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Ah, taxes! A bit of “humor” on a definitely serious topic for every enterprise: * Benjamin Franklin: “In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” * Bonnie Raitt: “Solar power is the last energy resource that isn't owned yet – nobody taxes the sun yet.” * Arthur C. Clarke: “The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.” Ok, time to get serious. The EY 2020 Tax and Finance Operate survey reported that 51% of all respondents expected an increase to their organization's tax risk profile from complying with emerging digital tax filing requirements, while a whopping 84% expected it to increase the workload of the tax and finance function. EY's 2022 Tax and Finance Operations Survey found 84% of respondents are actively transforming to tackle challenges. Talent, legislative and regulatory changes, and future-proofing technology are key concerns for Tax and Finance functions. And the COVID-19 pandemic worsened some challenges, accelerating the need to transform. Reality check: With new regulatory announcements coming every month, your business needs to adapt your processes to remain sustainable and profitable. How do intelligent businesses like yours take your tax transformation as a strategic turning point for operational efficiency and seamless compliance? Stop deprioritizing – or worse, ignoring – your company's tax function in digital business transformation initiatives. We'll ask Erika Buson, Sveinung Baumann-Larsen and Vicky Bradford for their insights on The Digital Enterprise: Turning Taxes Into Opportunity!

The Buzz 1: “As specialized tools and technology have emerged, the role of CFO has evolved. CFOs of companies large and small need to embrace flexibility, develop global strategies, and shift their focus to look forward rather than back.” (www.teampay.co/insights/cfo-quotes/) The Buzz 2: “When you are a successful company, you have to fight really hard to make sure you avoid complacency, arrogance, bureaucracy.” (Marianne Lake, CFO of JPMorgan Chase) The Buzz 3: “The CFO needs to be supported by a strategic FP&A team that is excellent at all levels… a team that is prepared for where the company is going—not where it's been.” (Jim Johnson, Former CFO of Adaptive Insights) Amid globally turbulent times, today's Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) function is striving to spend less of its time “Planning” and more time delivering value-added “Analysis” to its business constituents. How? Finance and its IT support teams need to focus on the future, utilizing the available modern tools – Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Analytics and Collaboration. Similar to the automotive industry working to deliver safe, self-driving vehicles, FP&A needs to “feel the need, the need for speed” [quoting Lt. Pete ‘Maverick' Mitchell in the Top Gun films] to drive automated or, even better, autonomous planning. What steps can your FP&A team take to harness technology today in order to optimize their time delivering the best possible analysis to your organization tomorrow? We'll ask Finance professionals Paul Davis at Analysis Prime, Colin Chu at SAP and Nilly Essaides at NeuGroup for their take on Driving The Emphasis on Analysis for Finance: Focus on Automation.

The Buzz 1: Most of the countries negotiating a global overhaul of cross-border taxation of multinationals have backed plans for new rules on where companies are taxed and a tax rate of at least 15%… A global minimum corporate income tax of at least 15% could yield around $150 billion in additional global tax revenues annually. 130 countries, representing more than 90% of global GDP, had backed the agreement at the talks. New rules on where the biggest multinationals are taxed would shift taxing rights on more than $100 billion of profits to countries where the profits are earned. [reuters.com – 2021-07-01] The Buzz 2: As of 4 November 2021, over 135 countries and jurisdictions joined a new two-pillar plan to reform international taxation rules and ensure that multinational enterprises pay a fair share of tax wherever they operate. [oecd.org] Look up! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's global minimum tax. Will your company be hit and if yes, how hard? Global minimum tax rules, aka “Pillar Two Model Rules”, are set to go into effect in 2024. Developed as part of the OECD/G20 BEPS 2.0 project, these rules will dramatically change the international tax landscape and create significant new tax reporting and compliance requirements for affected organizations, in every industry. With the clock ticking, your Finance organization needs to understand the potential impacts of these rules and develop a comprehensive technology-centered plan. Priorities to cover: adapting internal processes and systems to manage the new computations and data requirements, calculating your global minimum tax liabilities and satisfying reporting obligations. Saddle up! We'll ask Sveinung Baumann-Larsen at EY, Erika Buson at SAP and Matthias Klein at BASF for their take on The Arrival of Minimum Taxes: A New World Order.

The Buzz 1: Most of the countries negotiating a global overhaul of cross-border taxation of multinationals have backed plans for new rules on where companies are taxed and a tax rate of at least 15%… A global minimum corporate income tax of at least 15% could yield around $150 billion in additional global tax revenues annually. 130 countries, representing more than 90% of global GDP, had backed the agreement at the talks. New rules on where the biggest multinationals are taxed would shift taxing rights on more than $100 billion of profits to countries where the profits are earned. [reuters.com – 2021-07-01] The Buzz 2: As of 4 November 2021, over 135 countries and jurisdictions joined a new two-pillar plan to reform international taxation rules and ensure that multinational enterprises pay a fair share of tax wherever they operate. [oecd.org] Look up! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's global minimum tax. Will your company be hit and if yes, how hard? Global minimum tax rules, aka “Pillar Two Model Rules”, are set to go into effect in 2024. Developed as part of the OECD/G20 BEPS 2.0 project, these rules will dramatically change the international tax landscape and create significant new tax reporting and compliance requirements for affected organizations, in every industry. With the clock ticking, your Finance organization needs to understand the potential impacts of these rules and develop a comprehensive technology-centered plan. Priorities to cover: adapting internal processes and systems to manage the new computations and data requirements, calculating your global minimum tax liabilities and satisfying reporting obligations. Saddle up! We'll ask Sveinung Baumann-Larsen at EY, Erika Buson at SAP and Matthias Klein at BASF for their take on The Arrival of Minimum Taxes: A New World Order.

The Buzz 1: Most of the countries negotiating a global overhaul of cross-border taxation of multinationals have backed plans for new rules on where companies are taxed and a tax rate of at least 15%… A global minimum corporate income tax of at least 15% could yield around $150 billion in additional global tax revenues annually. 130 countries, representing more than 90% of global GDP, had backed the agreement at the talks. New rules on where the biggest multinationals are taxed would shift taxing rights on more than $100 billion of profits to countries where the profits are earned. [reuters.com – 2021-07-01] The Buzz 2: As of 4 November 2021, over 135 countries and jurisdictions joined a new two-pillar plan to reform international taxation rules and ensure that multinational enterprises pay a fair share of tax wherever they operate. [oecd.org] Look up! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's global minimum tax. Will your company be hit and if yes, how hard? Global minimum tax rules, aka “Pillar Two Model Rules”, are set to go into effect in 2024. Developed as part of the OECD/G20 BEPS 2.0 project, these rules will dramatically change the international tax landscape and create significant new tax reporting and compliance requirements for affected organizations, in every industry. With the clock ticking, your Finance organization needs to understand the potential impacts of these rules and develop a comprehensive technology-centered plan. Priorities to cover: adapting internal processes and systems to manage the new computations and data requirements, calculating your global minimum tax liabilities and satisfying reporting obligations. Saddle up! We'll ask Sveinung Baumann-Larsen at EY, Erika Buson at SAP and Matthias Klein at BASF for their take on The Arrival of Minimum Taxes: A New World Order.

