Register today for Maximising SAP to Enhance Finance Shared Services Excellence. This conference will help you discover how to:

• Exploit the latest SAP HANA and in-memory technology for real-time reports
• Organise governance between IT and finance to optimise your SAP user base
• Fill the knowledge gap when IT support leaves and your SAP systems are being utilised
• Train your users in the most effective way to use SAP (without the exorbitant training costs!)
• Support a global roll out
• Optimise your financial close and financial reporting processes
• Successfully automate your accounts receivable
• Easily manage your service delivery across multiple instances of SAP
• Successfully interface e-invoicing providers with your SAP system

Who is coming this year?

This year’s event brings you open discussions led by pioneering end users, such as AstraZeneca, Microsoft and Rolls-Royce. It is the perfect platform for benchmarking your activities and sharing ideas on how to solve the challenges you face.

Some of the organisations attending this year include:

ABB Engineering Services, ABN AMRO Bank NV, Airbus, Akzo Nobel Functional Chemicals, Alstom, BAE Systems, Boston Scientifics, EDF Energy, GSK, Kingfisher, Kraft Foods, Lyondellbasell Industries, Recticel, RS Components, SAP Business Objects, Tommy Hilfiger, Vodafone and more.

To get a feel of what you'll get from this event, download a selection of the best presentations from last year’s conference:

1. Edda Media case study: Implement a new general ledger functionality with one person and no consultants!
2. Airbus case study: Transforming travel and expenses
3. Unilever case study: How to regionalise your SAP landscape and then optimise on your SAP ERP backbone
4. SAP presentation: Squeezing out the functionality gaps: what’s new and coming up with SAP?

We are confident that the time you spend at our SAP event will pay for itself. We are so sure of this that we offer you a money-back guarantee if by the end of the event you  don’t feel you got the value you expected.
 

Day one: Wednesday 19th October 2011

09:00  Key strategies to consider for making sure SAP meets the needs of today’s finance professionals
When investing in SAP we all have the same goals in mind – to provide business intelligence through improved visibility of data, process elegance and performance excellence. But the deployment of SAP is not a simple one. It requires massive change and crucially, alignment between the IT and business functions. This session will give you an overview of what SAP users within finance shared services are doing to ensure they are getting the most from their investment.

Susie West
CEO
sharedserviceslink.com

09:45  Seven winning strategies for Europe-wide SAP improvement
Airbus is working towards its long-term objective of achieving a single SAP platform in 2017. Instead of simply waiting for its end objectives to be attained, it is capitalising from a lot of quick wins along the way. Discover how Airbus is capitalising off SAP to improve efficiencies immediately for short-term gains. This session is a must if you are looking to harmonise processes and tools between different projects and systems. Philipp Visotschnig will be looking in particular at how he has:

• Overcome cultural and language differences to streamline processes across the organisation
• Identified short-term wins that can increase efficiencies and reduce confusion
• Harmonised Airbus’ way of working whilst keeping legacy systems

Philipp Visotschnig
Head of Finance, Transformation and Improvement Program
Airbus

10:30 Morning coffee

Managing change

14:00 Implementing change: how can we ensure that people fully take on new working procedures after a major upgrade?
SAP promises to be an outstanding tool for competitive advantage within your organisation. Once you have trained your shared services users on new processes, how can you ensure that you will engage everyone’s commitment to making the new systems a success?

This session highlights real ABB case studies outlining how its change processes enabled it to move from seven ERP systems to one in the UK, with delivery on time and within budget. If you want to discover key tips on how to gain the full support of employees to maximise the benefits to your organisation then don’t miss this insightful session. 

