CFO ANZ Hybrid Live Series - August Edition 2022

Overview

The collaboration of finance and procurement is significant, however the benefits can be realised when organisations align operational processes with business outcomes across sourcing, procurement, and payables with an intention to deliver measurable value.

The role of a CFO, CPO an CSCO in the current environment is one of the trickiest. Take from building a data driven finance culture to rapidly accelerating transformations and taking ownership for adopting intelligent automation.

And when we zoom in, choice of operating model and technologies, metrics and governance, data management, all make the integration between finance and procurement much easier.

During this edition of Sit-Down Series we get together to take a look at:

• Automation and digital transformation strategies

• Retraining the workforce: What gets in the way of enhancing capabilities

• Boosting efficiency and productivity across finance, supply chain and procurement

What to expect

• 20+ Sessions Full day program
• Speakers 20+
• Attendees 200+
• Interactions 1:1
• 2 CFO Roundtables Executive Sit-Downs

What we will cover

• Retraining the Workforce Retraining the workforce: What gets in the way of enhancing capabilities
• Accelerating Transformations Driving Innovation and streamlining automation processes
• Market Fluctuations Understanding Risk, debt and fluctuations within the supply chain
• Boosting Efficiency Boosting efficiency and productivity across finance, supply chain and procurement

Agenda

• 8:30 am Leveraging Process Automation to Transform Financial Operations(Plenary) Attend this session to explore insights around governance, risk and compliance, including: What technology & architecture can help drive your business processes A risk temperature check and support for finance leaders to determine better ways to consider and manage risk Cost vs efficiency insights to help your organisation
• 8:50 am Evolve: Leadership and Communication Effectiveness for the Modern Business Leader(Plenary) Behavioural competencies are key to every business partnership role. A "seat at the table" must be earned. A stable and an effective business model requires the business leaders to wear multiple hats. What do you need to be a visible leader in the business, an excellent communicator, and an influencer. Without the essential leadership skills, certain key elements of a business transformation lacks value and credibility. Deep dive with Linda Scott as she outlines the need for effective communication to build rapport, relationships and contributions towards key business decisions. How do you build effective leadership behaviours to create high performance teams? What does a strategic leadership role look like post pandemic? How do you adopt a modernistic mindset and embrace change?
• 9:10 am The Cyber Resilient CFO – What are the top technology risks facing CFOs?(Plenary) CFOs have long been trusted custodians of an organisation’s funds. However, in an age of rapid digital transformation, cybercrime is now one of the biggest threats facing CFOs with the potential to cripple, not only financially, but also reputationally. What was once considered an “IT issue” now falls firmly under the remit of the Finance Chief and CFOs need to be very aware of the risks and prepared for these attacks. This eye-opening session will explore the Australian Cybercrime landscape – What are the latest threats, why are CFOs and finance teams being targeted and what should CFOs be doing now to protect themselves and their organisations.
• 9:30 am Panel Discussion: The Macro Economic Update(Plenary) The risk of an economic downturn have increased within the next 12-18 months. This means that the next few months could see more downside in sharemarkets, until inflation moderates and the growth outlook stabilises. We remain more optimistic on Australian shares versus US or Europe because of the higher exposure to commodities in our sharemarket (which remain in an uptrend) and less tech shares (which tend to perform worse as interest rates/bond yields rise).
• 10:00 am Morning Tea & Networking Break(Plenary)