The Buzz 1: “Purposeful storytelling isn't show business, it's good business.” [Peter Guber, CEO of Mandalay Entertainment, co-owner of NBA's Golden State Warriors and MLB's LA Dodgers] The Buzz 2: “Good stories surprise us. They make us think and feel. They stick in our minds and help us remember ideas and concepts in a way that a PowerPoint crammed with bar graphs never can.” [Joe Lazauskas and Shane Snow, co-authors, The Storytelling Edge: How to Transform Your Business, Stop Screaming into the Void, and Make People Love You] The Buzz 3: “Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world.” [Robert McKee, Story Mentor] These wise words about storytelling impact today's Finance planning and analysis function, as the CFO's team sees the value of weaving a narrative around actual events, explaining variances, and providing guidance. As the role of Finance evolves to a strategic business partner, the team needs to equip itself with the right tools to be a great storyteller. Beyond old-school spreadsheets, they need modern analytics, trusted data and actionable dashboards so they can recommend and guide their organizations to make the best business decisions. We'll ask Brian Kalish, Pras Chatterjee and Greg Wright for their take on Enhanced Planning and Analysis: The Super-Power of Storytelling and Analytics.

The soccer great Pelé [the all-time leading goal scorer for Brazil with 77 goals in 92 games] famously and wisely observed, “No individual can win a game by himself.” Pelé's words stand true beyond the soccer pitch. In the business world, they resonate even louder for the Finance function. To bring the entire organization together in Planning and Analysis as well as strategy, Finance needs to adopt a “business partnership” mantra. While it's generally accepted that all lines of business in an organization will “plan”, bringing these plans together collaboratively requires financial and operational skills, technical savvy and most importantly, leadership. As a leader and a business partner, Finance can become instrumental in enhancing the Planning and Analysis function to become an xP&A group – Extended Planning and Analysis – for organizational success, especially in our financially dynamic and turbulent times. We'll ask Anders Larsen Liu-Lindberg at The Business Partnering Institute, Pras Chatterjee at SAP, and Jeff Hattendorf at Macrospect for their take on Pele's words of wisdom as we explore The Power of Business Partnering: Enhancing Planning and Analysis.

The Buzz 1: “Sustainability is no longer a nice-to-have extra. It's a critical piece of the puzzle for companies looking to stay ahead of the competition and protect their bottom lines.[smart.arqlite.com] The Buzz 2: “For companies focused on ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) efforts, metrics matter…Each industry and organization will have different metrics that are material to their business.” [gobyinc.com] The Buzz 3: “Some companies report only their greenhouse gas emissions…others publish glossy reports about their CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives or use their ESG ratings as a badge of honor.” [hbr.org] Yes, sustainability strategy and reporting are hot topics and management priorities for organizations' internal and external stakeholders. Why? They can tangibly impact the ability to access finance, attract talent and grow market share. The big picture: Worldwide compliance requirements are driving sustainability initiatives, but the metrics to manage and report against can vary by sector, by country, by strategy. Organizations need to not only make future commitments about sustainability metrics, but also to demonstrate their plan to maintain and improve overall corporate performance. Forward-thinking organizations see sustainability reporting as an opportunity to spearhead new opportunities, efficiencies and growth, which require performance management capability and culture. Where to start? We'll ask Michel Haesendonckx at SAP and Esteban Rastrollo at EY for their insights on Sustainability Performance Management: Business Imperative vs Wishful Thinking?

Ah, taxes! A bit of “humor” on a definitely serious topic for every enterprise: * Benjamin Franklin: “In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” * Bonnie Raitt: “Solar power is the last energy resource that isn't owned yet – nobody taxes the sun yet.” * Arthur C. Clarke: “The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.” Ok, time to get serious. The EY 2020 Tax and Finance Operate survey reported that 51% of all respondents expected an increase to their organization's tax risk profile from complying with emerging digital tax filing requirements, while a whopping 84% expected it to increase the workload of the tax and finance function. EY's 2022 Tax and Finance Operations Survey found 84% of respondents are actively transforming to tackle challenges. Talent, legislative and regulatory changes, and future-proofing technology are key concerns for Tax and Finance functions. And the COVID-19 pandemic worsened some challenges, accelerating the need to transform. Reality check: With new regulatory announcements coming every month, your business needs to adapt your processes to remain sustainable and profitable. How do intelligent businesses like yours take your tax transformation as a strategic turning point for operational efficiency and seamless compliance? Stop deprioritizing – or worse, ignoring – your company's tax function in digital business transformation initiatives. We'll ask Erika Buson, Sveinung Baumann-Larsen and Vicky Bradford for their insights on The Digital Enterprise: Turning Taxes Into Opportunity!

Ah, taxes! A bit of “humor” on a definitely serious topic for every enterprise: * Benjamin Franklin: “In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” * Bonnie Raitt: “Solar power is the last energy resource that isn't owned yet – nobody taxes the sun yet.” * Arthur C. Clarke: “The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.” Ok, time to get serious. The EY 2020 Tax and Finance Operate survey reported that 51% of all respondents expected an increase to their organization's tax risk profile from complying with emerging digital tax filing requirements, while a whopping 84% expected it to increase the workload of the tax and finance function. EY's 2022 Tax and Finance Operations Survey found 84% of respondents are actively transforming to tackle challenges. Talent, legislative and regulatory changes, and future-proofing technology are key concerns for Tax and Finance functions. And the COVID-19 pandemic worsened some challenges, accelerating the need to transform. Reality check: With new regulatory announcements coming every month, your business needs to adapt your processes to remain sustainable and profitable. How do intelligent businesses like yours take your tax transformation as a strategic turning point for operational efficiency and seamless compliance? Stop deprioritizing – or worse, ignoring – your company's tax function in digital business transformation initiatives. We'll ask Erika Buson, Sveinung Baumann-Larsen and Vicky Bradford for their insights on The Digital Enterprise: Turning Taxes Into Opportunity!

The Buzz 1: “As specialized tools and technology have emerged, the role of CFO has evolved. CFOs of companies large and small need to embrace flexibility, develop global strategies, and shift their focus to look forward rather than back.” (www.teampay.co/insights/cfo-quotes/) The Buzz 2: “When you are a successful company, you have to fight really hard to make sure you avoid complacency, arrogance, bureaucracy.” (Marianne Lake, CFO of JPMorgan Chase) The Buzz 3: “The CFO needs to be supported by a strategic FP&A team that is excellent at all levels… a team that is prepared for where the company is going—not where it's been.” (Jim Johnson, Former CFO of Adaptive Insights) Amid globally turbulent times, today's Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) function is striving to spend less of its time “Planning” and more time delivering value-added “Analysis” to its business constituents. How? Finance and its IT support teams need to focus on the future, utilizing the available modern tools – Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Analytics and Collaboration. Similar to the automotive industry working to deliver safe, self-driving vehicles, FP&A needs to “feel the need, the need for speed” [quoting Lt. Pete ‘Maverick' Mitchell in the Top Gun films] to drive automated or, even better, autonomous planning. What steps can your FP&A team take to harness technology today in order to optimize their time delivering the best possible analysis to your organization tomorrow? We'll ask Finance professionals Paul Davis at Analysis Prime, Colin Chu at SAP and Nilly Essaides at NeuGroup for their take on Driving The Emphasis on Analysis for Finance: Focus on Automation.