Representative
ABB Engineering

15:00 What new SAP technology developments are there and how will they affect your work?
You might have heard the terms ‘in-memory technology’ and ‘SAP HANA’ mentioned more and more frequently recently. Not sure exactly what they mean, or what the new technology can do for you? Find out straight from SAP – exactly what the new  developments from SAP are and why hours of sifting through old data might soon be a thing of the past. Join this session and discover:

• Some of the newest case studies and early use of SAP HANA
• How to rapidly increase your ability to pull out data and reports in seconds
• Revolutionise the way your finance departments use SAP

Colin Sharp
Senior Director
SAP Business Objects

15:45 Afternoon refreshments

16.15 How to bridge your SAP users’ knowledge gap once your new system has been rolled out and the technical support team has left
The expensive roll-out of your much-planned and long-awaited new system is complete. The technicians have been and gone, and now it’s down to your people to get up-to-speed on the intricacies and intention of the new system. Many of us struggle to fill that knowledge gap. Once the support team has gone though, what choices do we have if we don’t want to pay exorbitant prices for lengthy and time-consuming training? Microsoft came up with a very smart solution that meant its SAP users required no such training. This session reveals how clear communication of the finance specifications meant that IT could deliver exactly what was needed in a language everyone could understand for maximum functionality in SAP.

Srinivas Krishna
Director Finance Operations
Microsoft

Toning up your financial close process

17:00 Interactive discussion: how to identify and root out backlogs and inefficiencies in your financial close process
There is an increasing pressure to reduce close cycles. So what tools can you use to find out where unnecessary steps exist in your process? And once you have made these process changes, how do you configure SAP as quickly as possible to reflect these?
Facilitator: Robert Watson
Global Process Owner
AstraZeneca

Philipp Visotschnig
Head of Finance, Transformation and Improvement Program
Airbus

17:45 The Speaker Clinic

18:00 Chair's close

Register now

Day two: Thursday 20th October 2011

08:30 Morning coffee

09:00 Top-ten take aways from day one

Susie West
CEO
sharedserviceslink.com

09:45 Driving effective processes that leverage SAP for best-in-class g lobal
transaction processing
Vodafone, winners of the Gold Award for new business application implementation at the 2010 SAP Quality Awards, will talk about how it is driving excellence in processes across finance, HR and supply chain by leveraging SAP. Focusing on the finance transformation and the resulting efficiency improvements, this presentation will explore how Vodafone has:

• Leveraged global processes for improved efficiency and effectiveness
• Deployed shared services to support a broad range of finance processes
• Established a single finance operations organisation encompassing local markets and shared services
• Optimised its use of SAP standard processes and process governance to drive further efficiency improvements

Simon Oddie
Finance Strategy and Transformation Leadements
Vodafone

10.30 Morning coffee

Complying with regulatory requirements

11.00 Successfully using portals internally and externally in the P2P process
Kingfisher recently set up a wireless supplier portal that integrates fully with SAP. Its entire journey – from sourcing, procurement, invoice and dispute management right up to payment will be discussed in this eye-opening session. Michael will offer insights into the way in which the project was implemented at Kingfisher and what lessons were learnt along the way for internal business partners, procurement, finance, and suppliers. If
you are looking to improve collaboration with your suppliers for improved mobility of cash flow, then this session will prove really useful for you.

Michael Hyltoft
Finance Transformation Manager
Kingfisher

11.45 How to organise governance between IT and finance to optimise your SAP user base
Changes in the external environment (such as new legislations) often highlight fragility in our business processes and business systems. This was the case for Rolls-Royce’s VAT arrangements. This session addresses how they set up proper governance processes across the business and identified how SAP could be exploited to meet VAT regulatory requirements. It is a must-attend for anyone wanting to increase control across IT and finance departments.

Charles Grant
ERP Process Specialist
Rolls-Royce

12.30 The speaker clinic

13.00 Networking lunch

15:30 Afternoon refreshments

16.00 Tackling the complexities of master data management for enhanced business insight
Managing master data to create a database of reliable information is at the top of everyone’s agenda. This will help shared services to standardise the processes and secure end-to-end finance flows. Akzo Nobel Functional Chemicals has made huge progress in this space, and with an imminent merger on its doorstep, further measures will be in place to improve on the work it has already done. This enlightening session will investigate:

• Challenges for Akzo Nobel in a shared SAP system environment
• The path from ‘traditional’ to ‘advanced’ master data management
• What supportive tools are available and what selection criteria you should use to drive your decision
• Ensuring your governance of master data for long-term success
• What lies ahead for Akzo Nobel on a corporate level: a balancing act between independent businesses and harmonised processes

Peter Palm
Information Manager - Control Accounting
Akzo Nobel Functional Chemicals

16.45 Chair's summary

17.00 The speaker clinic

17.15 Close of conference

Tuesday 18th October 2011

Choose up to three learning labs from A or B, then C and/or D

08:15-11:15 Learning Lab A: How to maximise SAP automation to enhance purchase to pay, master data management and order to cash processes

As a shared services director or manager running your shared services operation off SAP, you will be very familiar with limitations that can impact daily activities. Processes like purchase to pay, order to cash and master data management rely heavily on the set up and functionality of SAP. Issues such as fragmented communications with subsidiaries, suppliers, customers and internal functions, or poor visibility and auditability of your process management can lead to a shared service under delivering.