• 10:30 am Autonomous Finance: The Next Era of Finance Function(Plenary) The unprecedented last few months have forced financial leaders across the globe to rethink their strategies as the finance function's role in an organization is evolving to a data-driven strategic decision-making unit. It is now drifting from a “cost-saving” to a “value creation” model, and is evolving as a business unit responsible for creating a tangible impact on the organization. As per Workday’s latest CFO indicator survey, 57% of CFOs report they are now searching for AI and ML skills, and 40% of CFOs now prioritizing analytics and data storytelling skills to enrich finance's ability to act as a strategic business partner to the organization. With this changing tech landscape, digital transformation in the finance function is now being led by self-learning autonomous software powered by deep learning and artificial intelligence (AI). With functionalities like predictive analytics, process-specific actionable insights, and real-time visibility into KPIs, autonomous software is creating critical impacts in finance functions like order to cash. Along with crucial business gains, ranging from lower DSO to optimised working capital, autonomous technologies also help finance leaders make data-driven business decisions to future-proof their business and enable rapid top-line growth. Join us for an exclusive session, where Naveen Gupta, VP, Sales-APAC, takes you through the various ways in which HighRadius ensures your organization has a world-class autonomous finance function. During the session we discuss: The role of autonomous software in finance and its business impact on order to cash process functions. Digitally transforming A/R function to get real-time visibility of financial metrics on a single platform Using AI to improve key financial KPIs like cash collection, DSO, and FTE Productivity Expanding the scope of the finance function to improve customer experience and various other business ROIs Use cases for autonomous tech solving real-world finance problems in order to cash
• 10:50 am Supply Chain: The Art of the Possible(Plenary) Without doubt, we are now in a period of significant uncertainty and change that impacts how we plan, source, produce, move, and deliver across our supply chains. Developing resilience and agility is a critical enabler for adapting to the unexpected, the unprecedented, and as yet unseen impacts to supply chain planning. Join Dr Crispin Dobson as he leverages over 30 years in supply chain management to illustrate how organisations can shift from ‘what we’ve always done’ to driving insights across into designing a fit-for-purpose supply chain.
• 11:10 am Driving Change with the CEO(Plenary) .The role of the CFO has evolved as technology continues to drive efficiency and insight across every part of the organisation. This has lifted the demands on finance teams to from a reporting and compliance focus to strategic decision making and scenario planning. In this session we will have a look through what are some of the key elements a finance team should be addressing to drive a far productive partnerships across the organisation.
• 11:30 am Accelerating Transformation: Finance Reimagined(Plenary) The Finance Department is at the core of every business. Finance professionals are increasingly becoming more involved in business decision making and with new developments in technology such as predictive analytics and automation, finance professionals are in a unique position to bring all departments of the business together, facilitate collaboration and support the business to become more agile and improve decision making. Join us in this session as Samantha Randall shares the future of finance and a strategy to drive greater value: Relentlessly pursuing value The existing and new technologies that augment people's skills Intelligent finance operations that are fully data driven
• 11:50 am Lunch Break & Networking Hour(Plenary)
• 0:50 pm Connecting the Dots: Accelerating Forecasting While Increasing Governance and Productivity(Plenary) EROAD, a fleet management solution and telematics company, were bogged down with manual monthly forecasting and budgeting process using excel. In this session key stakeholders from EROAD discuss the challenges they had on a day-to-day basis along with the increasing requirements for them to provide better visibility into the forecasting and planning process, improve efficiency and turnaround times, security and integrity of data, reduce the likelihood of errors commonly found in Excel and facilitate better analysis and reporting.
• 1:10 pm Will Cloud Accounting be a Game Changer for the Finance Function?(Plenary) The cloud has had a transformative impact and cloud accounting has picked up the pace and is impacting the business landscape with its obvious advantages. The critical elements in the finance technology is based on the decisions of what the business needs from their finance department, and CFOs must select the right tools to help them achieve their set objectives. The flexibility, agility and mobility that cloud offers can transform the way accounting services are being delivered. However, transformation is more than just digitising traditional processes, It also requires investments in the people managing the processes. Join Jon Blackburn as he shares his journey and challenges of transforming a finance function and what CFOs need to implement to maintain a balance. Key drivers of technology change Developing a clear strategy for continuous improvement Key benefits and challenges