The Buzz 1: “As specialized tools and technology have emerged, the role of CFO has evolved. CFOs of companies large and small need to embrace flexibility, develop global strategies, and shift their focus to look forward rather than back.” (www.teampay.co/insights/cfo-quotes/) The Buzz 2: “When you are a successful company, you have to fight really hard to make sure you avoid complacency, arrogance, bureaucracy.” (Marianne Lake, CFO of JPMorgan Chase) The Buzz 3: “The CFO needs to be supported by a strategic FP&A team that is excellent at all levels… a team that is prepared for where the company is going—not where it's been.” (Jim Johnson, Former CFO of Adaptive Insights) Amid globally turbulent times, today's Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) function is striving to spend less of its time “Planning” and more time delivering value-added “Analysis” to its business constituents. How? Finance and its IT support teams need to focus on the future, utilizing the available modern tools – Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Analytics and Collaboration. Similar to the automotive industry working to deliver safe, self-driving vehicles, FP&A needs to “feel the need, the need for speed” [quoting Lt. Pete ‘Maverick' Mitchell in the Top Gun films] to drive automated or, even better, autonomous planning. What steps can your FP&A team take to harness technology today in order to optimize their time delivering the best possible analysis to your organization tomorrow? We'll ask Finance professionals Paul Davis at Analysis Prime, Colin Chu at SAP and Nilly Essaides at NeuGroup for their take on Driving The Emphasis on Analysis for Finance: Focus on Automation.

The Buzz 1: In his 2007 book “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable”, author and former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb focuses on the extreme impact of rare and unpredictable outlier events—and the human tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events, retrospectively. He calls this the Black Swan theory. The Buzz 2: “If you ever do have to heed a forecast, keep in mind that its accuracy degrades rapidly as you extend it through time.” The Buzz 3: “We see the obvious and visible consequences, not the invisible and less obvious ones. Yet those unseen consequences…generally are more meaningful.” Gone are the days when, as a whole, Planning & Analysis for the office of the CFO and the enterprise could be ‘just OK.' With black swan events becoming the norm, requiring guidance and scenario modeling, FP&A can no longer wait on gathering data from convoluted spreadsheets and uncollaborative business units. Yes, the pressure is on the CFO to deliver highly credible plans and ever better analysis. But how? The answer: Modern planning processes and tools – adopting extended planning and analysis, analytics and visualization, and machine learning – will help you transform your company's Finance function from good to great. We'll ask Jon Essig at SimpleFi Solutions, Chris Ortega at Fresh FP&A, and Floyd Conrad at SAP for their take on The Black Swan vs Transforming Your FP&A from Good to Great!

The Buzz 1: “Tasked with guiding the growth of companies, building digital organizations, and transforming the finance function, CFOs must first identify their objectives and then decide whether they will lead with people, process, or performance.” (HBR Executive Brief: The CFO Agenda: Transforming the Finance Function) The Buzz 2: “CFOs say that their time on transformations would be best spent on role-modeling new mindsets and behaviors, setting high-level goals, and communicating the transformation's results—when, in practice, they are most often charged with traditional finance-oriented responsibilities.” (McKinsey: Mastering change: The new CFO mandate) The Buzz 3: “Behavioral competencies are key to the business partnership role—a ‘seat at the table' must be earned. A CFO needs to be a visible leader in the business, an excellent communicator, and an influencer.” (Paul Ainsworth – www.toptal.com/) Modern Planning & Analysis transformation offers many benefits to the organizations that embrace it. Top-line benefits include extending planning across business units and LOB's, connecting real time with ERP, and adopting predictive planning as a standard part of the process. Good news: Powerful technology is available to help planners and the office of the CFO change processes to meet their enterprise-wide goals. Sounds great, just do it! But is technology the best, most effective way to begin? Reality check: Adopting a modern extended planning and analysis process goes beyond merely adopting and adapting new technology. It needs to include – and begin with – a significant process transformation led by Finance. We'll ask Pras Chatterjee at SAP, Brian Kalish at Kalish Consulting and David Dixon at IBM for their take on Aligning with Planning & Analysis Transformation: Process Changes.

The Buzz 1: In his 2007 book “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable”, author and former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb focuses on the extreme impact of rare and unpredictable outlier events—and the human tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events, retrospectively. He calls this the Black Swan theory. The Buzz 2: “If you ever do have to heed a forecast, keep in mind that its accuracy degrades rapidly as you extend it through time.” The Buzz 3: “We see the obvious and visible consequences, not the invisible and less obvious ones. Yet those unseen consequences…generally are more meaningful.” Gone are the days when, as a whole, Planning & Analysis for the office of the CFO and the enterprise could be ‘just OK.' With black swan events becoming the norm, requiring guidance and scenario modeling, FP&A can no longer wait on gathering data from convoluted spreadsheets and uncollaborative business units. Yes, the pressure is on the CFO to deliver highly credible plans and ever better analysis. But how? The answer: Modern planning processes and tools – adopting extended planning and analysis, analytics and visualization, and machine learning – will help you transform your company's Finance function from good to great. We'll ask Jon Essig at SimpleFi Solutions, Chris Ortega at Fresh FP&A, and Floyd Conrad at SAP for their take on The Black Swan vs Transforming Your FP&A from Good to Great!

The Buzz 1: In his 2007 book “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable”, author and former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb focuses on the extreme impact of rare and unpredictable outlier events—and the human tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events, retrospectively. He calls this the Black Swan theory. The Buzz 2: “If you ever do have to heed a forecast, keep in mind that its accuracy degrades rapidly as you extend it through time.” The Buzz 3: “We see the obvious and visible consequences, not the invisible and less obvious ones. Yet those unseen consequences…generally are more meaningful.” Gone are the days when, as a whole, Planning & Analysis for the office of the CFO and the enterprise could be ‘just OK.' With black swan events becoming the norm, requiring guidance and scenario modeling, FP&A can no longer wait on gathering data from convoluted spreadsheets and uncollaborative business units. Yes, the pressure is on the CFO to deliver highly credible plans and ever better analysis. But how? The answer: Modern planning processes and tools – adopting extended planning and analysis, analytics and visualization, and machine learning – will help you transform your company's Finance function from good to great. We'll ask Jon Essig at SimpleFi Solutions, Chris Ortega at Fresh FP&A, and Floyd Conrad at SAP for their take on The Black Swan vs Transforming Your FP&A from Good to Great!

The Buzz 1: CFOs often perceive cybersecurity to be the responsibility of IT, but as more finance processes run remotely, CFOs need to develop security measures specifically for the finance function and not rely solely on the organization's blanket security protocols to safeguard financial data. (www.gartner.com) The Buzz 2: Finance leaders in the midst of leading or co-leading a broader transformation initiative (42% of CFOs, per Deloitte's CFO Signals™ survey for Q2-2021), may want to make modernizing their security model part of that effort. (deloitte.wsj.com) The Buzz 3: CFOs and their teams are the gatekeepers for the critical data required to generate forecasts and support senior leaders' strategic plans and decisions…At the top of the four areas of technology that show the most promise for use in finance: automation and robotics to improve processes in finance.” (www.mckinsey.com) Yes, organizations must find ways to thrive in today's disruptive business environment, with its shifting geo-political and financial landscapes, the momentum to digitize and automate, and increasing cybersecurity threats. How? Focus more on internal controls over most business processes as well as corporate resilience in financial and cybersecurity domains. Cybersecurity attacks not only affect normal business operations but add ambiguity to the reliability of financial statements. Stakeholders are under pressure from due diligence requirements to gain more reliable views of organizational risk, resilience, accountability and transparency. To ensure quarterly and annual reports accurately reflect financial status and to bolster cybersecurity protection, they are automating process controls as part of a financial transformation. We'll ask Dr. Neil Patrick at SAP, Mithilesh Kotwal at Protiviti and Tony Robey at Wipro for their insights on Cyber Resilience and Control Automation for Finance.

