Financial Excellence With Game Changers, Presented By Sap

The Buzz: “A majority of executives and investment professionals agreeing that environmental, social, and governance (ESG) programs enhance shareholder value…Finance leaders can help spur companies to develop sustainability goals by articulating the financial benefits of sustainability projects and establishing criteria for funding the company’s ESG investments that account for their full range of benefits.” www.cfo.com Sustainability isn’t just a global agenda. It’s a corporate agenda and a topic driving fervent discussion in board meetings around the world. Not surprisingly, the Office of the CFO is key and central to these discussions. Regulations and standards are still emerging and differ across geographies. One thing is clear: organizations will need to be accountable, responsible and in compliance with sustainability requirements, or face significant consequences. But many forward-looking organizations see sustainability as an opportunity to create something better, to become leaders in building s

The Buzz: “As companies craft their responses to the COVID-19 crisis, CFOs are in the thick of the action. They need to make sure that their organizations weather the immediate business shocks while preparing them to emerge from the crisis in the best possible shape.” (https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/cfo-leadership-in-the-covid-19-crisis) As we move to what is hopefully the beginning of the end of the global pandemic, companies are gearing up to regain strength as we expect the economy to rebound. More than ever, the role of the CFO continues to expand, as resources in finance and risk teams must stay in lock step with the business to anticipate and guide strategy to help companies during the economic recovery. Cash management is a key aspect of ensuring a company has the financial resources to thrive, through optimization of working capital, cash flow, and the close with real-time insight. We’ll ask Anthony Coletta at SAP, Molly Boyle at Blackline

The Buzz: “The original inspiration behind the title 'Ripped from the Headlines' was the Warner Brothers film studio’s stock tagline, 'Torn from today's headlines!', used often beginning in the 1930s to promote the gritty realism of their 'social problem' films. The Evil Twin of this trope is “Could This Happen to You?” [tvtropes.org] What’s the latest news on the street that impacts FP&A? Or perhaps the better question is, “What’s the latest news in your home office, study, spare bedroom or kitchen table?”, depending on the distance of your home-working commute! It's time to take a look at topical content from current news headlines to learn how today’s hot topics will affect FP&A professionals today, tomorrow and farther into the future. We may be locked in, but that’s no reason to be out of touch. We’ll ask Jeff Hattendorf at Macrospect, Thiagu Bala at Deloitte and David Williams at SAP for their perspectives on Ripped from the Headlines: Financial Planning and Analysis.

The Buzz: “CFOs have recognized that surviving is not enough…2021 promises to be an epic year for CFOs and the companies they lead…the struggles of 2020 have taught us all many hard lessons, and these lessons will be used by elite CFOs to create a faster, more flexible, more competitive, and ultimately more profitable organization.” (forbes.com) Our first Financial Excellence Radio show of 2020 – January 28 – focused on a bright future for Finance and Finance professionals, with systems and processes underpinned by new and ever-improving technologies. Boom! Little did we know the impact COVID-19 would have on our lives or the unprecedented challenges it would pose to Finance, Financial Management and business survival. We’ll ask Kalish Consulting’s Brian Kalish, Deloitte’s Swapna Satwik and SAP’s Martin Naraschewski to debate the opportunity for Finance to reflect and reset priorities for transformation. Join us for Finance 2021 – Where Do We Go from Here?

The Buzz: “CFOs are focused on the battle to survive and maintain cash flow during the COVID-19 crisis. But…finance leaders are learning valuable new ways to manage risk in the future.” (fm-magazine.com) In the past when we predicted the future, “2020” was far enough out that possibilities seemed endless, near-term enough that predictions could be extrapolated from historical trends. But no one saw “this 2020” coming, and now we almost have 2020 hindsight. We’ve experienced change that could not be planned for, with financial markets reacting daily to lockdowns, shelter-in-place rules, business restrictions. What were the financial implications of this turbulent year? How will CFOs respond to external forces and plan for continued disruption? What new business models can help them innovate? We’ll ask Birgit Starmanns and Kevin McCollom at SAP and Rizal Ahmed at SAPInsider for their insights on 2020 Hindsight to 2021 Foresight: Finance Implications for Turbulent Times.