In this fascinating learning lab, you will learn how you can:

• Automate the bulk of your shared-services processes and transactions
• Significantly reduce transaction costs across finance operations
• Set up SAP to enable a world-class financial transaction process flow
• Accelerate the speed at which you standardise your vendor master data, financial processes and reporting

Learning Lab facilitator
Adam Chapman, Readsoft

08:15-11:15 Learning Lab B: How to exploit SAP functionality to ensure automated and accurate VAT reporting

A focused and interactive learning lab demonstrating bestpractice techniques to exploit standard SAP functionality to drive accurate and fully-automated VAT determination. Complying with European VAT legislation across multiple legal entities and reporting jurisdictions is an increasingly complex and costly burden. However, with little enhancement to its core VAT determination functionality over the past 25 years, SAP provides business with no out-of-the-box solution to manage complex
VAT flows found in almost all multinational companies.

However, there is way to modify your SAP system to cater for all VAT complexities, in a flexible and future-proof manner. Join this learning lab to discover:

• What complex business flows typically occur across multinational businesses
• Limitations in how standard SAP handles such flo ws which in turn forces many business to introduce high-risk, manual workarounds
• Various solutions and techniques to overcome these limitations
• A best practice approach that harnesses SAP functionality to drive compliant, automated VAT determination
• A session rich in content that has real, tangible benefits to both VAT and SAP professionals.

Learning Lab facilitator
Roger Lindelauf, Meridian International VAT Consulting Limited

11:30-14:30 Learning Lab C: How to get the most out of SAP
Many finance organisations are happy to have chosen SAP but under-whelmed by the reality. What should be operational excellence enabled by the power of SAP is often operational disappointment. Many wish that they had paid more attention to change management, governance and training to avoid the consequences that often come from an IT-led project.

This workshop is about how Nimbus Control enables an organisation to leverage SAP to deliver its full potential. Nimbus Control enables an SAP implementation to be
business-led. Post implementation, it underpins operational excellence and continuous improvement. It provides a collaborative and governance framework for stakeholders
involved in change – business, IT, compliance and Lean teams.

This powerful learning lab will show you how to:

• Attain visibility of end-to-end processes and their performance
• Secure a personalised ‘intelligent operations manual on every desktop
• Meet the needs of process stakeholders especially in IT and compliance
• Enable continuous improvement
• Accelerate finance transformation
• Integrate with SAP Solution Manager

Learning Lab facilitator
Mike Gammage, Nimbus Partners

14:45-17:54 Learning Lab D: Extending SAP for e-invoicing to drive collaborative commerce and ensure global compliance
SAP optimises business processes within an organisation, but the business advantage today often comes from networked enterprises that collaborate with suppliers and other
business partners outside their firewall and outside SAP. In this excellent learning lab, you will discover how to extend your SAP environment for e-invoicing and collaborative business commerce, so you can:

• Support VAT, GST, PST and other sales tax methods to ensure e-invoicing compliance within SAP
• Ensure orders generated by SAP or other systems are matched to preferred suppliers by commodity type, region and other variables
• Ensure that invoices consistently meet your defined price, quantity and related line-item variances for each order or contract
• Automate the matching of orders, invoices, goods receipt and contracts for touchless processing within your SAP environment
• Address the compliance requirements of invoices billed against blanket POs
• Authenticate your supplier’s electronic signature
• Comply with local regulatory mandates such as Sarbanes-
• Oxley and the EU’s e-Invoicing Directive
• This interactive lab will showcase how organisations are achieving results today by extending their SAP environment for collaborative commerce.

Learning Lab facilitators
David Wolstencroft and Richard Downs Ariba

Prices available for this conference