The Buzz 1: We've all heard these 'old saws' and know they're true: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” “Plan your work and work your plan.” The Buzz 2: “We don't hand aircraft pilots 50 pages of Excel reports after they've landed the plane, telling them they went to the wrong airport or they ran out of fuel. They have real-time insight into the external environment and the aircraft operations.…It's essential for FP&A and performance management to be viewed holistically like that…We should be helping to successfully land the aircraft.” (Jack Alexander, author: Financial Planning and Analysis and Business Performance Management) The Buzz 3: “Gartner coined the term 'xP&A' in 2020, but…Expanding FP&A beyond finance has been a best practice for several years – referred to by many names: connected planning, collaborative enterprise planning, integrated business planning, and company-wide planning….” (https://insights.sap.com/what-is-xpa) Better planning leads to better results, especially for the CFO's Finance team. But is “better” good enough in our era of perpetual business change and turmoil? Finance experts agree that more is needed to optimize Finance's performance and value to the organization. How? The Financial P&A profession needs to evolve to Extended Planning and Analysis 'xP&A' to strengthen cross-business collaboration, create aligned plans, and rapidly transition from gaining enterprise-wide insights to taking action. This requires not just the latest technology, but an overhaul of processes to align operational and financial planning with strategic goals. We'll ask Pras Chatterjee at SAP, Bryan Lapidus at the Association for Financial Professionals, and Jeff Hattendorf at Macrospect for their insights on the Extended P&A Mindset: Time to Align on Strategic Goals.

The Buzz 1: We've all heard these 'old saws' and know they're true: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” “Plan your work and work your plan.” The Buzz 2: “We don't hand aircraft pilots 50 pages of Excel reports after they've landed the plane, telling them they went to the wrong airport or they ran out of fuel. They have real-time insight into the external environment and the aircraft operations.…It's essential for FP&A and performance management to be viewed holistically like that…We should be helping to successfully land the aircraft.” (Jack Alexander, author: Financial Planning and Analysis and Business Performance Management) The Buzz 3: “Gartner coined the term 'xP&A' in 2020, but…Expanding FP&A beyond finance has been a best practice for several years – referred to by many names: connected planning, collaborative enterprise planning, integrated business planning, and company-wide planning….” (https://insights.sap.com/what-is-xpa) Better planning leads to better results, especially for the CFO's Finance team. But is “better” good enough in our era of perpetual business change and turmoil? Finance experts agree that more is needed to optimize Finance's performance and value to the organization. How? The Financial P&A profession needs to evolve to Extended Planning and Analysis 'xP&A' to strengthen cross-business collaboration, create aligned plans, and rapidly transition from gaining enterprise-wide insights to taking action. This requires not just the latest technology, but an overhaul of processes to align operational and financial planning with strategic goals. We'll ask Pras Chatterjee at SAP, Bryan Lapidus at the Association for Financial Professionals, and Jeff Hattendorf at Macrospect for their insights on the Extended P&A Mindset: Time to Align on Strategic Goals.

The Buzz: Michael E. Porter at Harvard Business School introduced the concept of a value chain in his book, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance [2008]. Competitive advantage cannot be understood by looking at a firm as a whole. It stems from the many discrete activities a firm performs in designing, producing, marketing, delivering, and supporting its product.” He adds that it's important to maximize value at each specific point in a firm's processes. Finance organizations have increasingly evolved from backward-looking reporting to analyzing information in real-time, both from a financial accounting standpoint as well as management accounting. Taking this a step further, finance is actively engaging in advising other parts of the business based on predictive modeling. Logistical processes – ranging from procurement, supply chain, sales and customer experience, to even human resources – are all reflected in finance, providing a holistic view of an organization. Finance then has the opportunity to leverage this information to evaluate the financial impact of strategic decisions and advise their counterparts in all lines of business across an organization. We'll ask SAP's Birgit Starmanns, Accenture's Rob Campanile and Ventana Research's Robert Kugel for their take on Finance and Its Focus on Integration into the Value Chain.

The Buzz: “Data is now more valuable than oil” a popular business sentiment. * In 2006, British mathematician and Tesco marketing mastermind Clive Humby shouted from the rooftops, “Data is the new oil.” * Now “Data Isn't The New Oil — Time Is”. (Michael Kershner, founder of ILC) * Oil has reigned for centuries as one of society's most valuable resources…But in today's 'data economy,' it can be argued that data, due to the insight and knowledge that can be extracted from it, is potentially more valuable. (Therese Fauerbach, CEO, The Northridge Group) While this metaphor can be further debated, the power and abundance of data in its various forms hold a special place within the enterprise and especially within the Office of Finance. But how the Financial Planning and Analysis [FP&A] function leverages operational and financial data in their day-to-day activities often remains a mystery. With systems that connect data in a meaningful manner, what can Finance to do change processes and make impactful decisions to become a much more data driven function that better helps their business constituents and ultimately increases shareholder value? We'll ask Brian Kalish at Kalish Consulting, Jeff Hattendorf at Macrospect, and Pras Chatterjee at SAP for their take on The Road to Finance Prosperity: Powered by Data.

The Buzz 1: Data governance the organizational framework…to understand where your data originated, how it was handled, and the goals your AI platform and machine learning models set out to achieve.” [https://www.datarobot.com/wiki/data-governance/] The Buzz 2: “Companies have tons and tons of data, but [success] isn't about data collection, it's about data management and insight.” [Prashanth Southekal at the Data for Business Performance Institute] The Buzz 3: “You can have all of the fancy tools, but if [your] data quality is not good, you're nowhere.” [Veda Bawo at Raymond James] Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are accepted as key drivers for the digital transformation of organizations and today's societies. To succeed with data-driven innovation, companies around the world need to develop an agile mindset and experiment with new technologies. However, with key concerns about data access and data quality in analytics and AI initiatives, applying data governance is often perceived as rigid and non-value adding. Is data governance an inhibitor suffocating technical innovation or a mandate that facilitates the success and further adoption of AI and machine learning (ML)? We'll ask Christine Legner, Maria Villar and Wolfgang Epting for their take on AI and Data Governance – Friends or Foes?

The Buzz: Michael E. Porter at Harvard Business School introduced the concept of a value chain in his book, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance [2008]. Competitive advantage cannot be understood by looking at a firm as a whole. It stems from the many discrete activities a firm performs in designing, producing, marketing, delivering, and supporting its product.” He adds that it's important to maximize value at each specific point in a firm's processes. Finance organizations have increasingly evolved from backward-looking reporting to analyzing information in real-time, both from a financial accounting standpoint as well as management accounting. Taking this a step further, finance is actively engaging in advising other parts of the business based on predictive modeling. Logistical processes – ranging from procurement, supply chain, sales and customer experience, to even human resources – are all reflected in finance, providing a holistic view of an organization. Finance then has the opportunity to leverage this information to evaluate the financial impact of strategic decisions and advise their counterparts in all lines of business across an organization. We'll ask SAP's Birgit Starmanns, Accenture's Rob Campanile and Ventana Research's Robert Kugel for their take on Finance and Its Focus on Integration into the Value Chain.

