At this point, you’ve:
✅ Cleaned the data
✅ Built the model
✅ Stress-tested the assumptions
✅ Automated the busywork
Now comes the part that actually moves the needle: communicating what it all means.
This is where the best FP&A teams separate themselves. Not just in what they know, but in how they influence.
Welcome to the final chapter in our series on the five core pillars of high-performing FP&A teams. In this capstone, we’ll look at how elite teams support better decision-making by pairing sharp analysis with crisp communication.
Why storytelling makes or breaks modern FP&A
Most finance teams over-index on precision and shortchange communication. They build in every edge case, map every dependency, triple check all the formulas…then email it over with a “let me know if you have questions” and hope it sticks.
It doesn’t.
A precise model is table stakes. But as FP&A becomes more embedded across the org, the expectation isn’t just accuracy—it’s clarity. A 30-tab workbook isn’t helpful to leadership. They need the takeaway: what happened, why it matters, and what to do next.
This is where too many teams lose the plot. They obsess over their models and leave the messaging as an afterthought. They fail to realize that, if their story doesn’t land, all that rigor gets lost in translation.
Top FP&A teams know better. They don’t just report the numbers—they make the numbers make sense.
Aleph custom Ryan Roccon, CFO at Zapier, summed it up well on a recent Run The Numbers podcast:
“You can have a great financial model, but it’s only as good as the execution that makes it a reality. Bridging that gap from model to execution starts with telling a really compelling story that connects the what to the why and promotes action and urgency. If you do it really well, you effectively translate what is often a pretty complex financial story into a narrative that helps folks understand the company strategy, near-term objectives, long-term ambition, the levers that will achieve those results—and the things they have influence over.”
That’s what separates the best from the rest: not just how they analyze, but how they communicate.
Let’s dig into how they do it.
From reporting to translating: What great storytelling looks like
1. Cut the clutter and surface what matters
Good finance teams know their numbers cold. Great ones know how to turn them into a story that sticks.
Let’s look at a simple example:
🔴 Spend increased 7% vs. plan.
🟡 Marketing spend is pacing 7% over plan due to higher agency fees. At this rate, we’ll hit the annual cap by September.
🟢 We’ve underestimated marketing spend, but our CAC payback period is still strong, so we should accelerate our next fundraise if we want to maintain our growth trajectory.
Same data, very different impact. The first version is a raw fact. The second adds some context. The third actually moves the conversation forward.
Andy Ravreby, VP of Finance at EvenUp, framed this concept well in our recent webinar on board meeting presentation best practices:
So, don’t bury the lead by flooding the room with numbers. Surface the one insight that matters most and frame it in a way that compels action. That’s strategic storytelling in modern FP&A, and it’s what unlocks real influence at the executive table.
2. Use visuals to drive your point home
Want your insights to resonate? Make them visual.
A dense, interconnected spreadsheet might impress your buddy Doug in accounting, but for everyone else, it’s a recipe for confusion. If your audience has to squint to find the story, it’s probably not going to land.
Great visuals guide the eye to what matters most. Think of it like turning a slide into a headline: the main takeaway should be impossible to miss.
If you’re highlighting a budget variance, for instance, don’t just show a table. Throw it into a red-green bar chart that makes it immediately obvious what’s off track. If you’re tracking a trend, a clean line chart with a visible inflection point does more than a wall of numbers ever could.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb to keep in mind: every chart, graph, or table should answer these three questions:
- What are we looking at?
- Why does it matter?
- What should we do about it?
If it doesn’t do each of these, well…
3. Tailor your message to the audience
Strong visuals are invaluable, but one-size-fits-all presentations are a fast track to a glazed-over room. Depending on who’s looking at it, the same chart can spark entirely different conversations. An executive wants to understand trade-offs. A budget owner wants to know what’s driving the variance. The board wants to know if the long-term outlook is still intact
Top FP&A teams know this, and they shape the same insight in different ways based on who’s in the room. They start with the punchline, then frame it in a way that resonates:
- If bookings are soft, the CRO wants pipeline clarity. The CEO wants to know if the forecast holds.
- If gross margin dips, product might need to rethink packaging. The board wants to know if it’s a one-off or a trend.
As Roccon put it: “You can’t just hit people over the head with CAGR and BPS. You’ve got to build the story for them.” In other words, ditch the jargon and speak their language.
It’s not rocket science: the better you understand what each person needs to hear, the more likely your points will hit home.
4. Hone your craft
It’s easy to listen to an awesome presenter and think, “she just has a gift for public speaking.” But the truth is, storytelling isn’t some innate superpower. It’s a skill—and like any skill, it gets better the more you work at it. Delivery, framing, presence…all of these improve with reps.
Not just boardroom reps. Every day reps:
- Present your numbers in the next team meeting instead of sending them over Slack
- Walk a cross-functional partner through your latest model instead of sending a static version
- Try shaping your weekly update like a story instead of a spreadsheet dump
Each time, you’re building the muscle. Over time, these efforts compound.
Practice doesn’t just help with your actual presentations, either—it also sharpens your thinking. You start spotting patterns faster. You get better at knowing what to cut, what to highlight, and how to shape your message so it resonates.
Along with consistent practice, great financial storytellers are also constantly seeking out feedback. After every big meeting, they pull someone aside and ask: what landed? What missed? What would you change?
It might feel awkward at first—do it anyway. It’s one of the fastest ways to level up.
And if you want to accelerate your growth even more? Look beyond finance. Pick up a book on narrative structure. Watch a TED Talk on presenting ideas. Take a public speaking course.
Here are some resources to get you started:
- [Book] How to Win Friends & Influence People
- [Book] Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals
- [Book] Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You're Put on the Spot
- [Video] TED Talk: How to speak so that people want to listen
- [Video] Board meeting prep and presentation best practices
- [Course] Robin Roberts Teaches Effective and Authentic Communication
- [Course] Mastering Executive Presentations 3.0
There’s a lot out there to help you get better at shaping a message and delivering it with impact.
Use the right tools to scale your storytelling
It’s borderline impossible to deliver a sharp, compelling story when your team is consumed by report-pulling, slide-formatting, and version-merging. Great storytelling takes time and focus—and the more time you’re spending wrangling data instead of interpreting it, the harder it becomes to pull off.
The right tools can make all the difference here. Consistently great storytelling is the product of systems that make it possible to do so over and over again at scale.
A modern FP&A platform like Aleph helps on a number of fronts:
- Real-time data, always up-to-date: No more copy-pasting into slides the night before a meeting. Aleph pipes live data directly into Google Slides and PowerPoint so your decks stay fresh by default.
- One source of truth, built for collaboration: When everyone’s working off the same numbers, you can skip the reconciliation debates and get straight to the conversations that matter: what does the data mean, and what should we do next?
- Custom views without duplicating work: Different audiences need different angles. Aleph makes it easy to tailor your narrative on the fly—without building and maintaining 14 versions of the same spreadsheet or deck.
- AI that highlights what matters: Aleph’s AI Scan agent automatically flags unusual variances and key drivers as soon as they emerge, helping you spot what’s changing before someone else asks about it.
- Drill-downs that keep the conversation moving: Follow-up questions don’t have to mean a follow-up meeting. Aleph lets you click into a number and slice it by region, product, or team on the spot. No more “I’ll have to dig and follow up.”
Parachute’s finance team saw this shift firsthand. Before Aleph, each close came with a wave of last-minute questions and fire drills. Afterward? They had the space to engage earlier, fix issues before they snowballed, and focus on the big picture. “Instead of the team having to attack 50 questions at the end of close, we’re able to collaborate with other teams earlier on. We have more time to figure out what’s going on vs. scrambling at the end,” Gregory Silva, their Head of Finance shared.
That’s the unlock. The tools don’t do the storytelling for you. But they give you the space, clarity, and confidence to do it well—every time.
If you haven't already, check out our full series on the five core pillars of high-performing FP&A teams. While we may be done with our core pillars posts, we've only scratched the surface of what separates the top 1% of FP&A teams from the other 99%. Subscribe and stay tuned! 👇
