| 001 Optional Pre-Conference Workshop — Smart Growth: Exposing the Blind Spots and Behaviors that Inhibit Profitable Growth |
| Many companies today face a common dilemma — how to meet the increasing demands of customers and new competition without driving excessive cost and complexity into their operations, and without overwhelming their customers with too many choices. The challenge is exacerbated because many companies are biased, in incentives and structure, towards putting more variety into the market while at the same time lacking the very information that would shine a light on the true value and cost of that extra variety. The result is a pattern of somewhat “blind” product and service proliferation, with no guarantee of growth in profitability. The role of the CFO has broadened such that they are ideally positioned at this “growth fulcrum” with a responsibility for understanding the levers of profitability while also ensuring a clear path to growth. This interactive workshop will discuss these issues and lay out a path for addressing the blind spots on profitable growth. The format will be a mixture of presentation, case study as well as an interactive breakout session. The breakout session will give participants an opportunity to assess their own companies in terms of the twin factors impeding profitable growth: behaviors and information gaps. Earn 4 additional CPE credits by attending this pre-conference workshop. An additional fee applies and pre-registration is required. See order form for details. |
Speaker:
Nick Reynolds, Principal, George Group Consulting
Stephen Wilson, Principal, George Group Consulting; Co-author of Conquering Complexity in Your Business
David Neely, VP of North American Administration, George Group Consulting
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| 002 Breakfast Seminar presented by HiFX — Best Practices in FX Risk Management: Public vs. Private Companies |
| This interactive panel discussion will combine the insights and experiences of three senior level executives with a background in treasury management at both public and private enterprises. The panel will discuss the creation of a disciplined risk management methodology, identify real currency risk levels, and offer suggestions to manage risks and protect profits. Practical examples and case studies will be reviewed to explain how to manage when things go wrong. Earn 1 additional CPE credits by attending this breakfast seminar. There is no additional fee for attending but pre-registration is required. |
Speaker:
Ken Goldman, former CFO, Seibel Systems
Amarjit Sahota, President and CEO, HiFX
Ward Naughton, Managing Director, Hanover Partners
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Focus:
Successful foreign exchange risk management places heavy demands on corporate treasury managers. Finance professionals must successfully identify, assess, and manage both transactional as well as translational risk. As importantly, practioners must be able to formulate and implement new approaches to managing these risks. In this workshop, HIFX brings together its own marketplace insights (gained from interacting with over 2,000 companies in over 100 different industries), with the pragmatic experience of two senior level financial executives having extensive treasury management experience at both public and private enterprises. The panel will discuss the creation of a disciplined risk management methodology and offer suggestions on how to manage risks and protect profits. Discussion topics will include:
• Managing risks and protecting profits (at public vs. private companies);
• Identifying real currency exposures and quantifying risk levels;
• Creating a disciplined FX risk management methodology;
• Finding available resources and utilities to help better manage FX exposures.
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Take Away:
Attendees will learn from the panel’s experts what types of strategies are being deployed by public and private companies seeking to proactively manage their foreign exchange exposures.
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| 101 Implementing a Ubiquitous Performance Management Solution |
Speaker:
Peter Bull, Group Program Manager, Microsoft Office Business Applications
Steve Wetzel, Chief Technology Officer, Maricopa County, Arizona
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Focus:
With almost four million residents, Arizona’s Maricopa County is the fourth most populous county in the United States. The county employs more than 14,000, has an annual budget of just under two billion dollars, and has won numerous awards recognizing excellence in management, finance, and IT. This session will discuss Maricopa’s philosophy for implementing a ubiquitous Performance Management solution across the organization — including monitoring, analysis, and planning applications — to address the many challenges associated with managing one of the nation’s largest counties.
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| 102 Managing Expenses and Driving Savings |
Speaker:
Greg Johnson, Regional VP, US Commercial Card Sales - Western Region, American Express Corporate Services
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Focus:
All companies can benefit from better management of expenses. This session will provide you with unique expense management strategies that have been effectively implemented at many US midsize companies.
