Southeast Asia CFO Vision 2017

The inaugural conference drew over a hundred CFOs, CEOs, and guests from across the region together for the first time in Southeast Asia, to explore the latest trends and top-of-the-mind issues faced by CFOs and emerging opportunities in Finance. 

Themed ‘Leading Finance to the future,’ the conference was graced by Member of Parliament and keynote speaker, Teo Ser Luck, and some of Singapore’s leading CFOs, CEOs and Deloitte specialists from Southeast Asia and around the world, who share perspectives on critical issues on the evolving economy and business environment of today, and how finance leaders and their teams have to evolve to stay ahead.

View the full program agenda here.

Sharing and Connecting

Plenary

Day One

Innovation and large-scale transformation in times of constant change

The world as we know it is changing - rapid advancements in technology, are profoundly altering our economy and creating new market opportunities for the organisations which can keep up and anticipate their impact. While some firms have benefitted handsomely, these same fundamental shifts have exposed other companies to significant performance pressures.

We explore the concept of identifying and scaling ‘edges’ as a methodology to innovate, transform and thrive in the world to come, including questions such as - How do you hold a long-term view and drive innovation and transformation in times of increasing quarterly reporting pressure? How do you make strategic choices in a world that is shifting at an increasingly faster pace?

Digital in Finance

Finance organisations have lots of experience managing change. But digital represents opportunities we have not seen before. Finance teams need to understand that the world will continue to move even faster and we need to prepare ourselves to meet the demands of the business and our stakeholders. Technology like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and cognitive agents are maturing rapidly and quickly filling the minds of many organisations and CFOs. Here we share some of the key digital disruptions affecting Finance and look at how CFOs can help their organisations to maximise the benefits.

CFO as a strategist

CEOs and boards increasingly want CFOs to not only deliver a finance organization that gets the numbers right, but also partner with them in shaping the company’s strategy, while still running the daily finance operations. It is important to understand the scope of a CFO’s role, where they should focus, and how they orient themselves to supporting strategy.

Deloitte’s expert shares the lessons learned from CFO Transitions, and specifically, how CFOs and CEOs align on strategy and effectively partner with the business.

Treasury trends and CFO strategic imperatives

CFOs that we have worked with reported that their Treasury function is more strategic than ever before, and in the complex business environment of today, CFOs are expected, to lead and provide the direction for the Financial Risk Management in of their organisation. In this presentation, we share a wide spectrum of foundational topics - from the various financial risks affecting businesses to building a digital-ready talent team, we will discuss what the building blocks are to successful financial risk management.

Day Two

Leadership, people and culture

Whether you are a newly appointed CFO or with years of experience in the bag, building relationships with peers in your organisation still is an important part of the role. To drive the company value and competitive advantage in the increasingly competitive environment today, it is more important than ever for CFOs to collaborate closely with other business leaders. What does the rest of the organisation generally expect from their CFOs and how can CFOs deliver effectively?

Here we explore the value of a clear, effective, and timely communications strategy; having a strong command of key enterprise issues, such as risk, finance, accounting, talent, and broader business operations; and building effective relationships with the CEO and other leaders across the enterprise, as well as address today’s pressing talent issues and feature insights into molding the team you need now - and five years from now.

Diversity & Women in leadership

More women are making their mark as leaders in various fields today in Asia. It is important for organisations and its people to see the need to accelerate diversity in the workplace.

Find out the which are some of the companies that practise diversity in the workplace environment and the benefits in promoting acceptance, respect and teamwork. 

Thriving in uncertainty: Global cost management insights and advanced cost reduction tools in the age of digital disruption

Global macroeconomic factors and the use of advanced cost tools are having a major impact on cost management efforts in organisations. This has created a cost/growth paradox we call “thriving in uncertainty,” where companies are simultaneously pursuing the seemingly conflicting goals of aggressive cost improvement and aggressive growth.

We address the results of Deloitte’s global surveys of cost management and cost improvement trends, exploring how companies are managing costs in this challenging environment and practical insights on tackling the cost/growth paradox and the incremental use of advanced cost tools related to automation and cognitive technologies.

Find out more about the cost improvement practices and trends in Asia Pacific from the Deloitte Asia Pacific Cost Survey 2017 here.

FinTech revolution: Unlocking the hidden value

In the era of Industry 4.0, FinTech has a very important role to play. Not just to enable or disrupt the financial institutions but also a key role to drive efficiency in the world of CFOs of large corporates. CFO’s role is increasingly becoming strategic. With deeper understanding of FinTech, they can further leverage opportunities that FinTech has to offer to their organisations.

Paul Tan, Managing Director, Banking and Head of Asia-Pacific of Greenwich Associates, share the key issues and opportunities faced by CFOs and how FinTech can address them.

Workshops

Workshop 1: Cybercrime in a digital age - Understanding your risks

Cybercrime has globalised exponentially into a $450 billion global industry with a projected trajectory of $6 trillion by 2021. It is now an evolved industry with sophisticated networks of cybercriminals and organised cybercrime organisations using established business models like the distribution model used for Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) to compromise and empty the coffers of any organisation with a vulnerability. It also shows no signs of stopping, with the World Economic Forum ranking ‘Massive incident of data fraud/theft’ as a top 5 Global Risk in its Global Risk Report 2017. Organisations and individuals are at risk if risk exposures or vulnerabilities are not identified appropriately and addressed in a timely manner.

Here we discuss the cyber threat landscape, the hottest tech trends and cyber risk implications, growing cyber legislations and strategic steps CFOs can take to address these cyber risks.

Workshop 2: The promise of analytics - What CFOs need to know?

No longer just an idea, predictive and prescriptive analytics have made inroads into corporations to predict financial performance, assess capital investments, and forecast and control inventories. The promise to leverage data to boost competitive advantage in turn provides insight across the value-chain that ultimately generates outcomes that help reduce costs, increase revenue, improve compliance, and reduce risks that lead to loss of funds.

Find out the latest trends in analytics and how that fits into the CFO agenda to shift towards greater visibility for smarter decision making to accelerate growth. Learn from case studies and be part of a discussion that considers the steps needed to extend analytics capabilities into finance functions. Explore innovative approaches with demonstrations and tools that enable CFOs to deliver further value throughout the business.

Workshop 3: Tax function of the future - Leveraging technology to deliver strategic tax objectives

Tax functions of multinational organisations need to manage complex stakeholder needs in a rapidly changing legislative environment. This trend seems very likely to continue and some leading organisations are already preparing for a world in which the tax function may look very different.

We consider some of the technology enablers (such as data analytics and robotics) that we see playing an important role, as well as the organisational and resourcing strategies groups are looking to leverage.

Workshop 4: Shared services trends

Shared Services Centres (SSC) have continued to play an important role in this region in improving service delivery as well as supporting growth of the business. Shared Services continue to evolve to meet the expectations of their customers and overcome talent and cost challenges.

We share the highlights of Deloitte’s 2017 Global Shared Services Survey, and emerging trends and developments in the shared services landscape. Our guest speaker will also share some of her experience in building up the next generation SSC capabilities.

Find out more about the SEA CFO Program or please contact us at cfoprogramsea@deloitte.com.