Plenary & Keynote Addresses

Plenary Address: Fighting the Recession: A Trillion Here, A Trillion There

David A. Wyss, Chief Economist, Standard & Poor's

The economy deteriorated with amazing speed in the fourth quarter, turning what had appeared to be a mild recession into what may be the longest and deepest downturn since the Depression. The freeze in financial markets originally triggered by subprime mortgage securities but which has since expanded to other sectors, is both cause and symptom of the economic difficulties, because the U.S. economy has been living beyond its means for the last decade. The capitulation of the consumer in the fourth quarter broke any remaining support for the economy. Getting the economy growing again requires both maintaining a functional financial system and restarting demand, without reviving the imbalances that caused the crisis. The deep downturn and cloudiness of the crystal ball multiplies problems for corporate budgeting and planning. The news will be bad, but how bad for how long? New information from both the economy and the organization needs to be incorporated more frequently into the planning process to provide greater visibility, foster agility, and enable better overall performance.

Key Issues

• Why this is the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, and is expected to be the longest and deepest recession since the Depression
• The crystal ball is even foggier than usual, since most normal financing mechanisms and other relationships have broken down
• Why the current situation requires great flexibility and frequent reassessment of corporate plans and finances

About the Speaker

David A. Wyss is chief economist at Standard & Poor's, based in New York. In this position, he is responsible for S&P's economic forecasts and publications. He is on the board of the National Association for Business Economics. Dr. Wyss testifies regularly before Congress, is quoted regularly in the press, and has appeared on many major television programs. He has also written many articles for popular and professional publications.

Keynote Address: Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting Today: The Shocking Gap between Best Practice and Business as Usual

Mary C. Driscoll, Senior Research Fellow, APQC and former President and Editorial Director, CFO Research Services

Economic volatility heightens the need for fast performance forecasting and resource re-allocation. A CEO needs to be able to turn to the CFO and get a quick and reliable sense of the likely impacts of competing tactical options, along with sound recommendations for profit optimization and risk mitigation. This is not a new concept. The call for relevance in financial analysis was sounded some time ago. Still, financial benchmarks generated at the APQC show that a surprising number of large North American businesses still house finance groups that spend too much time on mind-numbing and low-value tasks. At a time when companies need to be using advanced tools and techniques in planning, budgeting and forecasting, too many remain bogged down in static budgeting and planning exercises that serve nobody well. In this presentation, Ms. Driscoll draws from the APQC database of best practices and benchmarks to demonstrate the intellectual value that a well-equipped and well-directed finance organization can provide.

Key Issues

• How Finance can raise the financial IQ. of business rainmakers
• Working with business leaders to track the really important performance indicators
• Collaborating on smart mid-course corrections

About the Speaker

Mary Driscoll is an author, editor, and lecturer with expertise in corporate finance and business management. She serves as Senior Research Fellow at APQC where she leads the new financial-management best practices research initiative. For over 30 years, APQC has been on the leading edge of improving performance and fostering innovation around the world. APQC is a member-based nonprofit currently serving more than 500 organizations in all sectors of business, education, and government. Previously, she was President of CFO Research, the research services arm of CFO magazine. She spent seven years as a Senior Editor at CFO, developing features on topics ranging from finance transformation and capital markets to financial management information systems and leadership development. CFO magazine is a division of the Economist Group, based in London. 

Keynote Address: Enterprise Risk Management – Integrating ERM into the Strategic and Financial Planning Process

James Lam, President, James Lam & Associates and Author of Enterprise Risk Management

Why didn’t risk management, even at sophisticated global banks, do more to prevent or mitigate the fallout from the financial crisis? What are the critical barriers to effective risk management? More importantly, how do we overcome these barriers going forward?  In this keynote session, we will examine these questions and discuss what is wrong with risk management and how do we fix it. Recent surveys indicate that risk management has replaced accounting issues as the top concern for corporate boards. While the level of interest in risk management has never been greater, companies must avoid common pitfalls and implement practical solutions. Key topics include strengthening board risk oversight, establishing risk policies and tolerance levels, developing key risk metrics and dashboard reporting, integrating ERM into strategic and financial planning, and establishing an objective feedback loop on risk management effectiveness.