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Take Away:
Attendees will leave this session with insight on midsize company best practices in expense management. Learn the results of the 2007 CFO research study, Focus Spending, Increase Productivity: Finance manages cost while enabling productivity at mid-size companies. Attendees will also gain insight into the strategies used by mid-size companies to improve cash flow management, optimize process efficiencies, access spending data to drive vendor negotiations, receive rewards for high volume spend to offset expenses, and ultimately realize bottom-line value. This session will include actual client case studies.
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| 103 Cost Control and Forecasting — A Predictive View |
Speaker:
Steve McHugh, Director, EPM Marketing, Business Objects
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Focus:
This session will contrast standard planning and budgeting with predictive cost-based forecasting. The presenters will cover the following areas:
• The importance of truly understanding costs within the organization
• Linking of costs to key drivers within the organization
• Gauging the financial impact of changes on the organization based on cost drivers
• Moving to predictive modeling of future business results
• How organizations are using this methodology to make smarter near-term and long-term decisions
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Take Away:
After attending this session, attendees can expect to understand the difference between standard planning and budgeting and predictive cost-based forecasting, as well as how they can better predict the impact of change against their own organizations, including profits and resources based on real current conditions and the prospects for the future.
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| 104 Budgeting Beyond Excel |
| F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, providing solutions that make all applications secure, fast, and available. As a growing organization, F5 found that using Excel for their budgeting process was becoming both cumbersome and time consuming. Due to the company’s global reach, F5’s budget tracking requirements became too great for Excel and did not provide sufficient access for International Controllers. Distributing budget information around the world became problematic, as Excel files alone did not deliver the flexibility and performance the company required, in part because individuals couldn’t access the same spreadsheet at the same time. Financial Analyst Robert Howe, F5 Networks, presents the overall methodology used in moving away from Excel-based budgeting to a web-based solution. F5 now relies on a software solution to quickly create and analyze budgets, making the process more efficient, timely and accurate. The time saved from having an automated process in place has allowed F5 to spend more time on analytics rather than manually processing results via Excel worksheets. |
Speaker:
Robert Howe, Financial Analyst, F5 Networks Inc.
Andrew Conde, Regional Account Manager, Clarity Systems
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Focus:
This session is for financial executives who want to harness the power of performance management technology. This workshop will provide valuable insight if you are looking to improve budgeting, HR planning practices and reporting. F5 will present the overall methodology used to make the transformation from a manual to an automated process as well as key lessons learned.
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Take Away:
Attendees will leave this session with insight into the challenges F5 faced with financial planning as a result of large international growth. Delegates will gain an understanding of how they successfully improved process efficiency, strategic decision making, and cross-organizational visibility by using a performance management solution.
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| 105 Health Care Consumerism – Is it Good Business? What is Right for Your Organization? |
Speaker:
Tony Holmes, Principal, Mercer Health & Benefits
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Focus:
What is consumerism? Consumerism is a wide-ranging topic, not limited to just Consumer Directed Health Plans (CDHP). The essence of consumerism is to promote more engaged and educated healthcare behavior to improve health outcomes and costs. Why should CFOs care about consumerism? Health care costs continue to rise at rates higher than inflation, and businesses continue to search for cost-reduction opportunities that also meet HR objectives. Data from Mercer’s employer-sponsored health plan survey will be shared. What can employers do about it and what are their responsibilities? What about employees, what is their role? Consumerism is based on a model of shared responsibility between employer and employee. Employers need to provide information, education, choice, tools and incentives to employees. Employees need to change behaviors and seek the highest quality health care. What are the potential and emerging financial and other results and benefits of Consumerism? While consumerism shows great promise and rapidly growing popularity, is it delivering, and with what risks? How do you find the right “fit” or consumerism approach for your organization?
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Take Away:
When you leave this session you will have a better understanding of what Consumerism is, the facts about how it can or cannot help bring down health care costs, and what your role is as a CFO in promoting it in your company. You will also come away with practical ideas that can be implemented, and very importantly, a better understanding of the investments, realistic benefits, and risks involved … so you can determine “how far — how fast” to pursue consumerism is right for your organization.
