  must possess to be successful:

  • The confidence to speak up, question managers, and hold a mirror up to the business.
  • Influencing, relationship-building, communication abilities, and the ability to get the point across and start a conversation.
  • Persistence is required, as the message may not be received on the first try.
  • Business partners and knowledge of the business are required.
  • The capacity to turn numbers into a business strategy.

What are the responsibilities of a finance business partners?

A FBPs responsibilities include:

  • Improving the influence of financial reporting on business performance and gaining a better knowledge of it
  • Providing analysis and insight into financial reports to link them to company strategy
  • Developing or implementing effective commercial procedures to ensure that essential operational, commercial, and financial objectives are met
  • Building good ties with all senior managers and their teams and forming partnerships with them

How can Finance Business Partner create value?

FBPs that perform well must have a unique set of talents. They must be able to see the broad picture at all times while assisting in the implementation of procedural changes.

Within financial teams, the technical capabilities required for the position are relatively widespread. You will be distinguished by your interpersonal skills and dynamism, which are necessary for finance business partner positions.

What are the skills necessary for a business partners?

The skills required for the role of FBPs differ from those needed in the traditional finance back-office function. It involves someone accustomed to working in a fast-paced atmosphere and can propose, justifying, initiating, and implementing change. This is a highly strategic position. The iceberg is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to information and reporting. What counts most is your capacity to recognise the value in the information you share and to motivate others to apply it.

What is the future of a finance business partner?

In other words, it’s no longer adequate for Finance to supply historical data to the business. By maintaining organizational governance (internal audit, external, regulatory, and board reporting, accounting policy, ERM), efficiency, and control, Finance can fulfill its traditional duty of safeguarding value (transaction processing, general ledger ownership, tax compliance, control compliance, and optimization).

With the proper individual in the role who can assist Finance improve, effective business collaboration is critical to Finance’s future success. That means becoming the type of leader who can strengthen the Finance Business Partnering function as a whole—a leader who can progress from being a valuable individual contributor to leading and enabling a team of high-performing business partners to produce value. CFOs have many responsibilities. FBPs can help people figure out how they can aid the company and offer value. They can also assist company executives in engaging with Finance rather than feeling obligated to do so.

FAQ’s

Is a finance business partnering a personality or a designation?

Finance Business Partnering (FBPs ) is a personality trait rather than a professional title. Successful FBPs are recognized as leaders who can impact a company’s actions that go beyond the numbers.

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