The F&A Academy guides Bookkeeping Consultants in their growth toward Financial Controlling

At TriFinance, every consultant gets the chance to map out their own growth trajectory. Thanks to the combination of development discussions, training, mentoring, coaching, and the right projects, we ensure that our employees can put this growth trajectory into practice. For those at the beginning of their careers, all options are still open—an advantageous position but one that can also be overwhelming.

At the request of and tailored to our consultants

From this observation, the idea for the Academy was born: a structured growth path toward roles typically desired by young finance professionals with about two years of experience. We created two tracks: the Controlling Academy for consultants who want to evolve towards roles as a Business Controller, and the F&A Academy, for Financial Controlling.

The Academies form a follow-up to the Young Hub Program, which guides freshly graduated consultants in their first projects. But equally, the Academies are of interest to finance professionals with initial experience in a permanent role or in audit who are making the switch to finance consultancy. With the Academies, we guide and accelerate their careers towards business partner roles.

Regulatory compliance combined with a practical approach

For a Bookkeeping Consultant with a few years of experience in the fundamental processes (AP, AR, GL, etc.), the ambition grows to take on more responsibility and become a true business partner. However, acquiring the necessary skills is not straightforward. More complex and challenging tasks, such as VAT returns, financial statements, or assisting in tax reporting, require specific technical knowledge. And the only way to be a business partner is by having strong soft skills.

Based upon our extensive experience in supporting bookkeeping departments, we have developed a well-balanced training program that combines regulatory compliance with practical applications. Consultants not only learn what they need to do but, more importantly, how to do it efficiently. This is complemented by soft skill training, such as presentation skills and storytelling.

Immediately applicable knowledge and skills

The academy is organized in a way that allows consultants to immediately apply their new knowledge and skills to their projects. After all, it is by doing that they truly learn. Participants are encouraged to delve deeper into the subject matter themselves as they put it into practice. This approach yields the greatest learning gains, and also motivates our consultants the most.

By focusing on independence and practical applicability, we keep the training program concise: 10 training days spread over 2 years. We work with SBM and a mix of internal and external trainers to find the right balance between up-to-date technical knowledge and practical experience. For specialized knowledge on taxation, for example, we call upon external partners, while for subjects as finance process optimization, we have very experienced consultants internally who share their expertise. In this way, we offer a broad range of topics, with both theoretical and practical sessions.

A unique and exclusive program

Thanks to this approach, the F&A Academy is unique in its kind. For finance professionals who want to make a career within a corporate environment, there are no applied programs available that combine theory and practice. And if you want to make a career, in addition to technical skills, soft skills are by far the differentiator.
The same is true for our consultants. With the F&A Academy, we wanted to fill this gap in the market.

This is not only valuable for the consultants themselves, but also for their clients. Many internal bookkeepers suffer from gaps in their knowledge, which affects the quality of their work. By training our consultants to become true business partners within finance, we not only help their own careers, but also contribute to the improvement of their clients' processes.

A proven approach

Now that the first group of participants has completed the two-year program, we can proudly say that our approach works. Not only did the participants learn a lot, they actually contributed to improvements for their clients. It was impressive to see how they used the F&A Academy as a lever for their careers. They brought questions from their clients back to the F&A Academy and worked on solutions that opened new opportunities for them.

Read about the F&A Academy participants' experiences

Future focus

In the future, we aim to further focus on community building so that participants form an even closer network and continue to share knowledge and experiences beyond the F&A Academy. We also plan to further refine the program to align perfectly with the Management Track, which focuses on the skills needed for roles like Finance Manager or CFO. This way, we can offer finance professionals a growth path from school graduate to executive finance roles. Career detours are just as valuable. If someone wants to specialize in ESG or Data Analytics after the F&A Academy, we can again select the right training and guidance for that.

Thus, the F&A Academy is not just a place for learning, but also a stepping stone to a successful and challenging career within finance.