• 1:30 pm Corporate governance in a socially responsible era – how should companies transform?(Plenary) The world is seeing significant developments in financial and non-financial reporting. ESG has historically been PR driven and but with regulatory changes on the horizon in mandatory disclosures within governance, this is becoming the accountability of the CFO. So what does it look like to be a good corporate citizens in a more regulated and transparent era, and what deliberate actions are companies undertaking to ensure good governance? In this session you will learn: · What areas the CFO should be focusing on to implement good corporate governance into their controls · How companies are readying their tax and financial reporting departments in a digitalised age; · And the processes and technology you should have in place to ensure you have the right infrastructure to handle this new level of reporting and regulation.
• 1:50 pm Afternoon Tea Break & Networking(Plenary)
• 2:20 pm The Role of Technology in Cost Control and Sustainability Planning(Plenary) Spend management and ESG compliance have become increasingly important priorities for CFOs in 2022. In addition to managing cash flow and liquidity, many finance leaders are right now peering into the future to identify the foundational investments that will need to be made to equip the finance organisation with the talent, technology and operational capabilities needed to support growth and sustainability plans Boards and C-suites have witnessed digital leaders weather the pandemic with significantly greater resilience, speed and efficacy. In this session we talk about: how technology can help build sustainability, compliance and efficiencies into your business how Finance leaders can use automated processes to detect and manage indirect spend and support cash flow why organisations need to be listening to their employees (we will share some very interesting results from a recent SAP Concur sustainability survey) and why finance needs to take the lead to drive sustainability action, fast.
• 2:40 pm So You Think You’ve Done it All, What’s Next?(Plenary) Procurement is a critical business function tasked with saving costs, improving processes, enhancing procure to pay systems and mitigating supply chain risk. But what’s next for procurement when the lemon has been squeezed dry? Australian industry is littered with examples of restructuring and decentralising mature Procurement teams that have reached their sell-by date. But there’s a new pathway for enlightened procurement leaders that involves a reinvention of the team and a focus on higher value activity that can unlock a whole new raft of savings and process improvements called Supply Chain Consultancy. Uniting is a non-for-profit organisation with a surprisingly mature procurement function and a rather advanced one. With a long-term focus on improving business processes by introducing automation and techniques drawn from the consulting industry, Uniting is now focused on understanding each function’s upstream business processes to take cost out before it becomes a supply chain issue. During this session we get together with Chris Heptinstall of Uniting to look at the people, processes, systems and culture of his function and how he intends to transform Procurement before the cost saving lemon is squeezed dry. Join us as we discuss : • The importance of alignment of Procurement, and the business, • The future of procurement and what’s next for Uniting, • Speaking the board’s language to get buy in to an entirely new way of managing Procurement.
• 3:00 pm Evolve: Problem Solving & Lateral Thinking - Growing from Adversity(Plenary) What does a Global Pandemic and the loss of all four limbs have in common? In his light-hearted yet captivating take on adversity and pragmatism, Tom Nash elucidates the links between being forced to think differently to solve problems, and the lateral thinking methods involved in overcoming challenges. From overcoming the roadblocks of Path Dependency and Defensive Decision Making, to dividing and conquering problems creatively, identifying false assumptions and testing ideas that others don’t bother to. An uplifting discourse which takes solace from the knowledge that no matter what threats lurk on the horizon… we all have it within us to overcome them.