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| 106 Tax Risk Management: The Role of the CFO |
Speaker:
Hank Gutman, Director, Tax Governance Institute, KPMG LLP
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Focus:
In recent years, boards have demonstrated a heightened interest in a company’s tax accounting policies, judgments, estimates and risk exposure. This is due, in large part, to the overwhelming number of tax-related material weaknesses reported under S-O 404, the promulgation of FIN 48 and demands for more transparency and disclosure by regulatory and taxing authorities throughout the world. Boards are now asking more questions about taxes and the CFO is the person upon whom many boards depend for answers. In this new world it is imperative that a CFO understand how tax risks are identified, measured, controlled, and communicated. To meet this need, KPMG’s Tax Governance Institute offers this non-technical session to provide an overview on the subject of tax risk management from the perspective of a CFO. We will discuss a number of key questions, including:
1. How is tax risk defined?
2. How does tax risk affect financial statements?
3. What are the tax risk factors associated with compliance, transactions, planning, controversy negotiation and settlement, and litigation?
4. What is the CFO’s role in the oversight and management of tax risk?
5. What are the top ten questions likely to be asked by the board regarding an organization’s tax risk?
6. What are leading practices for identifying, measuring, communicating, and mitigating tax risk?
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| 107 CFO as a Change Agent |
Speaker:
Steve Jandrell, Director, Business Transformation and Change, TATA Consultancy Services
David Michelson, Director, Business and IT Consulting, TATA Consultancy Services
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Focus:
Being a change agent is extremely difficult, especially in today’s global environment. Complex organizational models, different cultures, and a multi generational workforce make the task of aligning people, process, and technology seemingly impossible. During this interactive discussion participants will learn how to balance the key levers of change; to build commitment for your transformational program, reduce risk, and accelerate results. These three objectives are obtainable independent of the degree of change required, whether at “steady state” or in the midst of a transformational program. The approach to transformational change discussed in this session will describe the themes, messages, and information that will help finance executives become more effective change agents. If you are involved in leading change, or responsible for a component of a change program, these are essential tools, techniques, and behaviors that can significantly build commitment, reduce risk and accelerate results. This session will also explore:
• Change agent dynamics in today’s complex business environment: how cultures, workforces, and a global environment mandate unique and well-thought out approaches to managing change;
• Definition of a change framework comprised of 8 specific levers that build commitment to, reduce risk, and accelerate results for a transformational program in any environment;
• Elaboration of the themes, messages, and information that have helped finance executives successfully navigate the time and behavior continuum of a transformational program;
• Examples of tools used by finance executives to align people, processes, and technology around transformational program objectives;
• Definition of a case for action for the CFO to serve as an agent for enterprise change.
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Take Away:
When participants leave our session, they will:
• Possess extensive knowledge surrounding the definition and use of a proven change agent framework that will build commitment to, reduce risk, and accelerate results for a transformational program;
• Understand the corresponding behaviors and tools to leverage as an integrated component of any transformational program;
• Be able to clearly articulate the need and the approach for finance executives to be a change agent for an enterprise.
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| 108 Financial, Human Resources, and SOX Compliance Planning and Analysis — Beyond the Excel Spreadsheets |
Speaker:
Dina Bank, Director, Financial Systems , MPG
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Focus:
This session will be a case study featuring MPG, a full-service media and marketing communications planning and buying agency with 14 offices in the US and Canada. This study will cover how MPG's headcount just about quadrupled in a short period causing their company’s salary forecast to become a victim of too many spreadsheets ("spreadsheet creep"). MPG needed a scalable model for reconciling and forecasting salary expense that could easily integrate with their existing financial information in order to more efficiently analyze client and departmental profitability. In addition, this scaleable model needed to be able to handle SOX requirements.
