Financial Planning & Analysis and Performance Management (Wiley Finance)

This is an amazing book for an overview in Finance, I majored in Finance but have been out of practice for 4 yrs and this is great at getting caught back up to what we learned in undergrad. I also like the tables and excel products you get access to by buying the book.

I agree with one of the author's early statements in the book, that FP&A is one of the most important yet undervalued functions. I've been a consultant for the entirety of my career and have been delivering a wide array of FP&A-related training programs for the past decade. The author's statement is certainly true and I aspire to change that through my work.While many readers might jump into only chapters of interest to them, I read the book cover to cover and found almost every chapter to be valuable and insightful. Despite being 600ish pages long, it was a surprisingly easy, and quick read. Many chapters echoed earlier points but not in an overly redundant way -- in FP&A, it's important to understand the relatedness and the author does a nice job of illustrating this. Every chapter provides an explanation as to why the topic is important to the FP&A function, examples of what to focus on and what to watch out for, and lots of dashboards to highlight key metrics. Each chapter is also accompanied by Excel files, which I have yet to explore, but the author was generous in his sharing. It's positive to reinforce what I'm already doing in my advisory work and, of course, helpful learning new approaches and ideas.If there's any room for improvement, I would suggest adding in some detailed, hand-on case studies in a future edition. For a seasoned FP&A professionals or CFOs, the high-level nature of the book is helpful. I'd guess that people who are new the profession or are more junior in their roles will benefit from the high-level discussion but may desire more detailed case examples. Also, most of the dashboards were Excel-based. And while most small and mid-sized organizations rely heavily on Excel, I'm finding companies of all sizes are becoming more keen on data vizualization platforms like Power BI and Tableau. It would be nice to see some of the author's points illustrated on different platforms.All in all, I'd recommend this book to anyone in the FP&A as a good reference. I'm looking forward to putting some of the suggestions into practice, helping my clients grow their businesses and develop their staff more intentionally.

Yeah it's good

This book is a pure gem!FPA and PM is not only about finance but also about management, and this book shows it brilliantly.The author gives thorough explanations, advice on every concepts and practical examples (which you can download too).Essential notions of finance and accounting which are a prerequisite are explained in simple terms. Therefore this book can be very useful to any manager and to anyone willing to leverage fpa and pm to run a successful business.To finance and accounting professionals, this book is an extremely useful read in order to improve your skills in this field and give better help to the firm you work for.How do you design dashboard and kpis to monitor the performance of the firm? How do you conduct the performance management process in your organization? How do you estimate future performance?Predicting future is difficult but the author gives techniques, advices and examples to produce the best results possible. This is invaluable!What are the key drivers of your business? How do you analyze and plan them? You get detailed answers with this book.How do you plan capital investments? How do you valuate a business? In the book.My friends! get this book and boost your career to an another level!

The media could not be loaded. Yes Yes Yes. This is a big gun. From A to Z this book covers a broad survey of the planning and analysis work for a company from maybe $200 million to a $2 billion dollar revenue in a nutshell. Buy it and read it three to five times. Start to think the ways a CFO should be able to think.

I just finished reading my copy of Financial Planning & Analysis and Performance Management by Jack Alexander and loved it. I have been looking for awhile to find a book about FP&A that addresses more than just Financial Modeling or general Financial Management theory, and the author's book on the subject is only one I have found thus far.Throughout the book the author makes an analogy comparing a well-thought set of dashboards on critical business and value drivers to the cockpit of a space shuttle, and it has completely changed the way I view FP&A as a function. I have already recommended this book numerous times to my coworkers, and am sure this book will remain on my desk as a guide to focus on what matters most.The author also includes examples and sample spreadsheets/dashboards which really help illustrate the point that FP&A provides the most value when the objective, analytical approaches we use are then used to influence and inform decision-making, and to guide the business to focus on the most critical business and value drivers.

I like the book (at least so far - I haven’t finished it yet) BUT it was sent to me in pre-used condition. Gross smudges of *stuff* on the cover, creases on the casing. Paid for brand new and received gross…

I recently decided to transition from Accounting to Finance. I bought several financial modeling and forecasting books and this one by far is the best. I was also able to download the excel templates and other info from the website related to this book.The author does a wonderful job explaining the fundamentals, key concepts, projections, and planning in a way that’s easy to understand.Accounting books always put me to sleep, this one Is actually interesting and I’m looking forward to learning how to prepare financial models and forecasting for my new job.