The Buzz: “Treasury is still a very young and new function. In sociology, we would speak of generation X…New regulations, new technologies, an interconnection and correlation between markets, economies and continents – will force the treasury function to evolve.” [linkedin.com] The economic downturn caused by COVID-19 has forced treasurers to re-evaluate their cash management and working capital strategies. While trying to keep up with the crisis, they are also looking to strengthen their operations to wither away future crises. There are a few key areas of focus that will become foundation for the future of treasury – accelerated digitalization, efficient management of working capital, and process automation and control. We’ll ask Haresh Chhaya at SAP and Erik Smolders and Abhinav Sethi at Deloitte to discuss these focus areas and the possibilities for corporate treasuries as they embark on their re-envisioned journeys on Rethinking Your Treasury Operations in Uncertain Times.

The Buzz X 9: We’ll ask finance experts Birgit Starmanns, Pras Chatterjee and Kevin McCollom at SAP to share their POV on the real stories behind nine recent business, media and popular press headlines: * Is Working Remotely the Future of Finance? (cfo.com) * Temporary Layoffs Just Became Permanent for Millions of American Workers (cnn.com) * Stock Futures Point Higher After Chaotic Weekend (seekingalpha.com) * How CFOs Can Be Better Leaders in the Age of COVID-19 (knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu) * Making strategic Planning Relevant in An Uncertain World (fm-magazine.com) * Walmart Signs Drone Deals As It Races to Play Catch-Up with Amazon (cnbc.com) * Coronavirus: Five Firms Booming Despite the Lockdown (bbc.com) * Cloud vs On-Premise (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) * Punches Thrown Over Passenger Who Won't Wear Mask on Airplane (msn.com) Join us for Ripped from the Headlines: Planning, Finance and Risk in the News.

The Buzz: “Gaining a greater understanding of your profitability requires more analysis than a financial statement and a balance sheet. By doing a profitability analysis, companies can identify areas in need of attention.” centage.com Profitability analysis is among the key benchmark criteria for profit-making organizations, providing the “bottom-line” marker of success. What role should it play in times of uncertainty like today, when markets are disrupted, supply chains are broken, costs are spiraling, and revenue streams are in disarray? It can help wrestle control of costs, identify business value, simulate and assess alternative courses, and focus on the most profitable parts of the business. Are more tailored profitability analysis and measures needed? We’ll ask Gary Cokins at Analytics-Based Performance Management, Sveinung Baumann-Larsen at EY, and Michel Haesendonckx at SAP to share their insights on Profitability Analysis: Challenging Times Call for Flexible Measures.

The Buzz: “We’ve come a long way in finance and accounting. From purely manual bookkeeping carried out in large, dusty, paper ledgers, through to Excel-based solutions and advanced accounting systems, we’ve been plunged into the exciting world of intelligent automation.” www.digitalistmag.com Finance is used to a “white box” set of tools for analysis, with traceable logic and steps. But a “black box”, with hidden inner workings, is needed for more complex processes. And Finance is again on the forefront, adopting machine learning and artificial intelligence. First steps are usually transaction-oriented. Sophisticated scenarios are predictive, using simulations with combinations of drivers for more comprehensive decision support based on data. We’ll ask Birgit Starmanns at SAP, Rob Kugel at Ventana Research, and JS Irick and Daniel Settanni at TruQua about the real value of machine learning on the bottom line and how it supports, not replaces, the human decision-making process.

The buzz: “As companies and government agencies send their employees home to avoid contact with the coronavirus, many cyber-security teams are facing the unenviable challenge of securing sprawling, vulnerable networks. Every time an employee connects to their corporate network from home, they’re creating possible access points for hackers to exploit. When this happens 1,000 times on a single network almost overnight, as it has amid orders for regional lockdowns, it’s increasingly difficult to ensure every connection is secure.” (www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2020/03/19/561702.htm) We’ll ask security experts James Roeske at Customer Advisory Group, and Erin Hughes and Anne Marie Colombo at SAP for their insights about the imperatives and opportunities to strengthen your organization’s information risk protection against massive scale financial fraud, cyberattacks and information theft. Join us for Gimme Shelter: Coping with Security Challenges of the New Remote Working World.

