Agenda
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AGENDA
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| 9:00 – 12:30 | Workshop A: Advanced Analytics For Finance | |
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Advanced analytics is used to discover deep insights that help identify business-improving and value-generating actions by leveraging predictive and prescriptive analytics, and can also facilitate the automation and prioritization of internal processes to improve efficiency and slash costs – goals close to every CEO and CFO’s heart. This session will explore how advanced analytics can be used in finance functions including:
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| 13:00 – 16:00 | Workshop B: Becoming A Data-Driven CFO: How Data Science And Machine Learning Can Be Incorporated In Financial Forecasting, Planning And Analysis |
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| FP&A teams sit at the confluence of transactional data and business strategy. As such, they are uniquely positioned to transform their roles by detecting patterns and confidently leading the effort to address risks and press ahead with strategy. However, a strong finance and accounting background is no longer sufficient to make this happen. The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data – and with Big Data comes the need for data science and machine learning, which enable finance professionals to model, forecast, plan, and drive business decisions at speeds formerly unheard of. Learn how to tap these tools to dive into previously impossible analyses and unlock new insights in this session. | ||
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Alan Lim FCPA Chief Financial Officer Great Western Agriculture and Greater Central Group |
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AGENDA |
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| 09:00 | Welcoming Speech, Opening Remarks & Thank You Sponsor Speech By Summit Producer |
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| Applying AI And Data Science To Transform FP&A | ||
| 09:15 | Keynote: How Data Science And Machine Learning Is Transforming P&G’s Financial Planning, Forecasting And Analysis |
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Kuhelika Sinha CFO – ANZ P&G |
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| 09:45 | How Microsoft Is Using Machine Learning To Deliver 99% Accuracy In Financial Forecasts |
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Machine learning is taking the field of financial forecasting to the next level by enabling finance teams to make continuous and more precise forecasts. Such technology has demonstrated the potential to boost forecast accuracy by 20% and cut variances by over 50%, making it an essential tool for any finance team in the data-rich years to come. Microsoft is among the companies that has embraced this transformative technology.
The software giant used to take 2-3 weeks to produce a forecast, with a large team of 100 financial and operational people collecting, compiling and discussing data mountains of data. Armed with a machine learning platform, 2 people can now do this in 2 days. The technology has also enabled Microsoft to maintain forecasting accuracy despite increasing volumes and complexity of incoming data, producing forecasts with an average accuracy of 98-99%. |
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| 10:15 | Future Of Finance Networking Breakout Session |
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| 10:30 | Roundtable Discussion |
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James Fergusson Head of Global Finance and Operations PaperCut Software |
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Joni Pirovich Special Counsel | Private Advisory – Tax, Blockchain & Digital Assets Mills Oakley |
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| 11:30 | How AI Bots Help Finance Leaders Read Invoices, Review Contracts, Validate Pricing And Even Process Customer Orders |
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David Allison Deputy CFO Healthscope |
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| 12:00 | Leveraging AI In Tax Planning, Contract Review, Fraud And Compliance | |
| Tax preparation, auditing and strategy consulting are services that have historically relied on an intensive use of human capital. Artificial intelligence (AI) is now challenging the traditional business models, with technologies such as natural language processing (NLP) and robotic process automation completing in mere hours what human auditors took weeks to do.
Deloitte has started using AI in the review of high volumes of contracts. Instead of having auditors comb hundreds of thousands of legal documents looking for a change of control provisions, which typically takes around half a year, the same can now be completed by a team of six to eight auditors working with an AI system in less than a month. Using NLP to extract information and a human-in-the-loop to validate the results, AI system is three times more consistent and twice as efficient as previous humans-only teams. The AI deployment won Deloitte the “Audit Innovation of the Year” award from the International Accounting Bulletin. |
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| 12:30 | Lunch & Networking |
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| 13:30 | Tech Talk Panel Discussion: What New Technologies Are Disrupting The Finance Function? |
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Technological development from personal computing to cognitive computing: what has the evolution from hindsight to insight enabled for the finance function?
