A very brief summary of actions which any finance professional should be aware of to improve partnering skills.  Communication, listening to understand, building relationships & understanding the core business are all essential. 

The bigger lesson for finance people to become better business partners is to continuously develop listening skills,be involved in the whole business and create trust with business units so that when we tell the story from the number it will add value to the business.

Better finance business partner focus on listening and asking questions.

This video reinforces the concept and underlines the importance of discovering the specificities and challenges of your organization. Taking in the business perspective (from sales, from operations, from marketing and the other functions) will enable you to to better analyze and improve the recommendations and actions put forward to the management team.

This helps to understand the requirement to support the business by building relationships outside of the finance function.

 We have a responsibility to the organisation to give meaning to the numbers. What is the story behind them, what has gone well ? what is going not so well ? This can be made easier by having relationships outside of finance that are helping us to understand the cost drivers of the business.