Strategic CFO Forum

AGENDA

October 17, 2022

All times are listed in Eastern time

9:00 – 9:30 am

Registration

9:30 – 9:35 am

Welcome

9:35 – 10:25 am

Into the Unknown: What the Finance Function Must Become Now to Win

We’re in a time of tremendous uncertainty and disruption, and when it comes to leading through this kind of challenge and change, there are few CFOs with more experience than James Kavanaugh, SVP and CFO of IBM. Since joining the organization in 1996, he’s had a ringside seat to every revolution and evolution inside one of the world’s most influential and technologically advanced companies. He’ll share his insights on developing a strategy to help you and your team solidify the business, weather the challenges and drive value through the organization—no matter what the weather.

Featured Speaker:

  • James Kavanaugh, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IBM
  • Co-Moderator: Lisa Donahue, Co-Head of the Americas & Asia, AlixPartners
  • Moderator: Dan Bigman, Chief Content Officer, Chief Executive Group

10:25 – 11:10 am

Why CFOs Should Prioritize Supply Chain for Business Resilience

In StrategicCFO360’s monthly CFO Confidence Index, supply chain disruption consistently tops the list of challenges impacting growth and profits, and there are few signals suggesting it will change soon. So how can you lessen the impact of supply chain challenges? We’ll provide pragmatic tips to help you improve supply chain performance and future-proof your business to supply chain exposures—and explain why the CFO’s office is best positioned to lead the way. 

Featured Speakers:

  • Jim Clayton, Principal, Business Transformation Leader, BDO USA, LLP
  • Val Laufenberg, Partner, Strategy & Growth Co-Leader, BDO USA, LLP

11:10 – 11:30 am

Networking Break

11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Concurrent Roundtables

Attendees will break into working sessions for in-depth, interactive discussions with other senior finance executives and a subject matter expert.

Facilitated by Rich Davis, Principal, Management Consulting, RSM US LLP;
Paul Calamita, Partner, Management Consulting, RSM US LLP

What does the future of your finance department look like? Is it a mix of upskilling your current talent, upgrading your current technology, outsourcing talent or technology, or something entirely different? All CFOs are trying to find greater efficiencies for themselves, and for their teams. Join your peers to discuss the role of data analytics in achieving operational excellence by gleaning better insights from the data points collected so you and your team can make more informed decisions and help your entire organization execute strategy better.

Facilitated by Aditi Charnoubi, Chief Growth Officer, Vic.ai

As every CFO battling to streamline and accelerate operations knows, the single most determining factor in digital transformation is the mindset of the employees, which is at the core of leading successful change management. You can get everything else right—partners, platform, process—but if you don’t get buy-in and engagement, the chances of game-changing success are negligible.

So how do you make change happen? How do you shift the mindset to move things forward in a meaningful way? Join your peers to share experiences and instantly-applicable, pragmatic tips to help make it happen. Whether you are curious about finding automation solutions or want the blueprints for scaling your business by working smarter, gain the kind of actionable insights you need to:

  • Implement an embrace-the-change mindset
  • Define a north star when selecting and adopting new technology
  • Leverage business intelligence effectively

Facilitated by Jack McCullough, President, CFO Leadership Council

Add an economic slowdown to a still-splintered supply chain, protracted labor shortages, high inflation and expected interest rate increases, and 2023 promises to be a year of unparalleled challenge for the finance team. We’ll put the wisdom of the room to work in a unique, facilitated discussion featuring the exclusive group of attendees at this year’s conference. Ask questions, dig for solutions and prepare to come away with ideas you can put to work immediately in your organization.

12:30 – 1:50 pm

Working Lunch and Concurrent Roundtables

Facilitated by Ann Dennison, Chief Financial Officer, Nasdaq

Digitization and transformation are critical aspects of the ever-changing finance function. As the markets and industry continue to shift, what are key factors that CFOs need to know to future-proof the business? How do you make the decisions, analyze the data and discuss digitization as a CFO with your C-Suite team and business leaders? In this session, we will discuss various approaches and methods we have learned to help you implement them into your business life cycles.

Facilitated by Valerio Trinchi, AVP Growth Initiative Leader, HighRadius Corporation

In finance, a clear view of today’s unfolding changes does much more than prevent loss. It empowers an organization to take advantage of opportunities. Anticipating and planning for the

rise of technology is essential, but it’s only one step. People are evolving, too. New working methods, already far removed from traditional norms, will continue to progress. The transition to smart machines won’t happen without a strong focus on the relationship between humans and machines, how the two collaborate, and how the current workforce and the business adapt to AI. Join this roundtable to discuss how your organization can learn to build this relationship between machines and humans, so you can make a workplace that doesn’t only equip teams but also empowers them.

Facilitated by Jack McCullough, President, CFO Leadership Council

Talent, talent, talent…from staff shortages, retention and recruitment to culture and employee wellness to reskilling and career development, workforce issues continue to top the lists of CFOs’ concerns in StrategicCFO360’s monthly pulse surveys. Salary is just one component of the talent discussion—CFOs can directly impact the talent conversation in other ways, such as investing in employee-focused initiatives that lead to better results and engagement, creating feedback loops to assess employees’ needs and adjust reward plans accordingly, and helping the company stay focused on operational excellence. Share ideas on what people are doing to retain their top talent in today’s environment.

1:50 – 2:00 pm

Networking Break

2:00 – 2:50 pm

The Key To Survival Now: Smarter Data, Smarter Decisions

Data-driven insights can fundamentally change your organization’s value proposition. Often data that the CFOs receive about the business pipeline, conversions, and current quarter deals are stale by the time they arrive at their desks. How can you make data more than just that and use it to drive your business objectives? And how can you leverage both financial and non-financial data to support cross-departmental decision-making? We will discuss ways to help you create a framework to maximize the value of your enterprise’s data and analytics by mapping key company objectives to KPIs and leveraging metrics to make smarter decisions on company strategy and financial planning.

Featured Speakers:

  • Chris Greiner, CFO, Zeta Global
  • Ann Dennison, Chief Financial Officer, Nasdaq
  • Niki Heim, Chief Financial Officer, LogicSource
  • Moderator: Dan Bigman, Chief Content Officer, Chief Executive Group

2:50 – 3:30 pm

Leadership In the Crucible: How Ukraine’s Commander Transformed to Win

An exclusive, interactive case study
The most incredible battlefield performance in a century is also a masterclass in leadership, management and organizational transformation. As special advisor to General Valeriy Zaluzhny, Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Dan Rice, a former Captain in the U.S. Army and president of Thayer Leadership, a leader-development shop based out of the historic Thayer Hotel on the grounds of West Point, has come to know the general, his team and their methods like no one else in the world.

How did Zaluzhny turn a plodding, Soviet-style army into the most lethal fighting force in all of Europe? And what can the rest of us learn from how he led that process—and how he leads troops today? In this exclusive, interactive session, Rice will share his candid observations, insights and takeaways from his time in Ukraine alongside Zaluzhny, with lessons for anyone leading a team through timultious times.

Featured Speaker:

  • Dan Rice, President, Thayer Leadership; Special Advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces
  • Moderator: Marshall Cooper, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Executive Group

3:30 – 4:30 pm

Networking Reception

Join us in the Café for a light reception and networking before you depart.