Speakers

• Jonathan Blackburn · CFO, Opera House A senior finance and business professional, keen to expand my executive board experience with a non-executive board position. Over 30 years’ experience in global and regional roles in the financial services, property and professional services industries, demonstrating corporate loyalty to a few key employers, complimented with an ability to take on and handle new responsibilities and roles. I am commercial and curious which allows me to quickly understand new responsibilities, build strong relationships and deal with ambiguity, utilising both my broad and specialist knowledge base to quickly add value to companies both large and small.
• Sam Randall · Chief Financial Officer, Accenture Experienced Finance Professional with a demonstrated history of working in the Information Technology and Services Industry. Highly skilled in all aspects of Corporate Financial Management, Business Advisory, Treasury, Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Business Collaboration, mentoring and building High Performing Finance teams.
• Gavin Levinsohn · Chief Growth Officer, eftsure After post-graduate studies in finance, Gavin spent 21 years in marketing communications leading businesses for global communication groups WPP and Publicis. In 2018, he reconnected with his long-held passion for all things digital and joined Eftsure where he is Chief Growth Officer.
• Chris Heptinstall · Head of Procurement, Uniting Chris Heptinstall has been a procurement professional for over 35 years and has been Head of Procurement at some of the world’s great companies including IBM, Goldman Sachs, Macquarie Bank, A.T. Kearney and QBE. After decades of working in the corporate sector he joined the not-for-profit organisation Uniting in 2019. Chris has championed many procurement processes that we now take for granted including P2P, category management, supplier relationship management, consortia buying and robotic process automation. He has won three separate CIPS Excellence Awards for his work as a procurement leader. Chris is passionate about the procurement profession and believes that our procurement choices effect not just the economy but our environment and the society in which we operate. He is a part time author and has self-published four successful thrillers.
• Sorupan Sivapalan · Client Executive, Tridant Sorupan (or Soups) has been with Tridant for two years working with clients across Australia and New Zealand to identify their opportunity and potential to increase efficiency and effectiveness in planning and analytics. Sorupan has 8+ years’ experience in consulting and helping organisations adopt best practices and process improvement across the SG&A organisation. He enjoys challenging and working with clients to understand the real pain points of current solutions and showcasing how Tridant can support from a multi-application stack point of view. In his spare time Sorupan is the President of an Independent Cricket Team (Cool Runnings Cricket Club), trying to become a bread making extraordinaire and loves to cook, but hates to clean!
• Chris Ellis · Director, Pre-Sales, Nintex Chris Ellis, Pre-Sales Director at Nintex, gained invaluable experience in SharePoint, Office 365 and the Nintex Platform as a pre-sales solution specialist within the partner network. Hailing from Aberdeen in Scotland, his work with the Nintex Platform exposed him to the full lifecycle from analysis and requirement gathering to delivery, support and training, contributing across a spectrum of projects in various industries and in some interesting places
• Crispin Dobson · Principal Consultant - Supply Chain, Cornerstone PM Dr Crispin Dobson has more than 30 years senior leadership experience in supply chain, manufacturing, maintenance, and management consulting roles, focused on business and process optimisation and leading operational and transformational teams. He has extensive experience in heavy industry, engineering, mining, and supply chain optimisation across multiple industries in Australia, North and South America, Europe, and Asia.
• Linda Scott · Managing Director and Founder, Thinking Leaders Pty Ltd I work with CEOs, business owners, executives and senior leadership teams to unlock their potential, achieve high performance, and fast track growth and results, for themselves and their businesses. I have worked in and for businesses as a finance executive for nearly 30 years. After a very successful career both locally and internationally, I founded Thinking Leaders to focus on leadership, career and business growth, decision making, time management, productivity, communication effectiveness, problem solving, increasing profits and results, and creating professional businesses to maximise monetisation value, through changing the way you think, behave and respond. A speaker and facilitator in the space of self-leadership and perspective, and how this impacts your environment and results, I teach strategies to help you understand that you have choice about your thinking, which in turn impacts how you respond and the results you create.
• James O'Reilly · Head of Sales - APAC, Unit4 James Oreilly is the Head of of Sales for Unit4 APAC. In a career spanning 30 years in IT, Telco, and F&B, he has driven enterprise-wide change with leading IT platforms including SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce. His passion for IT stems from his ability to transform business operations allowing businesses and employees to thrive without bureaucratic burden. Over the last 14 years James has been based in Singapore working at Lenovo and Hewlett Packard Enterprise covering a variety of operational roles, spanning product management, FP&A, strategy, GTM, professional services and supply chain.
• Pru Bennett · Partner at Brunswick Group, Brunswick Group Pru is a Partner of the Brunswick Group having joined in April 2019. Pru is a Fellow of the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and currently holds the following positions: • Chair of the National Foundation for Australia China Relations • Board member of the Value Reporting Foundation, • Board member UN Global Compact Network Australia • Council member of the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Corporate Advisory Council, • Council member Asian Corporate Governance Association • A very keen Laser Masters sailor