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Take Away:
When you leave this session, you will have learned how to streamline your financial and human resources planning and analysis requirements as well as SOX compliance. Best of all, you will have found the answer to eliminating your piles of error-prone spreadsheets once and for all. (Workshop presented by Applix)
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| 109 Web 2.0 for the CFO: ERP as You Know it is Broken at the Core |
Speaker:
Mark Nittler, VP, Application Strategy, Workday, Inc.
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Focus:
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) sits at the core of financial management processes. While these solutions have provided useful automation, their designs are more than 20 years old and now hinder finance transformation and modernization in key areas including governance, performance management, and virtually everything in between. Analysts, the press, and even establishment software vendors SAP and Oracle have said ERP is on the verge of a dramatic evolution based on new technology approaches such as Web 2.0, software as a service, in-memory databases, and built-in business intelligence. Have you seen what’s coming? More importantly, do you understand the business implications and opportunities? This session provides a rapid fire, executive level primer on the coming changes in business software, the key new technologies, and the potential they offer for supporting the new office of the CFO.
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Take Away:
Attendees will leave the session with an understanding of the major areas of change in business software including business model and delivery, as well as technology, usability, and functionality. You will gain understanding of the key terms and claims and some ideas about how these modern systems can impact your personal, departmental, and corporate goals.
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| 201 Building a Best in Class Finance Academy at Kraft |
Speaker:
Henry Fetta, Director, Finance Training, Kraft Foods, Inc.
Robert Blondin, Vice President - Learning Strategy, ACS
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Focus:
Kraft is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer products. With operations in over 72 countries and over 4,000 global finance employees, accounting for the business is a complex endeavor. Equally complex at Kraft is ensuring that the organization provides effective learning and development opportunities for global finance personnel at all levels. In this session, you will hear how Kraft formulated a comprehensive learning strategy for the finance function and proceeded to successfully implement a best-in-class training model that today provides a wealth of technical skills learning and development opportunities for the finance staff. This Kraft Finance Academy enables the function to accurately account for, and act as a “trusted advisor” to, the business. During this session, we will provide insight into the accounting training needs that Kraft faced internationally, how the creation of a comprehensive US GAAP training curriculum addressed those needs, how that program was leveraged to establish a finance learning function and strategic roadmap, and the methodology utilized to achieve these results. Additionally, we will present best practices that were keys to our success.
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Take Away:
Attendees will leave this session with insight into the value a finance training function can bring to the organization, the methodology that can be utilized to establish or enhance the training function, and best practices associated with undertaking a strategy of this magnitude.
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| 202 Trends in Health Care: How Consumerism Helps Engage Employees and Reduce Cost — Understanding the New Health Benefits Products on the Market |
Speaker:
John Young, VP, Consumerism, CIGNA HealthCare
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Focus:
In the past ten years, employer gross health care costs have increased almost 120 percent, making it one of the greatest cost pressures on company income statements. And since the U.S. spends significantly more on health care than other similar countries, the cost increases are impacting U.S. global competitiveness. The solution is not in cost-shifting through plan design. An effective health benefits strategy focuses on financial ownership and health advocacy to engage consumers. And this consumer-driven approach will remove costs from the health care system — rather than simply shift it — by engaging employees in their health and motivating them to become part of the solution. This session will show the value of well designed consumer-driven plans as well as the overall impact of a broader consumerism strategy to effectively help manage long-term costs. The health benefit industry has changed a great deal over the last few years. A few years ago, your company offered an HMO and a PPO option to employees. You may have also offered a Flexible Spending Account (FSA). Now your benefits team is talking about HSAs, HRAs and CDHP? What is it? How does it work? How is it different from HMOs and PPOs? And how will it benefit my business and my employees? This workshop will be a primer on the changes in health benefits designed to help CFOs better evaluate options.
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| 203 Fast Quality Closing ― More Time for Value Add |
Speaker:
Steve McHugh, Director, EPM Marketing, Business Objects
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Focus:
This workshop will take a look at ways to improve the close process. The presenters will cover the following areas:
• The main pain points that most organizations are experiencing in their close process;
• Critical failure points in the close process;
• Combining and automating elements to remove the human error factor;
• Driving the close cycle vs. being driven by it.
