Saudi Press

Saudi Arabia and the world
Thursday, Oct 02, 2025

How to up-level your organization’s financial IQ

How to up-level your organization’s financial IQ

Know your company's financial IQ? The confidence in your organization’s ability to leverage accurate, relevant data to make financially smart decisions?

Do you know your company’s financial IQ? It’s not a number generated by a test -rather it’s the overall confidence in your organization’s ability to leverage accurate, relevant data to make financially smart decisions. It’s measured by your company’s ability to quickly produce plans, generate actionable performance insights, and re-plan continuously in response to internal and external changes that affect your business.

A high financial IQ amongst all your employees positions your company to be more competitive, innovative, and prosperous, in an increasingly dynamic business world. And Finance is the strateg­ic advisor at the heart of it all.

Financial IQ is more important than ever because the pace of business is only getting faster. The winners in the modern economy are the agile companies that can turn on a dime as new trends emerge, customer demand shifts, and business conditions evolve. Effective business leaders use data from a variety of sources to identify opportunities and risks; those who don’t have that insight in real-time to execute more iterative planning cycles inevitably get left behind.

In this environment, frequent and collaborative planning is the key to sound decision-making. Every business unit’s plans and decisions are grounded in detailed financial data. Marketing develops demand generation plans and tracks a myriad of data. Sales deals with capacity models, quotas, and compensation plans and monitors progress toward those targets. Operations creates supply chain and demand fulfillment plans. The C-suite allocates resources and tracks performance.

Since business activities are interconnected, the data from these plans is relevant beyond the departments that produced them. But at all too many companies, planning data is siloed in spreadsheets, and it isn’t factored into the broader decision-making process. The finance team typically has the highest financial IQ in the organization, but financial IQ shouldn’t be exclusive to finance team roles. To achieve maximum agility, companies need everyone engaged in Continuous Planning, which elevates financial IQ across the board. In many ways this is the new mission for modern FP&A teams-to evolve from being a service provider to the business to being an empowerer of new capabilities across the business.


Modern finance teams lead the way


Because of the dynamic and unpredictable nature of modern business, the importance of agility, and the centrality of data to business decision-making, the role of finance has evolved significantly, expanding far beyond the back office. Today, finance leaders function as key strategic advisors who are intimately involved in driving innovation and growth.

For the businesses that are the heart of the economy, it’s finance leaders rather than pricey consultants who understand the complexity of the business. Today’s finance leaders are tech savvy, and since all of the company’s financial data flows through their department, they have the clearest, big-picture view. Extending that view is what Continuous Planning is all about.

The Finance team is already positioned to lead the way. By adopting a collaborative approach and then driving iterative planning cycles across the entire organization, Finance can stretch operations in all the right areas to enable companies to be nimble. When finance leaders can speed up financial consolidation and reporting cycles, bring more people into planning and decision making, and automate core processes, they can increase decision frequency, accelerate insights, and shorten the time it takes to turn insights into action.


Structured vs. dynamic planning


One major challenge to reaching that state is that finance has very specific Structured Planning and reporting needs, whereas business units have Dynamic Planning requirements. Reconciling these two sets of needs is the key to Continuous Planning.

One growing company, Planar Systems, experienced these challenges as they transitioned into a global organization. The Oregon-based digital display manufacturer was tracking data across regions, divisions, and products with spreadsheets, which made meaningful analysis time-consuming and difficult. After implementing Planful’s FP&A platform to support Continuous Planning, Planar automated and streamlined processes. When it was acquired by China-based Leyard, the Planar team was able to provide the only consolidated management view of the global business group, thanks to the platform.

The combination of both Structured and Dynamic Planning capabilities allowed the company to monitor a range of metrics to inform executive decision-making. Planar went on to double-revenue growth while holding steady on overhead. Planful also gave Planar and its parent company a single source of truth about business status, including revenue and profit drivers.


Automation and integration for the win


As Planar’s experience shows, automation and integration improve financial IQ across the board to enable faster decision-making and more nimble operations. That’s the advantage of a Continuous Planning approach: it provides the flexibility, interface, and data access to meet Dynamic Planning requirements, while also delivering the structure and control finance needs.

The benefits include more accurate forecasts, more frequent planning cycles, better resource allocation and less disruption from annual planning exercises. Digital Realty, a San Francisco-based business that develops and manages data center infrastructure and real estate, also found a more collaborative approach to planning with Planful.

With a Continuous Planning approach, Digital Realty centralized operational and financial metrics, consolidating data from the systems of various departments and applying financial rigor to deliver “an unbiased view of the big picture,” according to Digital Realty’s vice president of corporate FP&A, Glenn Snyder.

And that’s Continuous Planning’s superpower: the ability to bring everyone into the planning and decision-making process in a meaningful way, thus fostering greater collaboration to break down silos, and elevating the entire organization’s financial IQ. Continuous Planning accelerates financial consolidation and reporting, enabling faster, more informative planning cycles. With Structured and Dynamic Planning capabilities, businesses with a high financial IQ are in a better position to compete and win in today’s high-stakes, fast-moving economy.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Saudi Press
0:00
0:00
Close
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
UK, Canada, and Australia Officially Recognise Palestine in Historic Shift
New Eye Drops Show Promise in Replacing Reading Glasses for Presbyopia
Dubai Property Boom Shows Strain as Flippers Get Buyer’s Remorse
Top AI Researchers Are Heading Back to China as U.S. Struggles to Keep Pace
JWST Data Brings TRAPPIST-1e Closer to Earth-Like Habitability
UAE-US Stargate Project Poised to Make Abu Dhabi a Global AI Powerhouse
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Kuwait opens bidding for construction of three cities to ease housing crunch.
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
Turkish authorities seize leading broadcaster amid fraud and tax investigation
Qatari prime minister says Netanyahu ‘killed any hope’ for Israeli hostages
Apple Introduces Ultra-Thin iPhone Air, Enhanced 17 Series and New Health-Focused Wearables
Big Oil Slashes Jobs and Investments Amid Prolonged Low Crude Prices
Social Media Access Curtailed in Turkey After CHP Calls for Rallies Following Police Blockade of Istanbul Headquarters
Did the Houthis disrupt the internet in the Middle East? Submarine cables cut in the Red Sea
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Iran Faces Escalating Water Crisis as Protests Spread
More Than Half a Million Evacuated as Typhoon Kajiki Heads for Vietnam
HSBC Switzerland Ends Relationships with Over 1,000 Clients from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and Egypt
Sharia Law Made Legally Binding in Austria Despite Warnings Over 'Incompatible' Values
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Miles Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Cristiano Ronaldo Makes Surprise Stop at New Hong Kong Museum
Zelenskyy to Visit Washington after Trump–Putin Summit Yields No Agreement
×