The Buzz 1: “We have a single mission: to protect and hand on the planet to the next generation.” (Francois Hollande) The Buzz 2: “It's a collective endeavor, it's collective accountability and it may not be too late.” (Christine Lagarde) The Buzz 3: “It angers me when sustainability gets used as a buzz word. For 90 percent of the world, sustainability is a matter of survival.” (Cameron Sinclair) The Buzz 4: “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” (Robert Swan) Sustainability – “the new frontier of digital transformation” – is dominating business conversations from the C-suite to the front lines of customer service. The top challenges they're talking about? De-carbonizing and eliminating waste. Driving meaningful social responsibility across supply chains. Moving to cloud platforms to integrate and extend applications across business networks and optimize growth and innovation. Enabling visibility of fragmented data for compliance, including ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) reporting, holistic steering, and supply chain transparency. The bottom line? Leaders and stakeholders want to understand what their businesses are doing—and what more they can do—to improve the health of the planet. Data-driven insights are essential for building that understanding to drive action and measure impact. We'll ask SAP's Frank Omare, Jennifer Beason and Japen Hollist for their take on Creating The Sustainable Enterprise In 2022 and Beyond.

The Buzz: The CFO role has expanded beyond financial duties to encompass strategic responsibilities across the company. After closing the books 12 months ago on the extraordinary year that was 2020, which threw unprecedented challenges across mostly unprepared industries and businesses worldwide, we began 2021 with high hopes for the start of a recovery, with the office of Finance having a central role. Reality check: This optimism was tempered, with CFOs facing some of their toughest tests this year. Today, with just 17 days before the dawning of 2022, we look in our rearview mirror at how 2021 has highlighted areas of concern in the agility and responsiveness of Finance systems. For many organizations, investments in systems that offered greater flexibility, agility and the resilience to cope with future challenges became paramount. Along with this, the pressing need to combat cyberattack threats and address information privacy concerns led to an increasing focus on risk management and the prevention and mitigation of breaches. Today, three Finance experts share their POV on the Finance and Risk news headlines that illustrate the key themes and events that shaped business in 2021 – and the implications for the pandemic recovery and the future of Finance. We'll ask Nilly Essaide at NeuGroup, Pras Chatterjee at SAP, and Grant Small at Legion Star for their take on Finance Ripped from the Headlines: A 2021 Finance and Risk Retrospective.

The Buzz 1: “The best marketers are constantly looking for new digital marketing trends based on the evolution of technology, and platforms, to identify new opportunities…” (smartinsights.com) The Buzz 2: “Advances in technology, data, and analytics will soon allow marketers to create much more personal and ‘human' experiences across moments, channels, and buying stages.” (mckinsey.com) The Buzz 3: “The digital marketing landscape changes so much and so frequently that it's almost impossible to imagine what the future of digital marketing may offer in terms of opportunities.” (marketinginsidergroup.com) Marketers! Are you ready to meet the challenges ahead in the next decade? Today we'll bring you insights from six digital engagement, marketing and selling experts. We'll ask visionaries Kirsten Boileau at SAP, Steve Watt at Seismic, Sarah Goodall at Tribal Impact, Mike Orr at Seismic, Paroma Sen at SAP, and Bernie Borges at iQor, on Digital Engagement in Sales and Marketing in 2030. Join us for this final episode of our globally relevant Changing the Game with Digital Engagement Radio.

The Buzz: “Why doesn't a company know that a target customer has connections to an existing customer? Why doesn't it automatically see that a new customer may be involved with a company that engaged in fraudulent activities? There are so many good reasons to know business relationships – and integrate this knowledge into processes in a standardized way…countless pieces of information are publicly available, but not intelligently linked and easily retrievable.” (www.palturai.com) The ecosystem of businesses and people that surrounds your organization is full of hidden potential as as well as harm. The ability to successfully navigate in this ever-more-complex environment requires a revolution in data-driven insights. You need now – more than ever – to transform data with contextual insights into applicable knowledge that uncovers hidden opportunity as well as risk. Why? Knowledge gained from business network insights drives an evolution in customer acquisition and retention by enabling high-value, relevant customer interactions. And understanding the dynamics of an interconnected business ecosystem expands capabilities in risk mitigation. Good news! Innovative knowledge graph solutions – powering today's AI – deliver the contextual understanding your business needs to be competitive in tomorrow's connected world. We'll ask Bernhard Ritz and Noel Billingsley at Palturai, and Falk Rieker at SAP for their insights on thriving in today's challenging global marketplace on Business Network Insights: Tomorrow's Competitive Differentiator – Part 2.

The Buzz 1: “Change management is a critical skill in today's c-suite… Change management is a challenge for every organization.” (Dave Sutton, toprightpartners.com) The Buzz 2: “Slowness to change usually means fear of the new.” (Philip Crosby, 1926–2001, aka “The Fun Uncle of the Quality Revolution”, author: Quality Without Tears and Quality is Free) The Buzz 3: “Change before you have to.” (Jack Welch, former GE CEO, named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine) The Buzz 4: “People don't resist change. They resist being changed!” (Peter Senge, organizational learning expert, author: The Fifth Discipline) As finance and risk teams embrace technology more quickly than they did in the past, change management has never been more crucial to facilitate efficient adoption and effective implementation. With more organizations moving towards modern technologies for Finance – including automation and artificial intelligence (AI) – there is often resistance to change as well as fear of being “replaced” by computers. As business conditions and business models change, finance and risk teams need to transform their own organizations to take advantage of technology advancements – while ensuring the human element remains at the center of their strategic decisions. For these reasons and more, change management needs to focus on best practices and comprehensive organizational planning for change, from executive buy-in on changes in technology and business processes, to the communication of the what, the when, and the why of a change. We'll ask Birgit Starmanns at SAP, Jason Roling at Delaware Consulting and Ross Wilson at Accenture for their take on Enabling Intelligent Finance Transformation with Change Management.

The Buzz 1: “Recruiting great marketers should be your number one priority.” (Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot CMO) The Buzz 2: “Marketing's job is never done. It's about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.” (Beth Comstock, former GE CMO & Vice Chair) The Buzz 3: “Just because you are the loudest, doesn't make you right.” (Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO & Co-Founder) The Buzz 4: “The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing.” (Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist Founder & CEO) Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, technology was accelerating society's rate of change, especially impacting the skills needed in the workforce. And Marketing has not been spared. “The rapid rise of digitization and remote work has placed new demands on employees who, in many instances, now require different skills to support significant changes to how work gets done and to the business priorities their companies are setting.” (www.mckinsey.com) Today's marketers need to equip themselves to meet the challenges ahead in the next decade. What skills are imperative today? Will those same skills be relevant and needed in 2030? We'll ask Kirsten Boileau, Anna Millman, Jeremy Kestler, and Emily L. Phelps for their take on Winter is Coming: Arming Marketers with Skills for Today and The Decade Ahead.

The Buzz: On August 20, 2014, Maamar Ferkoun (AP IBM–Cloud Computing & Cognitive Technologies) wrote, “The flexibility and scalability of the cloud acts as an ideal complement to business intelligence activities. The ‘democratization' of the cloud is now allowing organizations that have used business intelligence with on-premises applications and on a limited scale to reach a whole new level—all through the use of storage, networking and tools that can sift through big data…” (www.ibm.com) Indeed, in the last few years, we have seen a huge adoption of cloud native applications for both edge applications and line-of-business functions, yielding new insights, business agility and lower IT costs. In addition to migrating their ERP landscapes to the cloud to achieve those benefits, companies are adopting the latest best practices to eliminate in-house customization and to bring intelligence at scale into the enterprise. Done right, this can have immense impact on the speed, agility and intelligence that companies like yours can tap into, to win market share and optimize your ecosystem of suppliers and partners. We'll ask Allan Coulter at IBM and Christian Thisgaard at SAP for their insights on the opportunities to exploit, as well as the pitfalls to avoid, in this business transformation. Tune in for The Second Cloud Wave Is Emerging: Delivering Enterprise-Scale Intelligence.