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Take Away:
After attending this workshop, you can expect to understand where key pain points are taking place in the close process, as well as how you can better accelerate the close process to allow your organization to focus on providing strategic business analysis to the rest of the organization.
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| 204 SAP Planning for Effective Financial Analysis and Reporting |
Speaker:
Gary Willenbrecht, Vice President Finance, Corporate Planning & Reporting, Beckman Coulter, Inc.
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Focus:
In this session, we will explore how Beckman Coulter implemented a BPM solution to standardize, shorten, and simplify their financial analysis and reporting processes:
• Corporate Performance Management,
• Forecasting, Planning, Budgeting & Analysis,
• Aligning Strategy to Budgets and Forecasts,
• Mergers & Acquisitions,
• Unified cross functional platform (Dynamic, Flexible, Automated).
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Take Away:
Through the firsthand experiences presented in this case study session, you will learn how to increase your output with fewer resources, and do so with more efficiency and accuracy.
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| 205 Moving to a High-Performing 401(k) Plan |
Speaker:
Elizabeth Howe Faber, Principal, Mercer
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Focus:
What is the role of the 401(k) plan within your organization? In order to determine how effectively the 401(k) plan is operating, there should be clear goals and objectives in place for the plan. How should the effectiveness of your 401(k) plan be measured? Based on specific goals articulated by the organization, plan participant’s accumulations can be compared to target goals. Such measurement can be done on an aggregate basis, as well as on specific plan sub-groups. Why should CFOs care about the effectiveness of their 401(k) plans? As 401(k) plans become the primary retirement vehicle for employees, the inability to accumulate adequate retirement assets will increasingly become a workforce management issue. Regardless of the amount of attention given to benefit adequacy and workforce issues, a basic objective for 401(k) plans should be to provide the most cost-effective and efficient savings vehicle possible to employees. What are the some of the factors that negatively impact a plan’s effectiveness? Such factors as plan design, participant behavior, investment returns, communications and operation of the plan may be preventing a significant portion of the workforce from reaching target accumulations. How can employers address potential shortfalls with their 401(k) programs? Employers should target potential shortfalls with specific interventions or plan changes that will address specific issues with their plans. Employee decision-making within a 401(k) plan is a key factor in securing adequate retirement accumulations and employers should consider ways to boost employee’s “financial literacy.” The Pension Protection Act of 2006 provided employers with additional options for addressing participant behavioral issues. A case study will be highlighted.
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Take Away:
When you leave this session you will have a better understanding of what an effective 401(k) plan is and how it can support organizational goals. You will come away with practical ideas for measuring plan performance as well as specific changes and interventions to improve the overall effectiveness of the plan.
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| 206 Business Performance Management — A CFO Priority! |
Speaker:
Marc Diamond, Partner, KPMG LLP
Alan Voels, Director, KPMG LLP
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Focus:
As the role of today’s CFO continues to evolve and expand, Business Performance Management remains a significant part of the CFO’s agenda. Among the many other demands of their job, CFO’s are held responsible for planning, measuring and managing their company’s business activities — a task that requires significant time, effort and accuracy. Through examples and audience interaction, this session will focus on:
• The importance of a corporate strategy for performance measurement and reporting;
• The impact felt from a lack of standardization of key financial reporting metrics and core financial reports;
• The impact of the proliferation of spreadsheets on the forecasting and planning process;
• The significance of a scorecard/dashboard strategy for company leadership and for alignment of metrics to core drivers of business performance.
We will also discuss how you can enable business empowerment and accountability for performance management and how you align multiple performance initiatives with different timelines to a corporate performance management strategy.
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Take Away:
At the end of the session, you will understand the key considerations for successful business performance management and will gain insights as to how organizations are designing and implementing effective performance management programs.
