New technologies and external factors are forcing companies to rethink financial planning and analysis.
Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) is an important part of any business’ strategy. At the moment, FP&A in pharma is going through a complex period of change. While new technologies are making it easier to collect and analyze data, external factors are making it much harder to predict what might happen next. Jennifer Kyle, CEO and founder of Condor, spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about ways companies can adapt their FP&A strategies.
Pharmaceutical Executive: What are the major issues impacting FP&A for the Pharma industry at the moment?
Jennifer Kyle: One of the most persistent challenges facing FP&A teams in the biopharma industry is the fragmentation of data and workflows. Teams often spend an outsized portion of their time manually reconciling information from disparate sources instead of focusing on meaningful financial analysis. This manual approach not only increases the risk of errors but also delays critical decision-making.
Additionally, there is the inherent unpredictability of clinical trials. Patient enrollment can fall behind schedule, protocols may require amendments, and site costs frequently exceed initial estimates. Without real-time visibility into trial operations and financials, FP&A teams struggle to explain budget variances or update forecasts with agility.
Lastly, the month-end close process is often prolonged by manual accruals across numerous vendors, creating compliance risks and audit challenges. Legacy budgeting tools further exacerbate these problems, as they are typically not equipped to handle the complexity or provide the dynamic modeling capabilities needed to assess the financial impact of changing trial assumptions.
PE: Given the chaotic nature of the moment (politics, tariffs), how is the role of risk management in FP&A evolving for the current climate?
Kyle: In today’s environment, risk management needs to be continuous and dynamic. Finance teams are increasingly running scenarios on a weekly, or even daily, basis to model impacts ranging from tariffs on imported biologics to disruptions in global supply chains.
By embedding risk indicators such as country-specific regulatory delays or currency fluctuations directly into forecasts, leadership gains real-time visibility into potential headwinds alongside core financial metrics. Risk management has evolved into a cross-functional discipline. It’s no longer confined to a standalone “risk” function; instead, it involves close collaboration among finance, clinical operations, procurement, and legal, working from a shared data infrastructure to anticipate and mitigate emerging threats.
PE: What new technologies are being implemented into FP&A?
Kyle: The pace of innovation in FP&A is accelerating rapidly. Cloud-native financial platforms, such as the one we’ve developed at Condor, are replacing manual spreadsheets by seamlessly integrating data from multiple sources such as CTMS, ERP, and vendor billing systems. This creates a single source of truth for accruals, budgeting, and forecasting, improving both accuracy and efficiency.
Additionally, AI is beginning to automate time-consuming tasks like invoice matching, accrual calculations, and data reconciliation. This allows FP&A professionals to focus more on strategic analysis rather than manual data management.
PE: As technology makes it easier for FP&A analysts to capture more data that includes more specific details than ever before, how is this impacting the scope of FP&A?
Kyle: The scope of FP&A is expanding significantly, driven by greater data availability and improved automation. With access to increasingly granular clinical and financial data, FP&A teams are moving beyond high-level budget oversight to more detailed insights such as patient retention, site performance, and vendor-specific cost trends. This evolution demands stronger cross-functional collaboration and a more integrated understanding of clinical operations.
As routine calculations become automated, FP&A teams are freed up to focus on higher-value work: interpreting insights, identifying cost-efficiency opportunities, and supporting strategic decision-making. Planning cycles have also become more collaborative, with finance working closely alongside clinical, procurement, and legal teams to align on assumptions and evaluate trade-offs. Continuous planning is also becoming more common, enabling decision-makers to access real-time insights, respond quickly to changing conditions, and deploy capital with greater precision.
