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Aprilsaw the rst SAP CFO Executive forum session in Melbourne, hosted by SAP in conjunction with The
Australian Financial Review. With an overwhelming response from the CFO and nance leadership
community, it truly brought to life the power of peer-to-peer engagement, especially in these evolving times.
I was lucky enough to sit on a panel alongside ve peers from across the industry:Race Strauss, Group CFO,
Jetstar;Jo Hands, CFO, Sensis;Andrew Grifths, CFO, Deloitte Australia;Siobhan Hammer, CFO, ALH
Group; and Anna Lee, CFO, The Iconic. It was an excellent discussion, whichfor me personally provided
unique insight into the perceptions and views of the CFO in light of how technology is shifting our mandate.
Id like to share my top four takeaways from the session:
1. Technology and digital transformation isimportant across the board, and for the CFOs agenda.
All of my peers referenced how technology and digital disruption are very important to the board of their
companies. At SAP, we have grown by listening to our customers and embracing the evolution to the cloud
through both acquisitions of best-of-breed market leaders and designingour ownnew products. Had we not
embraced this change, we could havebecome a Kodak. The Iconic, for example, makesit easy and affordable
for customers to buy the latest fashions and other products online and have them delivered to a very strict and
consistent service level. Jetstar has changed the way Australians and other customers y overseas by making
it more affordable and easier to book travel via online and mobile platforms.
2. Traditional nance expectations are no more.
As nance professionals, we cannot rest on our laurels with outdated static reporting. Finance is now at the
forefront of guiding the business, and ourexecutives and business partners expect much more. They assume
we have thetechnical ability toadd real value by providing real-time predictive analysis to make fact-based
decisions quickly.
We have historically played a steward role centered on compliance and transactions, but now is the time to
collaborate and transform our business with growth strategies into new markets. At SAP, we call thisbeing a
transformation agent, and we have developed a methodology for training our employees. All of my peers were
talking about the change and training we mustprovide to enableour employeesto keep up with
companyexpectations.
3. People who embrace technology are key to enabling change.
CFOs, and the C-suite in general, are increasingly becoming responsible for the IT function within their
organizations. Those who are able to embrace technology and spend more time understanding and
collaborating with the business will be true transformation agents who are sought after for key roles. The types
of roles that exist today will not be around in the future, and nance teams need to grasp this speed of change
and demonstrate the value they can give using their nance skills and training around interpretation.
4. Insight is key real-time data is nances best friend.
In order to stay relevant to business, CFOs must embrace real-time data.This willenable teams to spend
timeamong the business, assisting with fast interpretation and fact-based decisions rather than sitting in front
of a screen compiling numbers. Technology is enablingspeed, a single source of truth, predictive analysis, and
self-service, and the nance teams who embrace this will be a true partner to the business.
CFOs are responsible forleading transformation within the nance function, and it is clear that wider teams are
coming on board. Itis critical to serve as an enabler rather thana negative disruptor. Itwill be interesting to
see over the coming years where this puts us in the minds of the business as a strategic contributor. I am
already seeingand I am condent that we will continue to seethat nance will be integral to decisionmaking,working even closer with wider teams in the business.
I am really looking forward to the next CFO executive engagement. If you are interested in joining the CFO
executive community, sign uptoday. I look forward to connecting with you in the next engagement!
To learn more about how nance executives can empower themselves with the right tools and play a vital role
in business innovation and value chain, please visit sap.com/nance for additional research and valuable
insights and join us at SAPPHIRE NOW.
SAPPHIRE NOW (#SAPPHIRENOW) and the ASUG Annual Conference (#ASUG2016) will run concurrently
from May 17 to May 19 in Orlando. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak will speak on May 17, two days before
Coldplay plays Concert Night.
tapping into the expertise of suppliers, writes David Rae in Procurement Leaders. The CEO expects it of your
CPO, and your CPO expects it of you. For sourcing managers, this can be a lot of pressure.
Here are nine things your CPO wants you to know about how supplier collaboration is changing and why it
matters to your companys future and your own future.
2. Youre probably not realizing the full collective power of your supplier relationships
Supplier collaboration has always been a function of maintaining a delicate balance between demand and
supply. For the most part, the primary focus of the supplier relationship is ensuring the right materials are
available at the right time and location. However, sourcing managers with a narrow focus on delivery are
missing out on one of the greatest advantages of forging collaborative supplier partnerships: an opportunity to
drive synergies that are otherwise perceived as impossible within the connes of the business. The gamechanger is when you drive those synergies with thousands, not hundreds of suppliers. Look at the Apple Store
as a prime example of collaboration en masse. Without the apps, the iPhone is just another ordinary phone!
was interesting to me, what really struck me was his observation on how this co-innovation with the supplier is
spawning cost and resource optimization and the delivery of competitive products. As reported by Andrew
Winston in The Harvard Business Review, Target and Walmart partnered to launch the Personal Care
Sustainability Summit last year. So even competitors are collaborating with each other and with their suppliers
in the name of sustainability.