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| 207 Finance Transformation Through Business Process Integration |
Speaker:
Jim McKinley, Senior Manager, TATA Consultancy Services
Carlos Chu, Senior Manager, TATA Consultancy Services
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Focus:
Finance Transformation defined: Pervasive change designed to optimize the value of core back office functions in the pursuit of driving enterprise growth. When was the last time you weighed in on operating decisions or had a business unit come to you for key performance metrics? This workshop will present a unique approach to finance transformation driven by business process integration. Armed with the right concepts, work products, and behaviors, the focused and achievable outcome is an end to end integrated solution for delivering finance and accounting operational excellence beyond the traditional boundaries of F&A core functions. Using the order to cash function as a case study, the approach and construct of a transformational program of this nature will provide illuminating insight into how the finance function can truly empower enterprise growth. Offered for CFOs or other finance leaders who are about to or have already embarked upon a program geared to further control costs, meet changing customer and stakeholder requirements, and drive enterprise growth, this session provides a refreshingly simple yet complete approach to achieving finance transformation. Topics will include:
• Drivers and case for action for finance leadership in enterprise transformation;
• The importance of linking an enterprises’ value proposition to its operating model in defining the design principles of a transformational program;
• Using Order to Cash (O2C) success stories, demonstrate how finance leadership can drive finance and business process integration;
• Continuing with the O2C example, discuss how to embed business performance metrics into IT systems to integrate your budgeting and forecasting activities with your day to day operational decision making;
• Address real-world risks and solutions involved with building a true matrix organization where business, finance, and IT operations converge.
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Take Away:
When participants leave our session, they will:
• Understand the importance of looking beyond traditional finance functions when designing or managing a transformational program;
• Understand the levers other companies have used to effect finance and business process integration;
• Develop a perspective on optimizing their own IT infrastructure to support operational budgeting, forecasting and planning activities.
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| 208 Transformation and Optimization of Your Finance Processes |
Speaker:
Michael Fraley, Partner, Finance Transformation Lead, Computer Sciences Corporation
Clive Corscadden, Partner, Enterprise Systems Optimization Lead, Computer Sciences Corporation
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Focus:
This session will address the following points:
• Learn how to recognize and identify an underperforming finance organization/function;
• Analyze your current state business processes and systems, i.e. identifying “bottlenecks” and pain points;
• Design and optimize the future state of your processes, enabling systems and organizational structure;
• Discover how to quantify and prioritize the opportunities in your back office financial functions, i.e. “bang for the buck;”
• Build the business case for internal selling and investment justification;
• Create and execute an achievable implementation plan for benefit recognition.
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Take Away:
After attending this session, delegates can expect to:
• Understand a proven methodology for implementing finance process and systems optimization;
• Understand how Finance, IT and organizational structure must work together to optimize financial system performance.
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| 301 Peaks and Pitfalls of Planning: 20 Years in the Trenches |
Speaker:
Chris Caren, General Manager, Microsoft
Dan Bulos, President, Symmetry Corporation
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Focus:
Has your organization’s approach to creating budgets, plans, and forecasts kept pace with the latest approaches to performance management? The best planning infrastructures support the planning process by integrating a broader performance management function. Discover what works and what doesn’t work in a practical context. This session will cover:
• Creating an integrated planning environment to avoid planning silos;
• Adding value to the planning process by clearly defining the role of spreadsheets;
• Incorporating planning into a 360o Performance Management approach;
• Matching planning software to your critical needs.
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| 302 Trends in Health Care: How Consumerism Helps Engage Employees and Reduce Cost — Improving Employee Health and Lowering Costs |
Speaker:
John Young, VP, Consumerism, CIGNA HealthCare
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Focus:
In the past ten years, employer gross health care costs have increased almost 120 percent, making it one of the greatest cost pressures on company income statements. And since the U.S. spends significantly more on health care than other similar countries, the cost increases are impacting U.S. global competitiveness. The solution is not in cost-shifting through plan design. An effective health benefits strategy focuses on financial ownership and health advocacy to engage consumers. And this consumer-driven approach will remove costs from the health care system — rather than simply shift it — by engaging employees in their health and motivating them to become part of the solution. This session will show the value of well designed consumer-driven plans as well as the overall impact of a broader consumerism strategy to effectively help manage long-term costs. Employee health care costs are one of the greatest cost pressures on a company income statement. And the most effective way to positively impact those costs is through increased employee health awareness and improvement to drive long-term productivity improvement. This workshop will discuss how to get employees to treat their health care expenses differently and will review the importance of getting employees to take responsibility for their health to avoid unnecessary health care costs.