Key Issues

• Reviewing key lessons learned from the financial crisis
• Developing key risk metrics and dashboard reporting
• Common risk management pitfalls to avoid
  

About the Speaker

Mr. Lam has over twenty years of experience in risk and business management and is widely noted as the first ever "chief risk officer" and an early advocate of enterprise risk management. In a Euromoney survey, Mr. Lam was nominated by clients and peers as one of the leading risk consultants in the world.  Mr. Lam is the author of Enterprise Risk Management: From Incentives to Controls, which has ranked #1 best selling among 25,000 risk management titles on Amazon.com. Mr. Lam received the inaugural Risk Manager of the Year Award from the Global Association of Risk Professionals.  Treasury & Risk magazine named him one of the "100 Most Influential People in Finance" in 2005, 2006, and 2008. 

Keynote Address: Virgin Mobile USA Case Study: Today’s Risky Business

John Feehan, CFO, Virgin Mobile USA

Last year, when leading wireless company Virgin Mobile USA recognized that a retail partner was heading toward bankruptcy, CFO John Feehan, had to take action. Based on key data, John tightened billing terms, demanded cash payments, and adjusted shipments. This analysis of potential risk and the options to avoid it took the sting of the partner’s economic troubles off the table. Management all share the same agenda for growing the company and being successful; everyone at the table, however, comes from a different perspective so the CFO must be rigorous in seeking to forecast and plan for both possible and improbable risk.

There are a myriad of opportunities and challenges presented to Virgin Mobile every day and the CFO plays a key role in evaluating every business decision, a normally vital step but in these unusually challenging times, more critical than ever while maintaining a healthy balance sheet.

Key Issues

• Risk management transition from private to public company
• Evaluating mergers and acquisitions
• Operating in the current economy

About the Speaker 

John Feehan joined Virgin Mobile USA in January of 2002 as vice president of finance and was promoted to chief financial officer in August 2006. He is responsible for the company's overall financial activities and planning. Prior to joining Virgin Mobile, he served as chief financial officer of SAGE BioPharma. Feehan previously worked for Faro Pharmaceuticals as vice president - financial and operational planning and as director of finance for Stadtlander Drug Distribution Co. Feehan began his career at Price Waterhouse in Philadelphia and holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from St. Joseph’s University.

Plenary Address: Linking Strategic Planning to Operations

Dr. Robert S. Kaplan, Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School & Co-Author of

The Execution Premium

A strategic plan generally includes objectives for revenue growth and cost reductions. For these to be achieved, the enterprise must align its strategic initiatives and operational programs to enhance the value proposition offered to targeted customers and focus its process improvement capabilities where they can have the greatest impact. Dr. Kaplan will illustrate how to translate a strategy map’s process objectives into strategic initiatives and focused operational improvement efforts. Process mapping and analytical studies inform the design of operational dashboards that provide guidance and feedback to daily improvement efforts. The strategy’s revenue growth and productivity objectives also must be translated into resource spending decisions to supply adequate capacity to meet the expected volume and mix of sales. If, in the current economic environment, the strategic plan forecasts a contraction in revenue, the finance function must know how much and where to cut back on resource capacity. Come here how the finance function plays a vital role in linking strategy to operations by ensuring that short-term financial targets and resources are consistent with the strategic plan’s long-term priorities.

Key Issues 

• Select and fund strategic initiatives to deliver the capabilities to achieve long-term strategic targets
• Set priorities and design dashboards for process improvement programs
• Align spending on resource capacity to the demands from the strategic plan

About the Speaker

Robert S. Kaplan is Baker Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School. Kaplan joined the HBS faculty in 1984 after spending 16 years on the faculty of the business school at Carnegie-Mellon University, where he served as Dean from 1977 to 1983. Kaplan received a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T., and a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Cornell University. Kaplan’s research, teaching, and consulting focus on linking cost and performance management systems to strategy implementation and operational excellence. He has been a co-developer of both activity-based costing and the Balanced Scorecard. He has authored or co-authored 13 books, 16 Harvard Business Review articles, and more than 120 other papers.

