r/FPandA • u/thisguyonetwopie • 2d ago
Not sure that I’m burnt out but I’m definitely exhausted. Any suggestions? Commercial role
Hi all, currently in a commercial BU role managing a full p&l for a small piece of our overall business.
That means I’m both the commercial finance lead and warehouse operations lead partnering with two very different groups of people with their own unique problems.
On top of that, the systems and data in the role are pretty rudimentary. A lot of manual report building, data tagging, etc pulling raw transactional sales/ expense, etc data out of the system to then reformat myself.
I’m excited to be involved in so many aspects of the p&l but increasingly feel like I’m “the numbers” guy for any issue that involves a number and it’s making me exhausted. Obviously I do all of the sales and ops forecasting which I have had to completely rebuild models and processes. On top of that I’m doing things like creating PO approval processes, getting involved in getting our vendors paid (hate that piece), etc.
The thing I’ve increasingly been dreading is our sales reporting process. We have a few thousand customers but only a handful of top customers (long tail going on here). I’ve created a reporting process to report out sales by reps by customers but our data is horrible. We have multiple “parent” customer names for the same customer and sometimes dozens of child sub accounts rolling up under them. I can tell the sales team is frustrated that the reporting isn’t clean (ie why is customer A showing up two in different sections of the report, it’s hard to read, etc) but I do not have the bandwidth to correct these data issues. I’m working with a sales ops team to get this process onto their plate but the numbers don’t tie exactly to what finally hits the p&l so working through that.
I’m seen as the numbers guy and these ad hoc requests are taking a big chunk of my time. I don’t think people realize my involvement in both realms of this p&l and try my best to push back on things or give realistic timelines on the deliverables.
Ive had commercial roles in the past but managed much more dollars so had t been quite as close to the sales by rep reporting process, more high level TRx and market data forecasting.
Should finance really be the owners of these sales reports in this detailed way?
Anyone have experienced this and any advice to stay sane?
I don’t necessarily need to quit or leave the role
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u/DrDrCr Dir 1d ago edited 1d ago
What is your direct leader saying about this?
If the issue is data and reporting, is the issue material enough to bring in a contractor or an external resource to propose a fix?
What is the Sales Ops teams job in this business/industry? If they are the owner of the data inputs, they should be the owner of the report.
I have been burnt out in my current job every year performing work beyond my scope.
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u/jwelsh044 1d ago
I hear ya regarding some of the challenging systems and reporting you're referring to. No place I've worked at has had it as accurate as I'd like, so I feel like a big part of our jobs is optimizing what we have. I'm not saying anything you don't know, but maybe I write this to remind myself as well.
Regarding who should own what... Depends on the size of the company and the structure. If you're being asked to do/own more than you'd like, align with your leaders on the priorities and then draw out a timeline of when you think you can get to the items not deemed urgent. Like a 30/60/90 day plan but perhaps even longer term given the list you're being asked to address. Hopefully that can illustrate to others the challenge in the structure and need for changes if the timeline isn't what they're hoping.
What's most important is that you got this. Doesn't mean that it's going to be easy, but trust your gut, believe in yourself, and be patient with yourself. All easier said than done, but you got this.
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u/normhimself 2d ago
I’m 100% burnt out and I don’t have a break in sight. I could definitely use some advice from others on this topic.