Financial Excellence With Game Changers, Presented By Sap

Today’s buzz: Risk. Can ignorance of risk be bliss? Should risk responsibility fall on your CEO, CFO, CRO? Burning questions. You need answers. Now. The experts speak. Fiona Williams, Deloitte & Touche: “A Deloitte and Forbes Insights 2012 survey [found] ... a surprising 91% of companies plan to reorganize and reprioritize their risk management approaches in the next three years...” Scott L. Mitchell, OCEG: “We all know that even the best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray (Robert Burns’ poem, ‘To a Mouse’). To execute with this expectation is much harder to do than say ... our Plans B, C, D, E, and F are as likely as Plan A when it comes to the strategic things that really matter most.” Bruce McQuaig, SAP: “A recent survey by North Carolina State ERM Initiative identified the top 10 global risks ... there is no clear evidence that risk management practices have fundamentally changed and that the past will not be repeated.” Join us for Looking for Risk in All the Wrong Places?

Today’s buzz: Finance on the move. Mobility could soon change the face of your company’s finance function. The benefits of mobile BI are indeed impressive – faster and cheaper decision-making, improved productivity, enhanced agility, perpetual forecasting, and more. But before you jump on this bandwagon, first plan the smartest route to avoid these potential bumps along the way: data security on mobile devices, device limitations, your current backend infrastructure, and opening your decision process to many more people. Hmmm. The experts speak. Surya Mukherjee, Ovum: “Mobile BI sits at the intersection of great analytics and poor consumption.” Richard Barrett, CFOKnowledge: “With sales of mobile devices booming while sales of PCs are on the slide, I’m beginning to wonder who exactly is doing the heavy lifting.” Akash Agarwal, SAP: “Be the change you want to see in the world; if you don’t change, you get disrupted.” Join us for Mobility and Finance: Impact, Trends and the Future.

Today’s buzz: Performance management. Your CFO’s priorities have to change. How? Beyond closing the books, your Office of Finance must become a steward of the business, generate new revenue from customers and markets, and much more. The challenge: how to harness your EPM data and understand it well enough to integrate fact-of-life business risk into transparent, fact-based decisions that drive business results. Are you ready to leave conventional wisdom behind? The experts speak. John Steele, Deloitte: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” – Business adage attributed to Peter F. Drucker Jim Braun, Capgemini: “Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” – George Halas (1895-1983) aka Papa Bear and Mr. Everything, iconic leader of NFL’s Chicago Bears Kurt Bilafer, SAP: “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” – Robert H. Schuller, Hour of Power televangelist Join us for Performance Management: Steppingstone to Predictive Analytics

Business risk is a fact of life. Does the specter of product liability, cyber and physical security, fraud, theft, regulatory failure, breakdowns, and low revenues keep you awake at night? The experts speak. Paul Albert, Albert Investments: “A wise, battle-hardened senior investment banker told me: ‘We're in the business of taking risks with the objective of creating value for our shareholders while serving our clients' interests, so I don't mind taking risks. But when I take risks I want to understand what they are, why I am taking them, and how to reduce them or to get out of them.’” Nola Masterson, Science Futures Management Company: “Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.” (James B. Conant) Brian Barnier, ValueBridge Advisors: “What do a winning basketball team and a company with consistently higher returns have in common? The ability to ask ‘What if?’ more insightfully than their opponents.” Join us for Board Risk Oversight: What Are Regulators Saying?

Today’s buzz: Financial transformation. Finance professionals are on a treadmill, navigating the steep challenges of regulatory reporting, risk vs. opportunity balancing, new technology learning curves, and more. Bottom line: Rise to the occasion or fall off. The experts speak. Regina Edmiston, Deloitte: “Addressing the challenges facing finance organizations is a balancing act across process, technology and organizational components, with integrity of data and transparency to information as the underpinnings to any transformational changes.” KK Dave, Deloitte: “Finance transformation projects have a way of quickly growing bigger than anyone expected. And if you don’t watch out, they can grow out of control!” James Fisher, SAP: “’He not busy being born is busy dying’ (Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” from Bringing It All Back Home, 1965). It’s ultimately about rebirth and the need to evolve and change, to transform.” Join us for Financial Transformation: Ready or Not!