• Is Digital Transformation an opportunity or a threat?
• How do you define the role of the CFO in identifying new Digital opportunities
• How you can leverage agile business models

This session will cover the benefits of digital technologies, having skilled talent and an organisation that nurtures innovation. It will cover the importance of getting and retaining executive buy in of digital technology, skilled talent and innovation. Finally, it will cover some key tips and techniques for gaining and retaining executive buy in – including considering cost, risk and benefit.

Accounting and Finance has long been a high-ROI target for automation, yet there is more to be gained than from throwing technologies such as RPA and OCR at the problem. A modern approach to transforming this shared service puts user experience, citizen developers and globalization at the center of design, resulting in higher rates of straight-through processing, user adoption and scalability across a global organization. Learn how Siemens took this approach to raise the bar on its AP operation to meet tighter SLAs, accelerate its payback and prepare for rapid growth and change. In this session, we will cover:

• How Siemens used a modern approach to AP Automation that changed the game and success factors for digitization
• Putting user experience and citizen developers into the equation yields better results than automation for its own sake
• How COVID has changed the game for digital transformation with remote work, technology burnout and accelerated digitization

• Nurturing Agility to thrive in increasingly uncertain and rapidly changing markets
• Shifting the emphasis from meeting short-term negotiated objectives… to unleashing the reactivity and potential of your organization with more adaptative planning
• Ensuring the operational underpinning of strategies and plans, and taking advantage of modern forecasting solutions

Discussion on Rittal UK experience using low coding applications such as HCL Domino and Microsoft Power Apps and low cost hardware such as Rasperry Pi to develop workflows, databases and data visualisation tools.

Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.” This Chinese proverb goes to the essence of what is required for successful change management. Those involved in experiencing the change need to believe and understand it. They need to feel the experience is of benefit to them. Therefore the importance of understanding the human impact of any change is crucial. It requires strong leadership; it requires impactful communication; it requires very careful planning and it requires supreme patience.

Anyone engaging in a digital transformation can benefit from hearing about some case studies and best practices. The benefits of cloud and automation technology are plentiful but it has to come in parallel with process. This session will take you through some useful considerations as you go through your own transformation.

• What should CFOs prioritise
• How can we define the “blend of decarbonisation and digital transformation”
• Is there now an opportunity for finance professionals to collaborate globally

Business executives around the world say their understanding of the universe of strategic risk is changing. Managing risk effectively has always been a touchstone of the most successful companies. In today’s risky business environment, plans are hardly the sole reliable tool provided the complexity of unpredictable factors. Volatility of the business environment and associated risks as well as mitigation / limitation set-up actions are at the forefront of business investment expectations and a fundamental

• Transform Risk concept from theory to a practical strategic pillar
• Risk a pillar to build on future growth
• Own, master and remunerate risk

In an ever changing world, the CFO is expected to highly participate, even more so to lead the change. How to do that? What is the importance of company culture in there and how can you contribute as finance? And how can we apply that learning to any large transformation projects and in digitisation?

At EDF UK the Enterprise IT function reports to the CFO and has direct accountability for EDF UKs enabling IT services. Over the last 2 years we’ve been changing the way we provide IT with less of a focus on Capital investment and asset management and more of a focus on user experience, collaboration and productivity. One trigger for this change was a visit I made to our UK customer contact centres in Sunderland which set in train a series changes that ultimately meant the IT team were able to respond with agility and bias to action to the challenges of moving a workforce from office to home working, almost overnight, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Organizations are similar to human bodies in that they have a number of vital organs or functions that all need to collaborate to make things work. Having said that it is still very common to encounter silo organizations in which the key functions work towards their own goals and in their own way, with little to no cross-functional collaboration and alignment. Breaking down these silos and aligning the entire organization towards a common goal working as an intricate and collaborative community is one of the most important tasks of business leaders today.

The pandemic has brought to light the fragility of enterprise cost structures, lack of accurate and timely information, and a poor cash flow management. In a changing and uncertain economic environment, the challenge for finance leaders is to achieve a strategic cost transformation with a range of digital accelerators that can go beyond short-term cost savings. This actionable and pragmatic approach will enable organisations to protect margins, improve cash liquidity, and boost bottom-line performance.