Paul BarnhurstFP&A Expert Empowering Finance Professionals to Excel Everday

Numbers never tell the whole story.

31 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief dialogue, the speakers compare valuation to financial planning & analysis (FP&A), noting that while both appear heavily quantitative, each number actually rests on underlying qualitative assumptions and narratives. They argue that understanding the story behind the data—such as the business drivers and the quality of the underlying data—is essential for accurate forecasts, reporting, and analysis. The conversation concludes that the core skill set required for forecasting, reporting, and analysis is essentially the same, emphasizing the importance of a solid data foundation and narrative context in both valuation and FP&A work.

Chapters

Evaluation is very similar maybe to FP&A where it's really a combination of the quantitative. I say that valuation is like deceptively quantitative. Your forecasts are full of numbers just like our evaluations, but you start to peel it apart. Every number is like an assumption, and behind those assumptions are like qualitative squishy things or stories. So the qualitative ends up being important sometimes in more cases, just as important as the quantitative. That's the fun part of what we do. Probably what you guys do.
But I would say just connect it even more closely to FP&A and what great FP&A really should be doing. It's not just forecast, but everything we do, it's about how do you back it up? What's the story behind it? What are the underlying business drivers? If your foundation of the underlying data and the assumptions is solid, the results will be better. And I think whether you are doing a forecast or doing reporting, just doing analysis, whatever it happens to be, I think it's the same skill set.