The Buzz 1: The early development of accounting was closely related to developments in writing, counting, and money.…Accounting records dating back more than 7,000 years have been found in Mesopotamia, and documents from ancient Mesopotamia show lists of expenditures, and goods received and traded…all emerged in the context of controlling goods, stocks and transactions in the temple economy of Mesopotamia.” (en.wikipedia.org) The Buzz 2: “When I talk to other CFOs about process improvement, they often tell me that their top priority is closing the books faster…Poor-quality data can't be trusted, and it takes a lot of labor to scrub bad data.” (Perry D. Wiggins, CPA) The Buzz 3: Of the 2,300 organizations that answered APQC's General Accounting Open Standards Benchmarking survey, the bottom 25% said they need 10 or more calendar days to perform the monthly close process. … the top 25% can wrap up a monthly close in just 4.8 days or less—about half the time of the bottom 25%. … at the median are the organizations that need 6.4 calendar days to close out a month's books.” (www.cfo.com) Since the 13th century, accountants have been “closing the books” to give company owners a status on their business performance. And since this happens at all companies at every period-end, you'd think that by 2021, everyone has a perfect, optimized process. But period-end closing still has a reputation of being a burden – causing headaches and overtime. We'll ask experts Marc Six, Katharina Reichert and David Dixon to share their insights about closing acceleration and business trends affecting Finance teams each and every period-end on Fast, Faster, Fastest: What's Next for the Close?

The Buzz 1: “Social media allows big companies to act small again.” (Jay Baer @convince Marketing) The Buzz 2: “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” (Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO) The Buzz 3: “We don't have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.” (Erik Qualman, author, The Focus Project @equalman) Social media has dramatically affected how we navigate every aspect of life. Its impact on marketing is no exception, as in how it catalyzed the transition from push- to pull-centric marketing. According to MIT Sloan Professor Sinan Aral, “Social media is rewiring the central nervous system of humanity in real time. We're now at a crossroads between its promise and its peril.” This crossroads is forcing marketers to sail a boat they're still building while battling the stormy seas of short attention spans, political correctness, new social channels and other powerful waves. Argh! What impact will all of this have on the future of social media marketing? We'll ask social media agency owner Janet E Johnson, Mike Grehan at SEMPO and Anna Millman at SAP for tips to help your social media marketing stand out amid the high seas noise and find friendly trade winds. Tune in for Social Media Marketing aka Building Your Boat While Sailing.

The Buzz: “Data! data! data …I can't make bricks without clay” (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, #12). Intelligent Enterprises know how to use their data assets to achieve desired outcomes faster and with less risk. How? Especially in times of uncertainty like the COVID-19 pandemic, intelligent enterprises anticipate and pro-actively respond in real time to put their employees and customers first. And they create personalized, unique digital experiences from disparate data sources while leveraging AI, chatbots and voice technologies. Most importantly, they build digital ecosystems leveraging orchestrated data to create new business models and revenue streams to monetize data-driven capabilities and apply core business competencies in innovative ways. We'll ask Mike Price at Capgemini, Ritesh Menon at Incture and Scott Harrison at SAP for their expert insights on how your organization can get on board. Join us for The Intelligent Enterprise: Data Assets and Your Digital Ecosystem.

The Buzz: “FP&A [financial planning and analysis] used to hold all the cards; they had all the data at their fingertips. Nowadays, valuable data resides across the business. It's a battle to find out who has the best data, much less what this data is. Otherwise, a vacuum will develop that smart executives will fill up with their own data. The CFO has to be on top of information flow at all times.” (Mark Partin, CFO of BlackLine) The recent FP&A Trends 2021 Survey highlights that many FP&A practitioners struggle to create time to work on value added activities. From the most senior to the novice FP&A practitioners, there is still (too) much time spent on non-value-added tasks such as gathering data, excess time providing meaningful insights and having trust in the data. How does FP&A overcome these challenges? Tune in to hear FP&A experts' insights on how easily the available, yet disruptive technologies – such as AI/ML, Integration tools and an xP&A (extended planning and analysis) process – can help bring the FP&A practice to the top of the ladder when it comes to driving organizational-wide decisions. We'll ask Jeff Hattendorf at Macrospect, Hans Gobin at Plan2Plan Consulting, and Floyd Conrad for their take on Data: The Road to Value Add for FP&A.

The Buzz 1: “Automated emails, triggered emails, drip email marketing…phrases often used by people considering a marketing automation system…where there's email, unfortunately there's spam… plenty of marketers are willing to cross the line to try to generate more leads … They rent lists full of bad addresses and unqualified prospects…too aggressive with frequency and offers…a desire for a quick and easy return. Acting on that desire however can bite you squarely in the arse.” [www.net-results.com/blog] Today there's a solution to over-complicated processes, underqualified leads, too little use of customer data and personalization – Marketing Automation. What is it? Marketing automation utilizes technology to streamline and improve the efficacy of marketing efforts (Salesforce). It allows you to target audiences better and provide them with relevant content, all at the exact right time of their buyer's journey. But some people say Marketing Automation is almost too good at its job because as soon as a customer or prospect shows a bit of interest in your product or service, a slew of uninvited spammy promotional content begins appearing. Do they get annoyed, click off and abandon their journey with you? Question on the table: Has Marketing Automation transformed the industry in the right ways? Does automated marketing do its job too well? How will the inevitable cookies-less web impact the benefits of Marketing Automation? We'll ask Neal Schaffer at PDCA Social, Kirill Kniazev at Motili, and Alisha Seegmiller at SAP for their take on Out with the Old and In with Marketing Automation – Beneficial or Spammy?

The Buzz 1: “Simply put, a data ecosystem is a platform that combines data from numerous providers and builds value through the usage of processed data.” (mckinsey.com) The Buzz 2: “Data ecosystems provide companies with data that they rely on to understand their customers and to make better pricing, operations, and marketing decisions.” (mixpanel.com/blog) How can today's business organizations solve important societal problems and offer participants and consumers more benefits? The answer to this big challenge: data ecosystems. Data ecosystems offer a new, powerful way to achieve this and lay the foundation for real innovation. With the right approach, data ecosystems can be built up within a short period of time and offer long-term opportunities for expansion and value creation. But building and leveraging the value of data ecosystems can be a challenge for some companies. Leaders may be hesitant due to potential risks from sharing sensitive data with competitors and potential hackers. We'll ask Wolfgang Epting, Data Enthusiast and SAP Solution Advisor Chief Expert, Prof. Dr. Christine Legner, Academic Director Competence Center Corporate Data Quality (CC CDQ), and Maria Villar, SAP Enterprise Data Management and Governance Innovator, for their take on Winning with Data Ecosystems: Real Innovation for Value Creation.