The buzz: “Unlocking the potential of machine learning for the office of finance remains a hot topic for financial planning and analysis (FP&A) leaders….” (financialexecutives.org) During these tumultuous times, organizations more than ever need better tools and technologies to predict the future. Why? The CFO is under immense pressure to make sense of all internal and external factors, evaluating the impact of lines of credit, working capital, sales targets, expense reduction and pursuing new opportunities. Good news: Many CFOs and FP&A teams are already using Machine Learning and Predictive technologies to get closer to certainty. But can Finance trust these new technologies? How, when fully deployed, do they impact operations and the role of Finance? How is company leadership positioned on these challenges? We’ll ask Brian Kalish at Kalish Consulting, Jeff Hattendorf at Macrospect and Pras Chatterjee at SAP for their insights on Leveraging Predictive Planning to Ease Uncertainty.

Financial Excellence with Game-Changers, presented by SAP, presents a special one-on-one conversation with Birgit Starmanns, the Global Head of the oCFO – COE Thought Leadership Strategy and Programs for Finance and Risk at SAP. Birgit is a co-sponsor of this series. Birgit speaks with host Bonnie D. Graham about how change management has never been more crucial to executing Finance tasks and minimizing risks today. “As Finance and risk teams work almost exclusively remotely under ‘stay at home’ orders, change has come more quickly and will have a lasting effect. In the aftermath, there is a need for best practices that can be shared with teams to enable them to be effective in a virtual world.” She emphasizes that communicating changes – especially the “why” and executive buy-in – is key to overcoming a resistance to change, especially with the workforce fearful of losing their jobs to automation. Don’t miss this lively, insight-packed conversation with Birgit Starmanns!

Financial Excellence with Game-Changers, presented by SAP, presents a special one-on-one conversation with Pras Chatterjee, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Planning & Analysis at SAP focusing on SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation. Pras is a frequent panelist on this series. Pras speaks with host Bonnie D. Graham about how, despite all the changes in today’s economic climate, the Finance function and specifically FP&A has a unique opportunity to elevate its stats. The current pessimism can also exhibit some optimism if the right FP&A team operates the right way with the right tools. It may not be business as usual for a while, but that doesn’t mean FP&A can’t provide some unusual, but tested tactics to help make things a lot better. Pras also shares his strategy for immediate steps Finance can take to assist their business partners now. Don’t miss this candid, insight-packed conversation with Pras Chatterjee!

The buzz: “There’s limited precedent into how a global pandemic like COVID-19 will impact financial services organizations as they prepare to complete their first virtual close” (www2.deloitte.com). Every CFO and finance team needs to close the books at period-end. But now, as the current pandemic has pushed accountants and other white-collar workers to their home offices, there’s talk about a “Virtual Close” and whether companies are ready to close the books remotely. Financial processes, from daily transactions to publishing financial results, will need to be carried out in a virtual environment. Two types of leaders will emerge. The forward-looking will see a new opportunity to make a lasting impact on their businesses and ensure seamless execution to preserve business continuity. The others will simply pull back. We’ll ask Molly Boyle at Blackline, Imran Lodhi at TruQua and Katharina Reichert at SAP for their take on Welcome to a New World: The Virtual Financial Close.

The buzz: “Creating a strong FP&A team comes down to two things: innovation and engagement” (Nevine White). Amid global uncertainty, new pressure is on your Finance Department’s Planning & Analysis resources to go beyond budgets. They’re being asked to model dire scenarios and potential opportunities on the fly, gather inputs and steer the enterprise with as much ‘certainty’ as possible, given the immediate impact of previously unrecognized market forces. How can FP&A re-model their function, lead cross-department changes and use technology to lead the business to success? The experts speak. Nilly Essaides, The Hackett Group: “When the wind of change blows, some build walls and others build windmills” (Proverb). Ingmar Christiaens, EY: “Imagination is more important than knowledge” (Einstein). Pras Chatterjee, SAP: “A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life” (Muhammed Ali). JoIn us for FP&A: Planning with Certainty Amidst Uncertainty.

