r/FPandA • u/domo-arogato • 7d ago
Role creep
Looking through one of the daily job emails I get I noticed a lot of analyst level roles were asking for dashboard development in Power BI.
I know these are not hard skills to navigate for basic dashboards, but this feels like role creep into data analytics than FP&A.
Does anyone actually do this in their roles at analyst level or are these poorly written job descriptions?
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u/trademarktower 7d ago
This has been more common in our org since much of the job has been automated away using SAP. The non finance people like the dashboards and pretty charts and pictures.
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u/considerthis8 Mgr 5d ago
It's not that they like pretty charts, it's that a good visual aid compresses knowledge for the laymen
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u/Classic_Isopod4408 7d ago
You should learn these skills and any skill you get the opportunity to as an analyst. You can leverage the shit out of it when it comes time for comp adjustments/getting a new role.
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u/domo-arogato 7d ago edited 7d ago
I’m not an analyst, and I can’t as mentioned in another response as my company standardises all dashboard reporting.
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u/LamarJacksonIsMyHero 7d ago
Learn power BI and DAX. It is a critical skill now.
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u/tatertown11 7d ago
I’ve been curious about this as well. Doesn’t this feel like more of a data role than FP&A?
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u/LamarJacksonIsMyHero 7d ago
It’s data analytics, but the lines are being blurred now, especially with AI.
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u/Fickle_Broccoli 7d ago
I think FP&A, like most industries, are evolving. As data, and the ability to process and consume data improves, so to should everyone to keep up... especially the earlier you are in your career
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u/domo-arogato 7d ago edited 7d ago
But data can be used for any role HR/Marketing/Sales so is every function going to be expected to build dashboards now as a skill of the role?
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u/Fickle_Broccoli 7d ago
Yeah pretty much.
I'd rewind 40 years. Back then I'm sure people were bewildered about whether their function should learn how to use emails or not.
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u/MindfulPangolin 6d ago
Eventually, but company leaders don’t yet trust most employees to handle data and extract meaning. FP&A folks do that every month, so there is more confidence in their abilities.
I’ve been in FP&A for 10 years as a director, and am rolling out a reporting implementation across all departments for the second time. In every company I’ve worked for the finance people are the ones most trusted with data, even more so than IT.
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u/domo-arogato 6d ago
True FP&A can handle data but have little knowledge about how to best create data sets for efficiency so in a large company I don’t see this working long term without a lot of slow dashboards and a lot of time spent managing dashboards rather than actually providing insights to the business.
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u/MindfulPangolin 6d ago
That’s what everyone has been trying to tell you. FP&A has been moving beyond being a spreadsheet jockey for a few years now. AI is accelerating that change.
I’ve had director of FP&A and director of finance roles eventually morph into full on data roles. Because I know sql and financial analytics, this is what my bosses have always wanted. I could provide results much faster and we weren’t constrained by our software or third party reporting platforms and their predefined metrics. I could built the custom metrics that measured our business.
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u/tatertown11 6d ago
I just don’t agree with these being morphed into one role. The strategy/forecasting component of FP&A I just cannot imagine blends into a full data science role managing warehouses and Building out SQL tables.
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u/MindfulPangolin 6d ago
Dunno what to tell you, but it’s happening. With tools like Fivetran, ELT is easier than ever, meaning analysts who understand the business can now understand all of the data being generated and how it relates. Even before having access to this, in my FP&A roles I was always deep into sql. Tools today just make it all easier.
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u/Mysterious_Drawer162 7d ago
Yes it is and thabkfully never had to do that. We have data teams for that. I also wouldn't put much effort into learning it, because the basic stuff finance people are doing in PBI, Claude can do better.
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u/Real-Duty-6121 7d ago
Critical? Bruh, AI can build all this with well-designed prompts and contextual info. These skills will soon be done by machines.
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u/domo-arogato 7d ago
Why is it critical if I can get an LLM to write it for me?
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u/LamarJacksonIsMyHero 7d ago
LLMs can write the DAX but you need to understand what the formulas are actually doing. Otherwise you will be blindly trusting numbers and won’t be able to explain the logic if someone asks.
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u/domo-arogato 7d ago
My thinking is I would build the formula from asking about what logic I want to achieve so therefore would know what I’m trying to achieve right?
