As we head into the new year, we asked finance professionals on AFP’s North America Emeritus and Asia-Pacific Advisory Councils to share some of their goals for 2023.

Need some inspiration for your own New Year’s resolution? Check out the goals below, then see the FP&A Advisory Council members’ lessons learned from 2022.

Improve technology capabilities

Puneeta Kapoor, finance business partner at Navitas, shared four professional tactical goals to be more efficient in FY23: “1) Train myself on PowerBI to build effective dashboards. 2) Review KPIs — focus on three to five. 3) Continued focus on commercial analysis to ensure ROI on strategic new initiatives, build tool for COA (cost of acquisition), etc. 4) Less manual monthly reporting — work with IT to build a tool to ensure management reports are synced with transactional data.”

Pete Geiler, supply chain business director at Stanford Health Care, said one goal is to “improve financial reporting.”

Danny Shiu, member of the Asia-Pacific FP&A Advisory Council, has three goals: “Finish my first Anaplan implementation with success. Get a better understanding of a new food market. Stay healthy.”

Move beyond technology to better processes

“2022 (or perhaps since 2019) has been characterized by digitalization and transformation. I feel we are at a point where these two words have become a little lethargic to the finance team,” said Benjamin Chin, regional finance director, APAC, ECCO Shoes. “In 2023, I want to realign ourselves back to the north star of effective business partnering — remove the clutter of technology for a moment — and ask good, value-adding, action-orientated questions to our partners. Are our goals aspirational enough? Are we on the right track? Are we devoting enough time and energy on the needle movers? Undoubtedly, it is ripe to take a step back from the busyness of transformation and refresh our perspective of the actual business.”

Tracy Butler, CTP, CFO for ePac and member of the AFP Board of Directors, said she is looking to be “more proactive, less reactive.” She explained, “The fewer surprises, the better — there have been plenty already in the last two years. I want to have more balance, not just between work and life but also with work in general.”

Grow in current role

Johan Van Zyl, FPAC, senior vice president, data and process automation COE director, Marsh, said that his professional goal is the “expansion of current role (large ongoing project that will yield good progression opportunity).” He also hopes to find more balance with “less U.S. hours and more personal time.”

Jeff Altman, Chief of Staff to Chief Revenue Officer, Verizon, and member of the AFP Board of Directors, said, “A key goal of mine is providing a better work/life balance for my team. I want to have more structure and planning as much as possible, reduce the number of surprises/fire drills, and enable my team to have a clearer picture of where we are headed and how we are going to get there.”

After working at the same company for a decade, Peggy Ang, senior FP&A manager, took on a new job at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Her goal for the new year is to keep learning: “Trying out new things/areas, while uncomfortable and inconvenient at times, helps us to grow, builds courage and resilience (in trying, failing and trying again), as well as drives a continuous learning mindset, which can be both tiring and energizing at the same time as we ride the steep learning curve, particularly for mid-career transitions. There's also a saying that anyone who keeps learning stays young!”

Explore new roles

Douglas Yeung, member of the Asia-Pacific FP&A Advisory Council, has three goals for 2023: “Start my Ph.D. in May, start reading more and hopefully get some consulting/teaching/research gig on the side.”

While some are looking to start new endeavors, others, such as Pete Geiler, are looking to finish strong. Geiler said his other goal is to “prepare for retirement in early 2024.”

We wish you good luck and good health, and hopefully can help you meet your professional goals in 2023. Happy New Year!

See how the lessons learned from 2022 informed the FP&A Advisory Council members’ goals for 2023.

Ready to take your FP&A practice to the next level? Check out the FP&A Maturity Model.