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| 303 Why Wall Street Cares About your Supply Chain |
Speaker:
Joe Hornberger, Director, Supply Chain Risk Group , Manhattan Associates
Chuck Poirier, Partner, Consulting Group, Computer Sciences Corporation
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Focus:
In this session, attendees will learn:
• An outline of supply chain best practices that have proven results from industry leaders;
• The potential financial impact to be achieved from adopting these practices — based on documented survey results;
• The role the financial officer can play in being more active in promoting and deploying supply chain improvement initiatives;
• How to mitigate risk in global supply chains and create more predictable earnings;
• How to please Wall Street with more predictable earnings.
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Take Away:
After attending this session, attendees can expect to have greater insight into how they can play a specific role in promoting and deploying techniques that will improve supply chain processing and bring new revenues as well as enhanced earnings to their firms. Attendees will also understand how too many firms overlook the higher values that can be gained through more active participation of senior managers in supply chain efforts across the full business enterprise.
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| 304 Budgeting Beyond Excel |
| F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, providing solutions that make all applications secure, fast, and available. As a growing organization, F5 found that using Excel for their budgeting process was becoming both cumbersome and time consuming. Due to the company’s global reach, F5’s budget tracking requirements became too great for Excel and did not provide sufficient access for International Controllers. Distributing budget information around the world became problematic, as Excel files alone did not deliver the flexibility and performance the company required, in part because individuals couldn’t access the same spreadsheet at the same time. Financial Analyst Robert Howe, F5 Networks, presents the overall methodology used in moving away from Excel-based budgeting to a web-based solution. F5 now relies on a software solution to quickly create and analyze budgets, making the process more efficient, timely and accurate. The time saved from having an automated process in place has allowed F5 to spend more time on analytics rather than manually processing results via Excel worksheets. |
Speaker:
Robert Howe, Financial Analyst, F5 Networks Inc.
Andrew Conde, Regional Account Manager, Clarity Systems
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Focus:
This session is for financial executives who want to harness the power of performance management technology. This workshop will provide valuable insight if you are looking to improve budgeting, HR planning practices and reporting. F5 will present the overall methodology used to make the transformation from a manual to an automated process as well as key lessons learned.
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Take Away:
Attendees will leave this session with insight into the challenges F5 faced with financial planning as a result of large international growth. Delegates will gain an understanding of how they successfully improved process efficiency, strategic decision making, and cross-organizational visibility by using a performance management solution.
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| 305 Extreme Revenue Recognition — Beyond the Spreadsheets: Revenue Management Best Practices |
Speaker:
Dan Darst, Engagement Director, Softrax Corporation
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Focus:
Today's CFO is faced with ever increasing pressures, especially in the back-office. Issues such as the use of spreadsheets and revenue recognition plague the finance department. And whether we’re talking about traditional business models, or emerging models such as SaaS, studies show that the vast majority of companies, both public and private, are relying on manual processes to perform key revenue recognition and reporting functionality. The presenter will discuss the challenges of managing complex revenue recognition processes and the impact various business models have on these processes. You'll hear about the uniqueness of the revenue process, why it is handled outside typical enterprise systems and why companies largely rely upon spreadsheets. In addition, the session will address how revenue KPIs (key performance indicators) can provide a different view into your business, as well as outline success strategies for various business models supporting the audit and financial controls through a streamlined, compliant revenue process.
