Corporate FP&A Professional Grad Q&A

Do you like money? So do the students in our Corporate Financial Planning & Analysis Professional program. Two of them — Karen Smith and Justin Stephens — shed some light on their experience in the course and how it has enhanced their careers.

Karen works in a non-financial management role. However, she enrolled in the program because of correlations in her job and learning objectives of the course.

“My position requires a good amount of planning and working with numbers and analyzing trends, etc.,” she said. “I felt this course could provide me with new skills that could improve the design and overall effectiveness of any reports created in my department.”

As a Business Intelligence Developer, Justin’s interactions with financial planning and analysis (FP&A) teams spurred him to enroll in our course. He said, “I wanted to gain more insight into how the FP&A team uses the data that I make available to them.”

“I loved everything I learned in this class, and the instructor was great,” Karen said. “This class provided many industry best-practices that I can incorporate into some of the reporting I do. It also increased my level of knowledge of how financial models are built and shared between management and co-workers.”

Justin added, “The materials and instructor were very helpful in gaining the insight that I was seeking.” As a result of completing our program, Justin landed new opportunities to collaborate directly with his employer’s FP&A team.

Communicating business and financial information and building and interpreting financial projections are among the topics covered in this program. Both students indicate the course material is extensive but beneficial for everyone in the course, especially since they all had varying career fields.

Justin said it’s a “perfect” continuing education supplement for those who are passionate about business intelligence and finance. He also plans to continue reviewing the materials to reinforce what was covered in class.

Karen said motivations for taking this course might vary depending on one’s professional background and post-program goals. However, when asked if she feels more knowledgeable about the FP&A field, she said, “Absolutely!”