The last year will be remembered for the unprecedented challenges it brought to everyone. Even through the hardship and difficulties wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, finance professionals must nonetheless provide stability, model adaptability, and ensure business continuity and growth. Join Blue Shield CFO, Sandra Clarke, as she discusses finance talent, investing in innovation, and leading through COVID-19.

During the interview, Marc candidly discusses his experiences stepping into the CEO role in the middle of a global pandemic; how BlackLine pivoted quickly to support its employees and customers – and ultimately helped to reduce pressures facing the Finance & Accounting community, and also how BlackLine kept the acquisition of AR automation provider Rimilia on track during turbulent times.

The UL team will showcase how they used no-code workflow automation to improve their financial operations across invoice to cash, procure to pay and beyond.
Hear a top down strategic overview of how UL got started with no-code automation and what the team is achieving through continuous improvement.
Then, we’ll go direct to the front lines of how UL’s team manages no-code automation projects.

Lastly, the team will discuss some pivotal financial operations use cases that digitize processes on top of existing systems, speed up decision making with ML/AI, and reduce time and errors with automated workflows.

CFOs are transcending the finance function to becoming technology savvy business leaders architecting their companies’ recovery and growth phases in 2021 and beyond.

A recent global survey, conducted by Dimensional Research and supported by Rimini Street, of over 1500 finance leaders reveals CFOs are leading the charge leveraging digital to spur business growth and drive transformation. This requires active partnering with the CIO to prioritize and invest in the right technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), automation, cloud, and analytics – determining the economic viability of each IT initiative and maximizing ROI.

Join Hari Candadai, GVP Thought Leadership and Research, Rimini Street to learn in detail how CFO’s are:

• Prioritizing IT investments
• Becoming the architects of digital transformation
• Driving growth and shareholder value

Joni Arison, Senior Vice President of Finance Services, AT&T Inc., will share how she navigates through obstacles with passion and perseverance and how she looks for new ways to inspire her organization to succeed. You will learn how important it is to move faster by removing unnecessary barriers and finding ways to infuse data and technology to influence business outcomes.

With digital transformation on the rise for several years now, organizations have been integrating digital technology into all areas of their business to replace painstaking and time-consuming manual tasks. It took a worldwide pandemic, however, to truly accelerate this need for digital technology. This presentation, “COVID-19: The Accelerator of Digital Transformation”, aims to determine the importance of digital transformation for financial departments by discussing its advantages, key goals and it outlines the required considerations for financial leaders when driving the digital transformation in their department.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, John Tunison, the CFO of Trussway LLC, the largest manufacturer of wooden trusses and building components for the multifamily construction industry in the US, found himself stepping up to handle the company’s COVID response. In the space of less than a week, he found himself scrambling to do Financial Pandemic Leadership in the midst of COVID Finance. Learn how he tackled the challenges, what elements of his background helped and what industry trends already underway contributed to success. Hear stories that illustrate some of the situations he faced. Find out his outlook for the future and thoughts on what practices and lessons learned during the pandemic are likely to stick around and which probably won’t.

This presentation will dive into the benefits of going digital and why 97% of Best-in-Class U.S. businesses have included automation as a key part of their organization.

B2B payment fraud attacks are becoming even more widespread, yet many companies still aren’t prioritizing updating their security practices and technologies. Learn about the different types of attacks your business may face as well as tips to help tackle fraud and improve your business practices.

With a business model that focuses on training and employment for disadvantaged populations, Goodwill organizations across the country have faced steep challenges when working to increase minimum wage levels, both by state mandate and voluntarily. With the prospect of new federally-mandated increases to minimum wage, it is critical to evaluate the impact this could have on your business. In this presentation, we will consider ways to quantify the potential effect of wage increases and wage compression on your financial position, your employees, your overall business functions, and your community. We will look at tools you can use for forecasting the impact over time and ways Goodwill organizations have invested in technology to help support walking minimum wage levels up.

As a result of COVID-19, there have been residence implications for individuals and corporations. In response, the government has developed incentives, credits, and new tax compliance. Teleworking, or working from home, is the new normal and with that it brings on new regulations and tax implications. Due to the pandemic, there is a measurement of tax risk and we must use tax analytics as well as US GAAP, IFRS, and new accounting principles to combat the issues brought on by COVID-19. In addition, the world has had to adapt regarding traveling as there are new corporate policies, as well as employee restrictions for traveling and updates on the code of conduct. However, there are new tax opportunities and tax strategy because of COVID-19 and there is a global tax strategy for multinational corporations in response to the pandemic.