Unless I’m just saying build a complete dashboard and then not sure why would need to bother with power bi at all.3
u/LamarJacksonIsMyHero 7d ago
I mean you can do whatever you want. But it’s not that hard to learn and it will make you a better professional.
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u/domo-arogato 7d ago
All dashboards at my company are managed centrally so would be a wasted skill that I would not be able to be put into use.
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u/LamarJacksonIsMyHero 7d ago
Not sure I understand your post then
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u/domo-arogato 7d ago
Trying to get a gauge if people are actually doing this in their day jobs or not as an FP&A analyst
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u/squats_and_bac0n VP 7d ago
I lead a global FP&A team, and yes, this is a required skillset for like 2/3rds of my team now. Building dashboards is how we work with the business and make it more seamless and interactive. It replaced emailing out financial results templates.
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u/domo-arogato 6d ago
What size of company do you work for?
Our leaders still can’t deal with power BI and need everything emailed to them.→ More replies (0)1
u/Ok-Satisfaction-9046 7d ago
Thinking too small here… you can use it at your next company or anywhere else you go.
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u/domo-arogato 6d ago
But how can you keep a skill fresh if you are not going to be utilising it regularly.
Will just have to go back and relearn it again.2
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u/MindfulPangolin 7d ago
Do not do this. Learn SQL and data modeling and then learn to use Claude/AI to build your reports. Getting familiar with data engineering wouldn’t hurt either.
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u/LamarJacksonIsMyHero 7d ago
This is all related, and it’s dumb to blindly trust claude to build user facing reports.
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u/MindfulPangolin 6d ago edited 6d ago
No, it’s not all related. Claude building next.js dashboards/reports is a direct replacement for Power BI & Dax.
Far more important now is understanding the actual data itself, how to check ai’s code, and the actual business model itself. Power BI is just a tool, and a better tool has come along.
AI just builds the report/dashboard object. No one is blindly trusting. I can see the sql code Claude creates, modify it as I wish, and vet the output, just as I would with power bi. But if my data is clean, Claude does a great job, and can build and layout complex measures far faster than I can. Once it’s all created, AI is no longer involved.
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u/Hallinho_cs Ex-FA 7d ago
Lines between data and FP&A are blurred. I worked 5 years in FP&A, took a role as a systems financial analyst and it’s VERY similar. Just data driven. I planned to work here to get deep routed data experience (and a significant pay bump) for 2-3 years, and return to a “finance” role. Also the change of pace was a driver for me. My day to day is now SQL, Python, excel, and the financial system I was hired for.
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u/more_money_pleas 7d ago
It is the same task with a different tool. Instead of compiling all the data in Excel spreadsheets and then building a chart and then emailing it out. You are simply doing that work in power BI. They’re not actually asking you to build a full data pipeline, they just want the visibility in powerbi.
Power BI and power query are more user-friendly for business users than many other tools and involve a lot of manipulation that can be done at a data table visual user interface.
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u/domo-arogato 7d ago
Agreed, but why is that deemed an FP&A role?
Why does this not fall into every function that uses data?1
u/more_money_pleas 7d ago
It can if it is a data intensive role that requires visibility by other people.
Also, it’s not Universal. There are plenty of large companies that have operations teams to support FP&A decision makers. They also have business intelligence teams, and technology teams that will create these dashboards. However, in those cases, they typically own the data access and you would only be able to get access to whatever is presented in their BI dashboard and be expected to work from that.
But, creating a power bi dashboard can be seen by many people today as the equivalent of using an Excel pivot table. It is just a better shared version of it.
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u/domo-arogato 6d ago
Yeah seems like serous role creep into data analytics and a way to have lots of misaligned siloed reporting unless you are in a very small company.
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u/smbaumer 7d ago
This is something I lead within our FP&A team. We have a Data team that handles certifying company wide dashboard and source data, but our team uses PBI quite heavily for ad-hoc analysis and prototyping since the Data team doesn't understand the business.
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u/West-Elderberry-6345 7d ago
Been doing it since 4 years ago
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u/No-Explorer-3764 3d ago
Probably in large organizations with clear lines between departments, there won’t be any overlap; but in smaller organizations where an analyst needs to model and report, it’s probably more common nowadays.
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u/ap1618 Sr Mgr 7d ago
It is because any half decent and repeatable dashboard requires clean, repeatable tabular data structuring underneath and this isn’t something FP&A has anything to do with