Keynote Address: Increasing Your Expenses to Drive-Up Shareholder Returns

Anand Sanwal, Managing Director, Brilliont and former Vice President, Investment Optimization and Strategic Business Analysis, American Express & Author or Optimizing Corporate

Portfolio Management

This presentation is based on quantitative research of 800 mid- and large-cap companies and their revenue and stock price growth from 2002-2008. The study found that companies that increase their investments in strategic expenses over time actually outperform the market and competitive peers and as a result, companies that invest in strategic expenses while minimizing non-strategic expenses deliver superior results. Anand will share details of the analysis as well as the process and cost optimization discipline that helps companies achieve this. It will also cover how an organization’s Balanced Scorecard can aid in such an effort by helping to translate the organization’s desire to do this into specific operational goals that leverage the data captured in a Balanced Scorecard. 

Key Issues

• How increasing investments in certain types of expenses is beneficial to corporate performance, revenue growth and shareholder returns
• Minimizing non-strategic expenses to create additional investment capacity in strategic expenses
• Using the Balanced Scorecard to help accelerate the development of a cost optimization discipline
  

About the Speaker

Anand Sanwal is currently a Managing Director with Brilliont. He is the former Vice President, Investment Optimization and Strategic Business Analysis, at American Express where he was responsible for building, managing and leading the company's corporate portfolio management effort managing several billion dollars of per annum discretionary investment and project spending. It is widely recognized as the most ambitious corporate portfolio management undertaking within a large- or mid-size corporation. In this role, he also oversaw the CFO's strategic planning group and the company’s first-ever $50MM Chairman’s Innovation Fund.  American Express was recently recognized as the most innovative financial services company by Fortune Magazine for these efforts. He is the author of the book Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy (Wiley, April 2007) which features a foreword by former American Express CFO, Gary Crittenden.

Keynote Address: Winning in the Downturn: Secrets in Economic Survival
from Wal-Mart

Charles Fishman, Award-winning Journalist, Fast Company Magazine &
Author, The Wal-Mart Effect

In all the news about the damage the downturn is doing, there is one dramatic exception: Wal-Mart. While respected global giants from Toyota to American Express struggle, Wal-Mart thrives — with growing sales, increasing profits, new customers, a new image, even a new attitude. It's no accident. Wal-Mart was ready for the economic hard times. The retailer’s performance owes much to a culture that has often been mocked — unwavering budget discipline, tireless frugality, and long-range financial planning tightly linked to performance goals. In this talk, Charles Fishman goes deep inside the company to pull out the lessons that other businesses can take from Wal-Mart's culture of financial accountability. He gives you ideas you can use now, a way of thinking about your strategy and business when stability returns, and a burst of energy for tackling tough times -- all told with the vivid anecdotes and case-studies which are the hallmark of Fishman's work.

Key Issues

• Why Wal-Mart is always planning for the downturn, and always ready for it
• Creating Wal-Mart’s culture of financial accountability: confront the numbers, confront reality
• How Wal-Mart’s frugality provides a sense of freedom, nimbleness and even innovation

About the Speaker

Charles Fishman is an award-winning investigative and magazine journalist, who has spent the last 20 years trying to get inside, understand and explain important organizations, from NASA to Wal-Mart. Fishman was the first reporter ever permitted inside a Tupperware factory, and he was the first reporter in 30 years allowed inside the nation’s only bomb factory. Since 1996, Fishman has been a senior writer at Fast Company magazine. In 2005 he won a Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business journalism. His original story for Fast Company about Wal-Mart, "The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know," won best business magazine story of 2004 from the New York Press Club. His magazine writing has been included in Best Business Stories of the Year. “The Wal-Mart Effect,” his first book, made the bestseller lists of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek.