Finance topic
Planning and analysis as it is really practised: driver-based models, rolling forecasts, variance storytelling and the reporting that leadership actually reads.
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AFP’s 2026 benchmark finds the average budget still takes 8.7 weeks despite years of planning-technology investment. The teams reporting faster cycles are the minority that run structured scenario planning.
Snowflake and Databricks are pushing governed business definitions into the data platform itself — turning the semantic layer into the contract that decides whether finance AI answers with the company's real definition of revenue and margin.
AFP’s 2026 benchmark of 332 finance professionals finds structured scenario planning is still a minority practice, while the average budgeting cycle stays near nine weeks despite years of planning-technology investment.
AFP’s 2025 benchmark found unreliable and inaccessible data are still FP&A’s biggest technology obstacles, with spreadsheets nearly universal — the next upgrade is the information supply chain, not another application.
Gartner’s December 2025 market view put integrated, intelligent and continuous planning at the center of the category — while spreadsheets stayed nearly universal. The buying question is shifting to governed planning across connected data and AI.
A new generation of AI-native FP&A vendors is targeting the middle layer between source systems and spreadsheets. Aleph's Series B is a signal about what investors think is still unresolved in finance.
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The CFO Playbook
Editor's PickBenzinga CFO Robert Checchia, with host David McClelland, explains why finance leaders need to get closer to operations, give P&L owners clearer numbers and connect growth decisions to margin and cash generation — plus prioritization under private-equity ownership and AI experimentation with guardrails.
CFO Thought Leader / Planning Aces
Editor's PickFinance leaders explore AI agents for analytics, experimentation and order-to-cash checks, along with reconciliations, data readiness and opportunities to dramatically shorten finance cycle times.
CFO Thought Leader / Planning Aces
CFO perspectives on measuring AI through three lenses: operating cost reduction, risk mitigation and revenue generation, and how AI is changing planning and cross-functional decision-making.
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