Partners

• SAP Concur SAP® Concur® is the world’s leading brand for integrated travel, expense, and invoice management solutions, driven by a pursuit to simplify and automate these everyday processes. The highly-rated SAP Concur mobile app guides employees through business trips, charges are directly populated into expense reports, and invoice approvals are automated. By integrating near real-time data and using AI to analyse transactions, businesses can see what they’re spending and avoid possible blind spots in the budget. SAP Concur solutions help eliminate yesterday’s manual tasks, make today’s work easier, and support businesses to run at their best. Learn more at concur.com.au
• HighRadius HighRadius offers cloud-based Autonomous Software for the Office of the CFO. More than 700 of the world’s leading companies have transformed their order to cash, treasury and record to report processes with HighRadius. Our customers include 3M, Unilever, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Sanofi, Kellogg Company, Danone, Hershey’s and many more. Autonomous Software is data-driven software that continuously morphs its behavior to the ever-changing underlying domain transactional data. It brings modern digital transformation capabilities like Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, Natural Language Processing and Connected Workspaces as out-of-the-box features for the finance & accounting domain. Finance business stakeholders have been led to believe that they have only two choices: pick an application software vendor that digitizes a paper or Excel-based process to an electronic system of record, or, choose a middleware platform for AI or RPA to build and maintain in-house, domain-specific capabilities. In contrast, HighRadius Autonomous Software combines the best of both worlds to deliver measurable business outcomes such as DSO reduction, working capital optimization, bad-debt reduction, reduce month close timelines and improve productivity in under six months.
• eftsure Eftsure is a leader in fraud detection and payment protection. Our pioneering fraudtech solution brings financial controls into the digital age and helps organisations of all sizes mitigate the risk of incorrectly processing (EFT) payments, whether as a result of cybercrime, fraud or human error. Eftsure’s unique approach allows its customers to cross-reference payment information in real-time, immediately prior to processing them, against an ever-expanding network of over 2.5 million Australian organisations. In a world in which scammers are actively adopting new fraud tactics, such as social engineering, phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, Eftsure helps supports organisations to remain secure. With Eftsure, organisations acquire peace of mind knowing that EFT payments are being directed to the intended recipient and that they’re avoiding the growing risk of human error and digital fraud.
• Unit4 Unit4’s next-generation enterprise software transform work to be more meaningful and inspiring through software that’s self-driving, adaptive and intuitive, intelligently automating administrative tasks and providing easy access to the answers people need. Our intelligent Financial Planning & Analytics software solutions free your teams to spend more time delivering insights and creating value for the business. We help you understand the numbers more deeply and then turn that insight into action, for better business results. You will gain access to automated, AI-infused financial planning and analysis, budget management, and financial forecasting tools with highly interactive dashboards and powerful, pre-configured models.
• Nintex Nintex is the global standard for process intelligence and automation. Today more than 10,000 public and private sector organisations across 90 countries turn to the Nintex Platform to accelerate progress on their digital transformation journeys by quickly and easily managing, automating and optimising business processes. Learn more by visiting www.nintex.com and experience how Nintex and its global partner network are shaping the future of Intelligent Process Automation (IPA).
• Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters is the world’s leading provider of news and information-based tools to professionals. Our worldwide network of journalists and specialist editors keep customers up to speed on global developments, with a particular focus on legal, regulatory and tax changes. Our customers operate in complex arenas that move society forward — tax, law, compliance, government, media. In a disruptive digital age, we help professionals reinvent themselves.
• Anaplan Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE: PLAN) is a cloud-native enterprise SaaS company that enables enterprises to orchestrate business performance. Based in San Francisco, Anaplan has over 20 offices globally, 175 partners and 1,600+ customers worldwide. Business leaders rely on our platform to connect supply chain, finance, workforce planning, sales & marketing teams, systems, and insights from across their organisations to continuously adapt to change, and transform how they operate, create, and accelerate business success. At Anaplan we challenge legacy thinking and software that isn’t flexible for the modern organisation. We put our customers first to create heroes, unlock potential, build trust and confidence. We have architected the only platform offering that will take the time from planning to decision to zero. Together with an ever-growing number of users, a rich partner ecosystem and an active community, we all work together to deliver business value with the power of Connected Planning at every level within in every organisation. To learn more, visit anaplan.com
• Tridant www.tridant.com.au
• Cornerstone PM Cornerstone Performance Management was founded in 2007 with the primary mission to help our customers become data-driven and make the best use of their data assets. We have achieved this by gathering together world-class leading experts in their field with the drive and determination to use innovative solutions to execute digital transformations. This mission has seen our organisation grow to deliver ongoing value to our customers and become one of the leading Data Analytics consulting businesses in Australia. In 2016, Cornerstone Performance Management and PMsquare merged their Australian and Asian businesses. The Australian business operates under the Cornerstone brand, whilst the Asian region continues to operate under PMsquare. The combined entities of the Cornerstone Group are the largest Data Analytics focused consultancy in the Asia-Pacific market, with a talented and experienced team delivering Data Analytics solutions.

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