The buzz: “Today we are at a turning point in tax.… The new digital tax function is now evolving at great pace to become a strategic component of enterprise transformation” (internationaltaxreview.com). Tax functions in many organizations are yet to fully embrace integrated technology as a critical enabler to tackling a growing reporting and compliance burden. The downside? They’re focusing too much time and effort on reporting and file preparation, rather than using tech to create valuable business insights and intelligence to aid strategic decision making. But the tide is turning. Experts Matthias Klein at BASF, Sveinung Baumann-Larsen at EY, and Michel Haesendonckx at SAP will discuss the merits of using advanced platform technologies, applied with the right know-how, skills and resources to elevate the tax function from merely compliance to becoming a strategic business partner. JoIn us for Don’t Let Tax Become Too Taxing.

The buzz: “Consumers with a high level of digital trust spend more” (CA Technologies Report 2018). As consumers, producers and employees, we share and use massive amounts of sensitive and private information. The ability to establish and maintain “digital trust” in data protection and privacy is becoming a key businesses competitive differentiator. Digital trust is hard build, but can be lost with a single data breach. How trustworthy is your organization? The experts speak. Heather Federman, BigID: “The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them” (George Bernard Shaw). John Livingood, Protiviti: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently” (Warren Buffet). Chris Radkowski, SAP: “If you build it, he will come” (Field of Dreams). JoIn us for The Demands of Digital Trust: Data Protection and Privacy in 2020.

The buzz: “There’s no question over the last year this new wave of technologies has had an impact on CFO decision making.” (Sandy Cockrell, Deloitte). Integration, big data, in-memory, ML and AI are a few of the disruptions that dominated FP&A professionals’ tech conversations in the 20-teens. Despite geopolitical and economic uncertainties, tech innovation and growth are certain to continue. How should your FP&A team prepare to navigate what could be another decade of big change? The experts speak. Jeff Hattendorf, Macrospect: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself” (Tolstoy). Larysa Melnychuk, International FP&A Board: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” (Einstein). Pras Chatterjee, SAP: “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high, and we miss it, but that it is too low, and we reach it” (Michelangelo). JoIn us for 2020 Vision: What Will Drive FP&A in 2020 and Beyond?

The buzz: “CFOs must recognize their roles as agents of change charged with driving technological transformation across their companies” (digitalistmag.com). We began 2019 with a rush of activity, discussing which industries would emerge, the tech trends that would help Finance and risk professionals, and new disruptive technologies and industry trends where Finance and risk would play a key role. Today, from informed hindsight, three experts reflect on the year and predict what 2020 might bring for Finance. The experts speak. Nilly Essaides, Hackett Group: “The fragile wants tranquility, the anti-fragile grows from disorder, and the robust doesn’t care too much” (Nassim Taleb). Corey Olson, TruQua: “The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again” (Graeme Wood). Michael Emerson, SAP: “The moment we decide to fulfil something, we can do anything” (Greta Thunberg). Join us for 2019: Reflections on a Year in Finance, Collaborative Planning, and Risk.

The buzz: “An experience occurs when a company intentionally uses services as the stage, and goods as props, to engage individual customers in a way that creates a memorable event…The question, then, isn’t whether, but when—and how—to enter the emerging experience economy” (hbr.org). To be successful in building new digital experiences, Finance needs to ensure the viability of business models transformation. Finance has an opportunity to help your business deliver unparalleled experience to internal and external customers. How? By leveraging intelligent innovations across financial, operational and analytical capabilities to confidently predict and act in real time. The experts speak. Usman Aijaz, Deloitte Consulting: “Let us add a little joy to your day” (Starbucks). David A. Davidson, Accenture Strategy: “The pace of change has never been this fast, and it will never be this slow again” (Graeme Wood). Join us for How to Transform Finance in the Experience Economy.