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Pranay Lodhiya CFO Bureau of Meteorology |
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| 14:00 | How RPA Bot Automated Finance And Accounting Workflow And Slashed Processing Time |
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Sandeep Solanki Deputy Finance Controller – ANZ Mondelez International |
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| 14:30 | Barriers To Digital Transformation Of Government Finance |
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| Government is often slow to transform operational models, and this includes the finance function. The operating environment of Governments creates substantial barriers to transformation, despite the benefits significantly outweighing the costs and risks, and the opportunities to suppliers being significant. Government needs providers to develop solutions that address government technical needs, which, whilst sometimes high in volume, are less complex and consistent with private sector needs, as well addressing government barriers to change. | ||
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David Donovan Chief Financial Officer Digital Transformation Agency |
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| 15:00 | Afternoon Refreshments & Networking Session | |
| Robotic Process Automation: The Key To A High-Impact Finance Team | ||
| 15:30 | RPA In Financial Reporting: How RPA Can Save Finance Department 25,000 Hours Of Work Annually In Financial Reporting |
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| Gartner Says Robotic Process Automation Can Save Finance Departments 25,000 Hours of Avoidable Work Annually in financial reporting. Gartner research has found that the average amount of avoidable rework in accounting departments can take up to 30% of a full-time employee’s overall time. This equates to savings of 25,000 hours per year at a cost of $878,000 for an organization with 40 full-time accounting staff. Despite this immense benefits, only 29% of RPA Adopters have implemented this technology for financial reporting. | ||
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Probir Geoffrey Dutt Automation Evangelist IAG |
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| 16:00 | How GE Uses RPA And Optical Character Recognition (OCR) To Slash Invoice Processing Time By 60% |
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| GE Global Operations’ European teams have 19 RPA robots on board, helping human workers by shouldering the burden of repetitive, high-volume workflows. In the accounting department, these bots match order numbers from incoming invoices to those in GE’s system, monitor payment deadlines, record receivables, execute tax returns and more. The addition of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology and machine learning only makes these smart, efficient digital workers even better, giving them the ability to convert unstructured documents into structured data and self-improve as they ‘learn’ the various formats and types of incoming documents. Given that manual processing costs 50% of companies up to $25 per invoice, the numbers add up very quickly indeed. | ||
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Mark Sheppard Chief Commercial Officer, Asia Pacific GE Digital |
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| Finance Shared Service | ||
| 16:30 | The Future Of Finance Shared Services: From Virtual CFOs To Setting Up Finance Center Of Excellence |
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Adam May Chief Financial Officer Adelaide 36ers |
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| 17:00 | Closing Remarks By Summit Chairman | |
TIME |
AGENDA |
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| 09:00 | Welcoming Speech, Opening Remarks & Thank You Sponsor Speech By Summit Producer |
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| Bringing Data-Driven Innovation & Advanced Analytics To Finance |
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| 09:15 | Becoming A Data-Driven CFO: How Big Data Are Helping CFOs Acquire New Insights, Trends, And Generate Business Growth |
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Jennifer Scott Non-Executive Board Member Transformation Program Australian Bureau of Statistics |
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| 09:45 | The Future Of Financial Reporting With Analytics: How Advanced Analytics Are Helping Finance Leaders Improve Their Financial Reporting, Profitability Analysis And Operational Decision Making |
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Alan Lim FCPA Chief Financial Officer Great Western Agriculture and Greater Central Group |
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| 10:15 | Morning Refreshment & Networking |
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| 10:30 | Fraser Property Australia: How Advanced Analytics Helps The Real Estate Giant Improve Financial Planning, Forecasting And Analysis |
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To set its business direction, Frasers Property requires insight into forecast costs, revenues and potential returns. It sought a fast, scalable solution to meet emerging business needs. The company has deployed an advanced analytics platform, which can provide a detailed view of long-term revenue, cost and capital allocation across the business. It can also handle Fraser’s complex feasibility modeling for commercial and industrial developments from spreadsheets. Frasers Property has gained significantly faster access to forecast data, along with deeper insights into project revenue and costs to keep development projects on track across Australia. | |
| 11:00 | How Data Science And Predictive Analytics Helps To Improve Optus’ Cashflow Forecasting And Planning |
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Chris Horsfield, CFA Transformation Director Optus |
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| Future Of Finance And Accounting With Blockchain | ||
| 11:30 | How Blockchain Is Re-Writing The Rules For Accounting |
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| Blockchain has the potential to enhance the accounting profession by reducing the costs of maintaining and reconciling ledgers, and providing absolute certainty over the ownership and history of assets. Blockchain could help accountants gain clarity over the available resources and obligations of their organizations, and also free up resources to concentrate on planning and valuation, rather than record-keeping.