The Buzz 1: “The subscription economy is not new. In fact, the membership-based business model has been around since the 17th century…Recently, the membership-based business model has been gaining a foothold…Experts believe that the membership-based business model is the revenue model of the future.” (boldbusiness.com) The Buzz 2: “Building long-term relationships with customers is the route to value in the Subscription Economy®. Yet the Quote-to-Cash (QTC) process at most B2B companies—even those with subscription businesses—is optimized for linear transactions, not relationships. This results in complexity and cost to the provider and a poor experience for the subscriber.” (subscribed.com) The ‘new normal' has challenged businesses worldwide during the COVID pandemic. Instead of focusing on revenue growth, most companies were just trying to find new ways to serve their customers and survive, including pivoting their business model to offer product-related services and subscriptions. Some have developed partnerships to facilitate product delivery and installation during pandemic lockdowns – and plan to expand these services. To facilitate this business expansion, flexibility of how companies bill – and how customers pay – is paramount. Some customers may use multiple payment types for the same transaction, even with the option to pay a residual over time. There may be revenue-sharing with the partners that took on delivery and other services, long-term subscriptions or pay-as-you-go usage-based billing – and a developing trend of outcome-based billing. We'll ask Manoj Harbhajanka at Acuitilabs and Richard Chan at SAP for their insights on how different business models are evolving and how billing systems need to keep pace, on “Pivoting from a Product to a Service and Subscription Economy.”

The Buzz 1: “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is -- it is what consumers tell each other it is.” (Scott Cook, Intuit co-founder) The Buzz 2: “Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.” (Steve Forbes, Forbes magazine editor-in-chief) The Buzz 3: “A great brand is a story that is never completely told.” (Scott Bedbury, Brandstream CEO) The Buzz 4: “Whether B2B or B2C…We all are emotional beings looking for relevance, context and connection.” (Beth Comstock, Imagine It Forward author) The American Marketing Association [www.ama.org] describes “brand” as “...a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies one seller's goods or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” More than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic where volatility, complexity, and uncertainty have been at an all-time high, a brand's ability to get attention, be remembered, and be an educational resource has become more imperative than ever. That, in conjunction with consumers wanting their buying power to reflect their personal values, has placed extreme pressure on brands to get it right. Given all of this, what role does branding play in the buyer's journey and has that changed since the pandemic began? What could or should companies do to be better at reflecting the social climate or should they not engage in that conversation? What other impacts will the pandemic have on the future of branding? We'll ask Alicia Tillman, Mike Grehan and Dennis Thomas for their take on Brand Marketing in a Post-Pandemic World.

The Buzz: “What drives IT executives to initiate cloud migration? Deloitte's survey of more than 500 IT leaders and executives reveals that security and data protection is the top driver…increasingly relying on the expertise of third-party cloud-based security and infrastructure providers to protect their data…The No. 2 driver for cloud migration, data modernization, primarily involves moving data from legacy to modern databases.” [www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/why-organizations-are-moving-to-the-cloud.html] Let's look closely at this trend. Moving to the cloud is more than just a technology replacement; it is also a mindset change. The key to cloud adoption is leveraging cloud technologies in the right way, taking a center of excellence “COE” or “app factory” approach with a fail-forward, continuous iteration and improvement mindset. This is happening in many companies, as millennials demand increased automation and digitalization of key business processes. Rapid application development tools plus the empowerment of business user “citizen developers” – less reliant on central IT, with more development within lines of business – are reducing effort and shortening timelines. How can your organization adopt cloud efficiently and productively? We'll ask Madhu Angara at Deloitte, and Vipin Varappurath and Chris Aron at SAP, for their take on Heads Up: Cloud Adoption Strategy Insider Tips – Part 2.

The Buzz 1: “AI will optimize or transform ‘nearly every activity in finance.'” (Craig Wilton, Gartner, quoted at www.cfodive.com/news/artificial-intelligence-gartner-finance-trends-2020/573233/) The Buzz 2: “Tech is in everything… 2021's CFOs need to be more tech-savvy than ever. Indeed, with so much big data, A.I., and robotics technology available for CFOs to utilize, learning and incorporating tech into the traditional finance role is key.” (fortune.com/2021/06/21/cfo-technology-big-data-ai-robotics/) As we begin to come out of the pandemic, the ways of doing business have inevitably changed. Companies have discovered ways to be more flexible, respond faster to changing economic conditions, better serve customers, redefine supplier relationships, and create more efficient internal processes. CFOs at mid-market companies in particular are more invested in going beyond the status quo. By embracing automation and artificial intelligence (AI), they are optimizing their own processes to then provide valued advice at the executive table, armed with real-time insights and AI-driven predictions of the financial outcomes of strategic decisions. And with their time freed-up by automation, Finance can collaborate better with other lines of business, including leveraging AI to investigate the financial impact of strategies from core finance processes on HR, manufacturing, and sales. We'll ask Birgit Starmanns at SAP, Dan Cupersmith at Analysis Prime and Bryan Pruner at Delaware Consulting for their take on Automation and AI: Helping Mid-Market CFOs Guide and Collaborate with the Business.

The Buzz 1: “Today it's not about 'get the traffic' — it's about 'get the targeted and relevant traffic.” (Adam Audette, Chief Knowledge Officer, RKG) The Buzz 2: “Optimizing your website for real people helps you gain your visitors' trust, starts building a relationship, and lets you sell products without having to jump on a sales call.” (vwo.com/website-optimization) A bit of history (Wikipedia.org): Webmasters and content providers began optimizing websites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, webmasters only needed to submit the address or URL of a page to the engines, which would send a web crawler to crawl that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.” Are you a marketer who still assumes web optimization and search engine optimization (SEO) are the same? Reality check: Not! Web optimization is much more than SEO. It's the critical first step for an effective digital marketing program, incorporating both on-page and off-page enhancements to ensure your pages are found and visitors to your website take the actions you desire. We'll ask Aaron Zitzer at Aventi Group, Tom Shapiro at Stratabeat and Diego Pineda at Vengreso for their expert insights on Web Optimization: Make Your Customers' Digital Journey Suck Less!

The buzz: “It's imperative that you find the right balance between automation and human intelligence within your business. Automation is shy; it's great for boring, repetitive tasks behind the scenes, but not so much when it comes to the frontlines.” (tigersheet.com/blog/best-automation-quotes-and-what-can-be-learnt-from-them/) Nobody wants a job doing the same repetitive tasks all day, every day. Instead, they want to spend their time making good decisions to better serve customers. Similarly, business organizations want to make optimal use of their trained people to provide the best levels of service – with a workforce increasingly working remotely, reflecting workplace flexibility accelerated by the COVID pandemic. Can your company eliminate the boredom of repetitive daily tasks? Can you better apply workforce skills to deliver consistently great service to customers and partners? Can you achieve these goals in a flexible workplace? Yes to all, when you have Intelligent Automation (IA), also called cognitive automation. IA is the use of automation technologies – artificial intelligence (AI), business process management (BPM), and robotic process automation (RPA) – to streamline and scale decision-making across organizations. We'll ask Chet Harter, Sukshitha R, and Keith Grayson for their take on Excel At Your Job, All Day, Every Day: Intelligent Automation.

