The 2012 Summit for Leaders in Finance Shared Services is designed to help you get the greatest value for money from your shared services.

With built in networking and benchmarking opportunities this is a valuable opportunity to get up to date with the key issues facing your business, as well as to meet and benchmark with your peers

Bringing together leading experts in shared services, we will address the key issues facing your business including:

Improving customer satisfaction. Expert speakers will address how they have addressed negative feedback and what changes they make to improve customer satisfaction

Harnessing efficiency savings. Learn how leading companies have reaped the rewards of standardising and automating and how they are continuing the journey of continuous improvement

Moving up the value chain. Learn how Leading companies are moving up the value chain, how they are reducing costs and improving quality

Getting the greatest value for money in shared services. Leading shared services will share their insight into best practice for efficiently and high-performance.

Day 1 - Conference

Thursday October 11th 2012

7.30am Registration and coffee

8.00am What are you looking to achieve from your shared services operation right now? Pre-conference survey results revealed!

Shared services are set up for a reason. It’s not all doom and gloom with the job losses and resistance to change involved. Real benefits are being witnessed by SSOs all around the world. So what do you want from your shared services right now? This session explores the results of your pre-conference survey to benchmark how your company’s motivations compare to others and what are the top challenges getting in the way of making sure your SSO is really delivering on its promise.

Susie West
CEO
sharedserviceslink.com

9.00am Moving HP’s Global Business Services from Low Cost Provider to Value Added Business Partner

Jeff Fiorini, Program Manager, Global Businesses Services, HP

9.45am Morning coffee and networking break – demo sponsored by Ariba

10.15am Setting up your shared services for success: an end-user consultation (one hour workshop)

If you are planning to launch a shared services operation, or are in the throes of migrating your local finance to your new SSCs, you will have a list of challenges and questions for people who have been there, done that. In this session, Deborah Moehlich will answer your questions and discuss possible solutions for your own challenges in this highly-interactive session. Deborah has defined the vision and managed the implementation of Fiserv’s newly created Financial Shared Services Center (FSSC), building up to 60+ associates to handle F&A activities for the enterprise and has several tips and key lessons learnt to help you start your journey.

Deborah Moehlich
Director of Financial Systems and Shared Services
Fiserv

11.15am Moving up the value chain: harnessing the value of shared services

Once a shared services center is initially birthed, it is critical to provide immediate value. However, it is also important to continue to add value throughout the shared services life cycle - from infancy to maturity. This session will provide a case study on two shared services centers' journies toward continuous value creation. In the session you will learn:

• The need for successful results for credibility and trust.
• The critical importance of an effective governance model.
• The design of an effective balance scorecard to drive high performance and results.
• The importance of integrating end to end functions with a Partnership Model.
• How to to develop and implement 3 year value creation plans.

 Ed Martinez
Vice President, Shared Services
The Wendy’s Company

12.00pm The speaker clinic

12.15pm Networking lunch with topic tables

1:15pm What steps can you take to transform your shared services’ customer satisfaction?

Interactive Session

In this session, Bhupesh Patel shares how Coca Cola’s shared services identified the root causes of problems and the steps they took to drastically transform their customer satisfaction. The audience will then break out into roundtables to share ideas with peers on what are best practices for improving customer satisfaction, even with great pressure to keep operational costs to a minimum. Attend this session to be fuelled with ideas to gain and keep respect from your shared services’ customers.

Bhupesh Patel, Head of Procure to Pay Operations
The Coca -Cola Company

2.00pm Global process standardization: how can you ensure a smooth transition and global customer satisfaction

Standard global processes are essential to take out huge operational costs from global companies. But resistance from local business units, particularly because of legal and regulatory exceptions, is a huge obstacle that many global process owners struggle to overcome. In this session, Kim Rankel shares how Eli Lilly’s standardized their procure-to-pay process globally to contribute towards saving $1 billion in operational costs in just over one year and reveals the lessons that could make your standardization smoother.

