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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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