This presentation will discuss current and innovative methods for Executives to identify and report on significant risks to senior leadership and boards of directors. We examine a framework of a risk resilient organization to identify and discuss current emerging risks. We will review examples of effective reporting as well as examine approaches to have effective risk conversations with your executive team and board.

This engaging, interactive and energetic keynote describes the techniques of Stoic Leadership and how Stoicism, a philosophy from the times of ancient Greece and Rome provides the solutions a leader needs to run a happy and productive team, no matter what external events are taking place.

This session gives you and your team the mindset and practical tools to become productive, resilient and engaged, tackling the most common problems a leader faces when leading a team.

This action-packed and practical keynote will challenge participants to apply stoic methods to:

1) Evaluate their own leadership style and values.
2) Reduce stress and increase focus, both for you as a leader and for your team.
3) Create a culture where respect and ethical behaviour increase creativity and success.

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.

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.

This presentation will primarily focus on the impact automation has on staff and navigating them through the transition and transformation of their roles and responsibilities. Finance innovation through BI and RPA transforms not only the business process, but the roles and responsibilities of the staff performing them. During this presentation, I will discuss how the innovations have transformed a staff that primarily focused on production activities to a staff that primarily focuses on analytics.

Bona Allen and Amanda Stone discuss strategies used to overcome challenges of the 2020 pandemic and impacts felt by their people, businesses, and broader landscape. They reflect on successful strategies and their methods to staying agile and planning for the new normal.

No one prepared for the pandemic. As 2019 ended, we anticipated a profitable 2020 and beyond. The impact of the pandemic was immediate and required nimble strategy, increased communication, and ability to pivot in order to combat the uncertainty. In this session, we reflect on lessons learned and discuss examples of strategies that resulted in success vs. failure. Specifically, looking at the need to adopt new technologies in order to fuel strategic decision-making, increase communication, and achieve agile planning.

Nicole Milnthorpe, CFO, Smokey Bones, will share how she’s navigated through the pandemic and how the CFO role has changed throughout the years. You will learn the importance of value creation and how to prepare for upcoming industry trends.

At EDF-UK the Enterprise IT function reports to the CFO and has direct accountability for EDF UK’s 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 of changes. This ultimately meant the IT team were able to respond with agility and bias to action the challenges of moving a workforce from office to home working, almost overnight, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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.

Please join the North Region of Central Florida CFO at Advent Health, Brent Davis, in this Executive Interview where he will discuss how his team has adapted to continue aligning their short term and long term goals with their mission, vision, and values in a time of uncertainty.

Due Diligence for Mergers and Acquisitions is all about the numbers – assessing growth rates, margins, integration costs and synergies to be realized. Once an acquisition is closed, what happens now. Matt Poleski, Gallagher Northeast Region CFO examines the top questions you face once an acquisition is closed:
1. Should we integrate all faster all at once – or should we go slower making sure every project is implemented precisely?
2. How should the acquiree prioritize integration projects versus running the day to day operations?
3. What things can I take credit for as early wins?
4. What key success factors should I measure?
5. Who should I manage and identify the key stakeholders to measure change.
6. How do I nail down roles responsibilities and relationships?

Mergers and acquisitions continue to be prevalent in today’s marketplace. What happens after the deal is signed can make or break an organization’s success. It can be a struggle to balance the strategic and financial goals of the organization. Decisions regarding investment or cost savings can cause conflicting messages to your employees and shareholders. There are some key guiding principles and tactics to reduce these pitfalls.

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 digitization?

The presentation will be focused on the impacts of the COVID crisis and sociopolitical issues. I will show how the COVID crisis changed the marketplace using beer as an example, but also speak about how to motivate essential factory workers at a time when most others were working from home and how to operate in a post-COVID world. How focusing on Safety and Health as your first priority guarantees business continuity, service, quality and cost.

Robust internal controls are a critical part of any business’ success, yet are often taken for granted or ignored. The importance of effective internal controls are too often not recognized until a control failure results in adverse effects on the enterprise. This presentation will focus on real-life consequences of control failures at Hill International and lessons learned that will benefit you and your organization.