Kim Rankel
Director Purchase to Pay North America
Eli Lilly

“Excellent networking opportunity”
Senior Manager
Market Development
Connolly Consulting

2.45pm Afternoon refreshments and networking break – demo sponsored by 3c InSight

3.15pm Mandatory versus non-mandatory approaches to e-invoicing: what works best for you?

Interactive Session

The Treasury Department has mandated all of its suppliers to submit invoices electronically either via its portal or its business-to-government network. They are also encouraging other government agencies to voluntarily adopt e-invoicing. What lessons have they learnt from using both approaches? In this session, Adam Goldberg facilitates roundtable discussions to share his experience and your peers so you know what approach works best for you to maximise your own electronic invoice conversion.

Adam Goldberg
Executive Architect
US Treasury

4.00pm How to keep your reputation with smart talent planning when rapidly expanding your shared services operation

4.45pm The speaker clinic

5:15pm Chair’s close

5.30pm Cocktail reception

“Very good networking framework. The small set-up drives collaboration and interaction (very good).”
Head of Shared Accounting Services
ABB

“Not only informative, but information I can take away and use immediately.”
Director of Accounts Payable
Bell Canada

DAY 2: Conference 

Friday October 12th 2012

8.00am Registration and coffee

8.30am Maturing your shared services: what value drivers are you now considering and how are you going to achieve them? Value drivers examined include:

• Cost savings
• Ability to support company growth e.g. integrating acquisitions • Accelerating policy development
• Enabling innovation into services and business processes
• Business insights

This session also explores how to weigh these value drivers against cost-benefits and returns on investment

“By far met and exceeded all my expectations.”
Shared Services Director
Cash America International

9.15am What financial processes should you outsource? Why and how can you make the transition as easy as possible?

Interactive Session

The Treasury Department is standing-up a pilot for an end-to-end billing and collections capability, or “centralized receivable service”. Federal Departments and agencies can volunteer to participate in the pilot. Once fully deployed, Treasury estimates that the service could deliver $350-400M in additional collections and savings ($310-340M from improved collections and $40-60M from reduced costs). This is one of several shared solutions under development with the US Federal government. So how do you decide what financial processes you should outsource? Share ideas with Adam and your other peers to discuss how to correctly choose suitable financial processes and migrate them as smoothly as possible.

Adam Goldberg
Executive Architect
US Treasury

10.00am Morning coffee and networking break – demo sponsored by Readsoft

10:30pm 7 Simple Techniques You Can Use to Add Value through Changes to Your Accounts Payable Shared Service Center

For the most part, accounts payable is considered a cost center, and an expensive one at that. While shared services drastically reduce the cost of this critical function, there are steps any shared service center can take to further reduce the cost and in a few rare instances actually add to the bottom line. This is not about smoke and mirrors but rather simple strategies that are easily implemented.
Ms. Schaeffer will explain how each of these techniques works and how you can implement them in our own shared services center. She will be joined by a practitioner who has implemented some of these strategies.

Mary S. Schaeffer, Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow

11:30pm The speaker clinic

12.00pm Networking lunch

“Fantastic!”
Accounts Payable Manager
Sodexo

1.00pm Fight your technology gremlins! Bring your number one technology challenge and discuss with peers how to resolve them. Challenges covered include:

• P-cards
• Audit recovery
• e-Invoicing
• Line-level matching, OCR and advanced data capture
• ERP implementations
• Workflow solutions and document management
• Accounts receivable automation

Steve Slatzer Project Leader
Finance Business Services
Invensys

Nick Dadswell Director
Finance Business Service Invensys
Invensys

1:45pm How can you enable your shared services to expand and really add value?

Outsourcing is not always the answer. Whichever way you look at it, a key cog in your machine to keep control, drive efficiency and free up your resources for expanding shared services’ scope is automation. So what has made the difference for Mohawk? In this session, Cindy Hein discusses how to implement OB10’s e-invoicing solution to now process 2.5 million invoices per year with just 19 accounts payable clerks. She will then reveal where staff are being redeployed to add more value for their organization and what plans are in place for Mohawk’s next generation of shared services delivery.