Alongside other automation trends such as machine learning, blockchain will lead to more and more transactional-level accounting being done – but not by accountants. Instead, successful accountants will be those that work on assessing the real economic interpretation of blockchain records, marrying the record to economic reality and valuation. |
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Dr. Daniel Gozman Director of Engaged Research The University of Sydney Business School |
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| 12:00 | How Blockchain And Smart Contracts Underpins Financial Transformation | |
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Alan Tsen CEO/ Founder Fintech Victoria |
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| 12:30 | Lunch & Networking |
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| Future Of Finance And Accounting With Cloud | ||
| 13:30 | Re-Imagining The Future Of Finance With Cloud: How Hungry Jack’s Uses Cloud To Automate Its Entire Budgeting And Planning |
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With over 430 restaurants across Australia, Hungry Jack’s is one of the world’s largest Burger King master franchisees, serving every Australian four to five times annually. At Hungry Jack’s, a digital-first, cloud-first mindset has transformed finance’s role in delivering on customer expectations. “We are really conscious of what’s going on in the consumer market, how people’s behaviors are changing, and we’re making sure that we’re getting ahead of the curve with AI and machine learning to understand what finance can look like,” explains CFO Nigel Everard. Everard and his team replaced a legacy finance system that wasn’t integrated to other key data sources, such as point-of-sale systems, with a cloud ERP system that delivers full visibility into customer behavior and operations. “This has changed the way that the business thinks of finance, from the score keeper to the real business partner who can talk to the business around a future strategy. | |
| 14:00 | How Australia Post Reduced Financial Closing From 15 Days To 2 Days While With Cloud? |
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Australia Post began its cloud financial solution journey to automate and standardize its reconciliations, with an iterative rollout across four subsidiaries. Today, Australia Post can automate roughly 750 account reconciliations a month—dramatically reducing manual work and contributing to a remarkably fast two-day month-end close. Australia Post can also automatically generate daily reports that highlight accounts in need of closer investigation. The cloud financial solution can provide real-time updates and meaningful balance sheet reporting to management. | |
| 14:30 | Financial Data Management On Cloud: Why A Single-Source-Of-Truth Can Improve The Decision Readiness Of Performance Data |
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| Government is often slow to transform operational models, and this includes the finance function. The operating environment of Governments creates substantial barriers to transformation, despite the benefits significantly outweighing the costs and risks, and the opportunities to suppliers being significant. Government needs providers to develop solutions that address government technical needs, which, whilst sometimes high in volume, are less complex and consistent with private sector needs, as well addressing government barriers to change. | ||
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Francoise Merit Global Chief Financial Officer Aurecon |
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| 15:00 | Afternoon Refreshments & Networking Session | |
| 15:30 | Challenges In Deploying RPA In Finance And Accounting |
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| Gartner Says Robotic Process Automation Can Save Finance Departments 25,000 Hours of Avoidable Work Annually in financial reporting. Gartner research has found that the average amount of avoidable rework in accounting departments can take up to 30% of a full-time employee’s overall time. This equates to savings of 25,000 hours per year at a cost of $878,000 for an organization with 40 full-time accounting staff. Despite this immense benefits, only 29% of RPA Adopters have implemented this technology for financial reporting. | ||
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Niluka Perera CFO Kildare Ministries |
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| 16:00 | CFO Panel: Closing The Digital Skills Gap In Finance To Avoid Setbacks On Your Digital Transformation Efforts |
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Digitization is reshaping the finance talent profile. To get the most out of modernized systems and new tools, finance needs to provide appropriate training, so staff can develop strong data and technology acumen. But how can you help team’s transition to the new digital operating model, and how do you make sure they have the skills and competencies to be successful in the future? In this session, you will discuss:
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David Donovan Chief Financial Officer Digital Transformation Agency |
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Pranay Lodhiya CFO Bureau of Meteorology |
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| 16:30 | Case Study: Coordinating A Global Move Away From Legacy Systems In Finance |
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| 17:00 | Closing Remarks By Summit Chairman | |