The FP&A Playbook from Nestlé, Mars, Kraft Heinz and Amazon: Swati Bagri

From being the First kid in her family to finish high school, Swati Bagri began as a role as auditor at Deloitte (“I did what any 17-year-old smart kid would do. I just followed my friends”). At Deloitte she discovered a “love of finance” realizing it’s “what I want to do for the rest of my life”.

Swati cemented her FP&A career at some of the world’s biggest brands: Nestlé, Mars, Amazon, and Kraft Heinz. At these giants she absorbed and built a playbook to get from “good” to “great” FP&A. Behing the success of FP&A at these teams, she explains is 3 things: strategic planning and forecasting, technology and risk management.

In this episode Swati talks about:

• Finance transformation as a significant part of her role (the slippery term of “finance transformation” defined as the “effective use of technology to free up people’s time”)
• How predictive analytics was used at Nestlé from rainfall data, and the wider playbook of building financial models with consumers in mind 
• Hyperinflationary markets like Turkey and Egypt and FP&A and the lessons learned
• Business partnering roles at Amazon and Nestlé and what I have learned about successful relationship building towards common objectives 
• Co-founding The Strategy Story (including learning about Marriage insurance for wedding days)
• Start by Explaining the P&L and coaching non-finance folk
• War stories – annual planning cycles 
• FP&A-led transformation at an ecommerce marketplace business and getting buy-in from senior management through a data story
• The power of podcasts to keep your at the top of your finance game 
• Sky Jumping and my favorite Excel function

Connect with Swati Bagri on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/swatibagri/

Book a mentoring session with Swati at https://topmate.io/swatibagri