Tuesday Mar 07, 2023

Unleashing your audit skills to be a successful FP&A leader

Nicolas Boucher has a simple message to anyone who wants to move from audit to FP&A.

The Head of Finance and Controlling at Thales says: “You can do it. I am an example of that.”

He says many skills are transferable from audit to FP&A. “Looking at financial statements from different companies in different situations and different industries” is one. Another is understanding “the figures compared to the past or compared to trends to give assurance to the figures. This is actually what you are doing as FP&A when you are analyzing the actuals against the budget or against last year.”

After seven years in audit at PwC which took him around the world and saw him get “battlefield promotions” Nicolas didn’t want to remain in audit forever and wanted “something more operationally close to the business.”

In this week’s podcast he explains how he made the move from audit to FP&A and the skills he has learnt in his 15 years as a finance leader.

Whether it is his past as a DJ (“When you have control of the microphone from 500 people, you need to know what you have to say and to have the confidence to do it”) or board reports and his daily content as a global finance thought leader with 127,000 followers on LinkedIn he explains the importance of stopping people from being “ bored” or losing attention.

He also reveals the inside scoop on a new course “giving everything that I learned the last 15 years” - that he wishes he had been given when starting out.

In this episode Nicolas reveals:

How to shape your audit skills to to get a role in FP&A
His key learnings in a finance career that has taken him all over the world including France, the US, and Singapore, and across audit, controlling and FP&A roles.
The secrets to hitting 126,000 followers on LinkedIn as one of the leading FP&A (and general finance) influencers
His lessons from a large-scale finance transformation at Thales
The importance of communicating “bad surprises” early
His early DJ Career and the lessons for a career in finance
His new course, Become a High Performing Finance Professional
His favorite Excel function

Links from the show

https://nicolasboucher.online/ Become a High Performing Finance Professional course with links to his content online

Unleashing your audit skills to be a successful FP&A leader

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