5. Co-marketing is a win-win
Look at your list of suppliers. Does anyone have a brand that is bigger than your companys? Believe it or not,
almost all of us do. So why not seize the opportunity to raise your and your suppliers brand prole in the
marketplace?
Take Intel, for example. The laptop youre working on right now may very well have an Intel inside sticker on
it. Thats co-marketing at work. Consistently ranked as one of the worlds top 100 most valuable brands by
Millward Brown Optimor, this largest supplier of microprocessors is world-renowned for its technology and
innovation. For many companies that buy supplies from Intel, the decision to co-market is a strategic approach
to convey that the product is reliable and provides real value for their computing needs.
All of us want to do strategic, impactful work. Sourcing managers with aspirations of becoming CPOs should
move beyond writing contracts and pushing PO requests by building strategic procurement skill sets. For
example, a working knowledge in analytics allows you to choose suppliers that can shape the market and help
a product succeed and can catch the eye of the senior leadership team.
Sundar Kamak is global vice president of solutions marketing at Ariba, an SAP company. For more on
supplier collaboration, read Making Collaboration Pay Off, part of a series on the Future of Procurement, by
Oxford Economics.
Social media and crowdsourcing: You may not think CFOs spend a lot of time on social media or
crowdsourcing sites, but these methods can actually expedite nance processes, such as month-end
responsibilities of the nance organization.
Big Data: CFOs already have a lot of data at their ngertips, but in 2020 they will have even more. CFOs in
both tech and non-tech sectors who understand how to use that data to make valuable, informed decisions,
can strategically guide their company and industry in a more digitally oriented world.
To do this, Friedman says CFOs can lead the way by addressing some critical areas:
1. Know the issues: Gather the key questions that leaders expect Big Data analytics to answer.
1. Make data easily accessible: Collect data that is manageable and easy to access.
1. Broaden skills:The nance team needs people with the skills to understand and strategically interpret the
data available to them.
The above information is based on the CFO.com article What Will the CFO Role Look Like In 2020? by
Deloitte COO & CFO, Frank Friedman Copyright 2015 CFO.com.
Want to learn more about best practices for transforming your nance organization?View the
SAP/Deloitte Webinar, Reshaping the Finance Function.For anin-depth look at digital technologys role in
business transformation, download the SAP eBook,The Digital Economy: Reinventing the Business World.To
learn more about the business and technology factors driving digital disruption, download the SAP
eBook,Digital Disruption: How Digital Technology is Transforming Our World.To read more CFO insights from
a tech industry perspective, read the Wall Street Journal article with SAP CFO Luka Mucic: Driving Insight with
In-memory Technology.
During a heavily industrialized era, the skills employers wanted mostly involved obedience, increased
performance, and, well, pretty much the opposite of what a good employee is appreciated for today. Its clear
the world is continuing to change and, along with it, so are jobs and the criteria that determine the ideal
candidate. What will the world look like in the future and what sort of employee it will demand?
Sense-making
In an era that relies increasingly on technological developments, productivity might increase, but its bound to
take humanity down with it. Essentially dened as the ability to determine the deeper meaning behind
something given, sense-making is a necessary skill if we are to keep the shades of gray that dene us.
Moreover, it also refers to the ability to connect dots and to create something out of the given plan. Given how
we are all slowly but steadily getting replaced by machines, in the future, there will be fewer people to aid with
the creative part of business.
Cross-cultural competency
Globalization is a growing reality and seclusion is becoming a foreign concept for us all. Whether were talking
about multi-national structures or interpersonal systems that make it easier for cultural mixing, its clear we
need to adapt to the times.
Its already becoming clear that people who speak multiple languages are more likely to occupy an important
position. Moreover, plenty of companies are now going global, extending all over the world. As a result, their
ideal employees need to be able to adapt to different cultures.
We are fortunate enough to be able to say we are starting to be looked at less like robots and more like human
beings with functional ideas and creativity. This is shown in the growing trends of companies that are starting
to encourage self-initiative and nding nonconventional routes for problem solving.
In the end, its all about pushing ourselves beyond our limits and out of our comfort zone. Employers look less
in the direction of people who wholly abide by conventions and more toward people with the ability to bring
innovations and solutions no one else would have thought of.
Social intelligence
Last but not least, the era of globalization also heavily encourages teamwork. Possessing social skills is going
to become a crucial asset, whether were talking about interactions with customers, employers or employees.
Social intelligence refers to the capacity to understand that others dont share the same goals and motivations
as we do and the key to all is asking the right questions and getting their own goals to align with our own.
These will be the keys to being the ideal employee in a few decades. Are you ready for the future?