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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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