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Take Away:
After attending this session, attendees will better understand how to apply business intelligence and revenue recognition to enhance strategic decisions; how to monitor your business to prevent badly timed and misstated revenue; and how to turn your revenue policy into an automated workflow driven, integrated solution.
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| 307 Managing for Value — Lessons Learned from Private Equity |
Speaker:
Juan Carlos Webster, Principal, Booz Allen Hamilton
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Focus:
It is a known fact that private equity firms generate superior returns for investors by buying and restructuring undervalued companies. In the past much of the value generation came from financial engineering while today, value is created largely through management-based improvements. This workshop will provide insights into the management approaches that corporate leaders can adopt if they want to increase shareholder value in a manner similar to that of private equity.
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Take Away:
Through a combination of examples, case studies and best practices, you will be provided with the tools to generate excellent shareholder value and address the big questions facing management today — e.g., What components of my portfolio should we grow, fix or sell? Why manage for long-term value? Is capital structure important? Should a company increase its dividend payout? Should companies be more conservative when assessing an acquisition target?
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| 401 CFO Research Study: The Procurement Function’s Role in Reducing Risk, Improving Decision Making and Driving Cost Savings — Review of the Research Findings |
Speaker:
Sam Knox, Vice President and Director of Research, CFO Research Services
Paul Tong, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Ariba, Inc.
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Focus:
A recent study conducted by CFO Research Services and sponsored by Ariba, Inc., endeavored to uncover the relationship between excellence in procurement and effective, ongoing cost control. The goal of this research effort is to provide CFOs with fresh insights into methods for elevating the procurement function’s role to become: a key vehicle for cost control; a provider of data visibility for increased financial performance; and an information source for improved decision making. Focus areas of this research included: the top opportunity areas for cost savings; indicators used to measure the effectiveness and performance of the procurement function; procurement information as a key input into decision making; and potential risk areas. With the final results of the research now available, Sam Knox, Director or Research CFO Services will present the findings, discuss insights and summarize key conclusions during this session. Attendees will receive a copy of the full report analyzing the research findings and related conclusions.
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Take Away:
Attendees will have a detailed look at the crucial ways in which procurement can positively affect bottom line results and will come away with immediately actionable information.
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| 402 Managing Performance — The Bridge Between your Current and Desired Results |
Speaker:
Pete Winiarski, Principal, George Group
Bob Iversen, VP, George Group
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Focus:
This session will examine a proven process for maximizing performance. The presenters will cover the following points:
• You must first understand the drivers of performance;
• Targets should be set based on real opportunity;
• Accountability is created with Performance Dialogue (formal and informal);
• Yes, you do need a periodic diagnostic exercise;
• Reconciling Aspirational/Stretch Targets with Budget Commitments: They are different.
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Take Away:
After attending this session, you can expect to understand the process described to “Maximize Performance,” as well as know how to get started in your organization.
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| 403 Extreme Revenue Recognition — Beyond the Spreadsheets: Revenue Management Best Practices |
Speaker:
Dan Darst, Engagement Director, Softrax Corporation
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Focus:
Today's CFO is faced with ever increasing pressures, especially in the back-office. Issues such as the use of spreadsheets and revenue recognition plague the finance department. And whether we’re talking about traditional business models, or emerging models such as SaaS, studies show that the vast majority of companies, both public and private, are relying on manual processes to perform key revenue recognition and reporting functionality. The presenter will discuss the challenges of managing complex revenue recognition processes and the impact various business models have on these processes. You'll hear about the uniqueness of the revenue process, why it is handled outside typical enterprise systems and why companies largely rely upon spreadsheets. In addition, the session will address how revenue KPIs (key performance indicators) can provide a different view into your business, as well as outline success strategies for various business models supporting the audit and financial controls through a streamlined, compliant revenue process.
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Take Away:
After attending this session, attendees will better understand how to apply business intelligence and revenue recognition to enhance strategic decisions; how to monitor your business to prevent badly timed and misstated revenue; and how to turn your revenue policy into an automated workflow driven, integrated solution.
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