Cindy Hein
Director of Shared Services
Mohawk

“Worth attending and will get ROI on the cost, also good networking.”
Head of Procure-to-Pay Operations
Coca Cola

2:30pm Afternoon refreshments

2:45pm What drives a high performing accounts payable function?

A recent study on Accounts Payable productivity has identified a number top-performing AP departments based on key metrics. This session will address how a number of these leading companies consistently perform high on KPIs, and eight best practices consistently observed amongst the top performers.

Eric Jones, Director - Corporate Payables, US Tresaury

Todd Holcomb, Director of Supplier Services, Alliance Data

3:30pm How can you consistently impress your shared services’ customers even when going through huge system and organizational transformations?

When managing huge transformations such as implementing an ERP or going through huge organizational redesign, often your shared services reputation can get damaged. So how can you carefully plan for this to truly deliver satisfaction while making these necessary changes?

4:00pm Chair’s summation followed by the speaker clinic

4:15pm Close of conference

“Efficient and profitable – sharper than SSON, more interactive and therefore more useful.”
Director of Accounts Payable 
Lafarge

“Very good speakers, good topics and very efficient timing of presentations.”
Supply Chain Management and Global Procure-to-Pay Manager
Newmont Mining Company

Pre-Conference Learning Labs

Wednesday October 10th 2012

Learning labs are the perfect way to drill down into the detail on how to solve some of the top challenges faced by shared services leaders.

Our two-hour group exercises provide the perfect opportunity to rigorously assess how certain strategies and technologies would work in your own company scenario, benchmark with your peers and leave with detailed information about the latest shared services solutions in the market.

Learning Lab A

10.00am – 12.00pm

e-Invoicing 2.0 - the art of e-Invoicing Enforcing Process Compliancy

e-Invoicing is recognized as the future of processing invoice transactions. Businesses are now asking: how do I improve my AP process beyond simply taking out mailroom costs?

How do I achieve maximum supplier participation?

There is a range of critical factors to achieving success in your e-Invoicing program. Donna Weaver will take you through a step-by-step process to ensuring success, including:

• Benchmark yourself: take the e-Invoicing readiness assessment
• Understanding your project scope
• Building a business case for success and mitigate risks
• Setting the right targets and putting best practices in place to follow them through
• The critical factors to onboard suppliers
• International considerations
• Learning from the experience of other organizations

Learning Lab facilitator
Donna Weaver
OB10

Learning Lab B

10.00am – 12.00pm

How to transform visibility and control of your shared service operation with minimal cost per document

Electronic document imaging solutions automate your business processes to significantly reduce your costs per transaction. But often companies don’t realise the full costs of owning and maintaining their own solution, meaning ROI is slow to materialize. If you want the benefits of increased control and visibility for your finance operation with little to no capital expenditure and end-to-end IT support included in low per-document processing fees, this learning lab reveals a new cloud-based solution and:

• How to use ’detail’ data extraction to provide valuable dashboards for executive-level visibility and strategic decision making
• New tracking functionality to inspect what you expect and manage corporate issues more effectively
• Insight on how to find real ROI!
• How to eliminate off-the-shelf gaps and meet all business needs with one solution
• The top three reasons for implementation failures and how to prevent them
• How to leverage best practice business rules that can turn a department into a profit center

Learning Lab facilitator
Diane Gasparro
XTglobal

“Refreshingly better than most conferences I have attended before from different providers.”

Director of Accounts Payable
Medline Industries

“Great! Well organized and very effective format.”

