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Should FAST be good for everything?

Standards in themselves do not promote good or best practice. They simply promote a way of doing things that is commonly understood by the community that chooses to adopt them.

Spreadsheets are critical to business decision making

Build, Review, Support, Training

Spreadsheets: critical to business decision making globally

Warren Buffet famously said “Beware of geeks bearing formulas”.

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Modelling Standards do not equal Standard Models

Can one model do everything?

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Assessing ROI of your financial modelling training – 5 questions to ask

The best courses will recognise that there is work to be done once the classroom course is finished.

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Nine things to think less about when building a FAST model

So what happens to all that spare thinking time? Where does it go?

Training

Whose model is it anyway?

Where’s the individual who built the last version? Somewhere else probably, and busy. So what do you do?

Build

‘The model says so’ is never an acceptable answer

It may well be, and very often is the case that the model is right, but you have to be able to explain what is going on

Training

Online courses vs. live training

Both learning methods are continually compared and contrasted, and both have their fervent-supporter camps. But one has to be better than the other, right??

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With falling oil prices, shedding staff is exactly the wrong thing to do

The oil and gas industry is not good at managing price downturn cycles. Shareholders use short-term criteria to reward top management.

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How training empowers employees

Traditional carrot-and-stick motivational methods paralyze workers, and stymie creativity and productivity

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Are spreadsheets killing your finance function?

The F1F9 approach (using the FAST Standard) is so simple and so effective that I found myself questioning why nothing like this had happened earlier.

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Practical tips for new negotiators

"Bad negotiators can cause significant financial loss to their company and also reputational damage"

Training

The best way to test a financial model is by splitting roles

"There is no software to my knowledge that can help with conceptual testing. For the moment we must continue to rely on our own intelligence and understanding."

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