The Buzz: “I'm not paid or evaluated on the accuracy of my crystal-ball predictions. I'm paid to enumerate every possible outcome and do something about every possible outcome well in advance, when it's still possible to do something, because once it's happened it's too late.” (Marty Chavez, Former CFO, Goldman Sachs) Is your organization struggling with finance transformation and future steering? How differently should you approach long-term thinking and planning, to be better prepared for future events and disruptions? It's time for answers! A comprehensive enterprise-wide planning strategy goes beyond visualization and reporting. It entails enabling extended planning and analysis across the various lines of business, leveraging real-time insights and predictive capabilities for effective decision-making to bring everyone together. Innovating and empowering your business users through modern cloud-based solutions and models accompanied by AI-driven insights will help your organization stay agile and gain fast time-to-value to make the best business decisions, given our “new normal“ dynamic market changes. We'll ask Pras Chatterjee at SAP and Jumen Rest and Neil Morton at PwC for their take on Extended Planning and Analysis for Resilient and Sustainable Organizations.

The Buzz: “'That thing out there…that is no dinosaur,' says Owen in the 2015 action/sci-fi film Jurassic World. Can the same be said about your email marketing strategy?” (mashable.com) Fifty years ago, in 1971, pioneering American computer programmer Ray Tomlinson implemented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet. It was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to ARPANET. The first business marketing email blast was sent in 1978 – and companies are still using this method of communication with customers and prospects today. Given the digital transformation every business is undergoing now as a result of the global pandemic, we're wondering if this form of communication is antiquated or truly the backbone of how we entice, engage, and convert customers. Or is it something in between? Does email fit into the modern buyer's journey? What's working and what's not? What might the future of email marketing look like? We'll ask Neal Schaffer at PDCA Social, Lindsay Miles at Emory University and Ashley Melendez at SAP for their take on eMail Marketing: Digital Dinosaur or Business Backbone?

The buzz: Big Think (https://bigthink.com/words-of-wisdom/nikola-tesla-2) discovered a visionary quote by Nikola Tesla [1856–1943] in a 1926 interview with Collier's magazine where he described the modern-day smartphone: “When wireless is perfectly applied, the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.” Fast forward to today: The Internet of Things, aka ‘IoT', has crossed over into mainstream commercial and business use. In honor of Tesla, we googled “IoT Trends 2021” and got ~75,700,000 results in 0.49 seconds. What would Tesla say about how IoT now impacts data analytics, computing at the edge, remote work, remote health care, robotics, smart homes, life in cities, automation, smart retail, cybersecurity, industrial equipment monitoring, and customer experience? We'll ask Don DeLoach at Rocket Wagon Venture Studios, Tom Raftery at SAP, Dave Friedman at Ayla Networks, Rob Tiffany at Ericsson, and Ron Rock at Microshare, Inc. to unpack IoT in the News: Ripped from the Headlines – Part 2.

The Buzz 1: “Indirect attacks against weak links in the supply chain now account for 40 percent of security breaches.” (Accenture Security / Third State of Cyber Resilience Report, www.ironnet.com) The Buzz 2: Cybersecurity in the supply chain cannot be viewed as an IT problem only. Cyber supply chain risks touch sourcing, vendor management, supply chain continuity and quality, transportation security and many other functions across the enterprise and require a coordinated effort to address.” (csrc.nist.gov) In a renewed focus on supply chain risk management and protection, and to vet their suppliers’ cybersecurity maturity, the US Department of Defense and federal government have established the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). Direct suppliers and others will be required to reach a prescribed level of maturity and be certified by a third party just to qualify to do business with state and federal agencies. Industry observers expect these requirements will be adopted in the commercial space to mitigate supply chain risk there, as well. Heads-up to all CFOs: Not attaining CMMC certification for your supply chain cybersecurity may impact your ability to drive revenue and to do business. We’ll discuss why CFOs needs to focus on supply chain management impact on cash flow, working capital and shareholder value; best practices for supply chain risk management; the importance of these federal and state guidelines; and how to identify, define, and automate the essential data handling and security controls for sensitive data within the supply chain. We’ll ask Keyaan J. Williams at CLASS-LLC, Keng Lim at NextLabs and Anne Marie Colombo at SAP for their take on CFOs: Get Ready for Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification!

The buzz 1: “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” (Tom Fishburne, Founder, Marketoonist). The buzz 2: “Marketers need to build digital relationships and reputation before closing a sale.” (Chris Brogan, CEO, Owner Media Group) The buzz 3: “Companies that speak in the language of the pitch are no longer speaking to anyone.” (The Cluetrain Manifesto, 95 business theses, 1999 – 2000) For years, sales organizations have understood the need for a new way to engage prospects and customers – particularly since traditional rolodex-dependent cold-calling was producing dismal results. Why? Buyers are demanding a personalized, customized, and integrated experience along the total customer journey. Yet at the same time, Marketers have been reluctant to embrace a new way of engaging customers – always throwing out the “volume” argument. Who is right? If sales teams are having real success with the “digital engagement” model, why are Marketers so resistant? What information / data / knowledge will help Marketers embrace this new paradigm? How can Marketers support their sales team counterparts for their collective success? We’ll ask Steve Watt at Seismic, Sarah Goodall at Tribal Impact and Charrele Robinson-Brown at SAP for their insights on what it will take for Marketers to change their mindset, skillset and potentially, their toolset, on Marketers’ Reality Check: Your Digital Presence Quotient *DPQ*.

The buzz: What drives IT executives to initiate cloud migration? Deloitte’s survey of more than 500 IT leaders and executives reveals that security and data protection is the top driver. With 58 percent of respondents ranking it No. 1 or 2, security is top-of-mind for everyone, from C-suite IT executives and senior leaders to IT managers and developers.…The No. 2 driver for cloud migration, data modernization, primarily involves moving data from legacy to modern databases.” [https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/why-organizations-are-moving-to-the-cloud.html] Let’s look at this trend more closely. Moving to the cloud is more than just a technology replacement; it is also a mindset change. The key to cloud adoption is leveraging cloud technologies in the right way, taking a center of excellence “COE” or “app factory” approach with a fail-forward, continuous iteration and improvement mindset. This is already happening in many companies, as millennials in the workforce are demanding increased automation and digitalization of key business processes. And rapid application development tools plus the empowerment of business user “citizen developers” – less reliant on central IT, with more development within lines of business – are reducing effort and shortening timelines. How can your organization adopt cloud efficiently and productively? We’ll ask Sarah Lottman at Deloitte, and Chris Aron and Vipin Varappurath at SAP, for their take on Heads Up: Cloud Adoption Strategy Insider Tips.

Wondering who today's business innovators are and what's on their plate that can change the way YOU do business next? Pour a fresh cup of your favorite breakfast beverage and join our expert panel for the debut of Breakfast with Game-Changers, as we explore these timely questions: How do game-changers think? What inspires them to develop breakthrough technologies that disrupt, excite and improve companies everywhere — and even become the stuff of legend? How long before their next “Aha moment“ impacts the way you run your business? And why do we listen to them at all? We'll also deep-dive into the topic of Mobility. Why is it considered today's leading game-change technology? How has this cataclysmic shift impacted the drivers of today's technology market? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter at #SAPRadio.

Wondering who today's business innovators are and what's on their plate that can change the way YOU do business next? Pour a fresh cup of your favorite breakfast beverage and join our expert panel for the debut of Breakfast with Game-Changers, as we explore these timely questions: How do game-changers think? What inspires them to develop breakthrough technologies that disrupt, excite and improve companies everywhere — and even become the stuff of legend? How long before their next “Aha moment“ impacts the way you run your business? And why do we listen to them at all? We'll also deep-dive into the topic of Mobility. Why is it considered today's leading game-change technology? How has this cataclysmic shift impacted the drivers of today's technology market? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter at #SAPRadio.