Accounts Payable Manager
Alliance Data

Learning Lab C

12.30pm – 3.00pm (includes working lunch)

Smart Invoicing for Shared Services: Move Beyond Scanning to Achieve Paperless Invoice Processing

Scanning and OCR are sometimes considered a last stop in efforts to streamline invoice processing, but for shared services organizations committed to best practices in accounts payable, they are only a first step. This session will discuss how a "smart invoicing" approach over a business commerce network helps companies capture invoices from all suppliers for complete automation of their procure-to-pay process. The ability to achieve touchless invoice processing rates of 98 percent or higher with smart invoicing can’t be achieved with other AP automation approaches.

Attend this session and learn how you can:

• Eliminate errors and exceptions at the point your supplier’s submit invoices to you
• Ensure that contracts and purchases comply with your policies, procedures, and preferred vendors
• Reduce supplier inquiries and maintenance costs using a self-service supplier portal
• Expand the capture of early payment discounts while meeting your days payable outstanding (DPO) objectives
• Comply with local regulatory mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley and the EU’s e-Invoicing Directive

Learning Lab facilitator
James Tucker
Ariba

Learning Lab D

12.30pm – 3.00pm (includes working lunch)

Collaborative process excellence: how to optimize and then continuously improve your end-to-end financial processes

This workshop reveals how leading organizations including BAE Systems, Cameron and Sony are applying business process management to underpin operational excellence of their shared services and global business services operations. This is not just about implementing or optimizing ERPs, but how to make continuous process improvement a sustainable, competitive advantage which improves service quality, improves efficiency and ensures compliance.

This powerful learning lab will show you how to:

• Attain visibility of end-to-end processes and their performance
• Improve service delivery and customer experience via process standardization and transparency
• Improve collaboration between all process stakeholders including shared service staff, process owners, IT, compliance and customers
• Engage all employees in continuous process improvement
• Accelerate the speed at which you implement, adopt, upgrade, improve and consolidate your ERP landscape.

Learning Lab facilitator
Clark Swain
Nimbus Americas at TIBCO

Learning Lab E

3.30pm – 5.30pm

Optimizing working capital – integrating decision analytics in the fundamentals

Predicting and managing cash flow allows your CFO, controller and treasury department to make critical decisions to give your company its future competitive edge. But many shared services and finance directors have little insight into their credit and collections and payments processes. Are you doing everything necessary to collect cash from customers? Are you sure you are paying the right price for the right service? Are you always ensuring payments to vendors are paid exactly to terms and not too soon? And when invoices qualify for early payment discounts, are you always taking advantage of these? Have you integrated analytics in to projecting your working capital? In this learning lab, discover how to:

• Reduce your days sales outstanding (DSO)
• Gain clear insight into your procurement and payment processes
• Ensure payments are made exactly when they are due, capture discounts, understand working capital
• Keep your vendors happy
• Maintain control of your knowledge capital
• Utilization of Decision Analytics to understand current activities and project future working capital requirements

Learning Lab facilitator
Narasimha Kini
EXL

 Learning Lab F

3:30pm-5:30pm

Premium Plus
conference + 3 Learning Labs  

50% off
$1649.50

50% off
$1449.50

50% off
$1224.50

50% off
$999.50

Bring your team! sharedserviceslink.com understands the value of team knowledge sharing. Groups booking at the same time from the same company receive the following discounts (discounts apply to the full price only and cannot be applied retrospectively). Only one discount is applicable per non-member. In order to qualify for the early bird discounts, bookings must be received with payment before stated date. We do not combine discounts but we will honour the discount that is better for you.

To make a group booking call +1-646-845-7349

Bring your team!

Teams of 2 10% discount
Teams of 3 15% discount
Teams of 4 20% discount
Teams of 5 25% discount
Teams of 6 30% discount
Teams of 7 35% discount
Teams of 8 40% discount

Satisfaction guarantee at sharedserviceslink.com

We are absolutely confident that you will receive value for money. To give this belief credence we are offering a money-back guarantee if you feel you have not experienced value for money from attending our events. There is no catch. To qualify for this you need to ensure you liaise with Susie West directly before the end of the conference, and that you attend all conference sessions over the two days. Learning Labs are not included in this guarantee. All refunds will deduct a 10% administration fee.