All 2025 Conference Sessions

Creating Long-Term Value Through Strategic Cost Optimization

Speaker:

• Michelle Carlsen

Key take-aways

• Traditional cost structure models don’t always help organizations drive long-term value creation. 
• The long-term value creation of cost optimization initiatives can be greatly improved by focusing efforts in a way that prioritizes and protects spending towards factors intrinsic to the organization, aka differentiating costs.
• Cost optimization and efficiency improvement strategies should be targeted toward enabling costs that directly support mission-critical operational outcomes, and the optimization goal in this area should be to achieve a satisfactory level of performance with the minimum viable spend.
• The bulk of cost-cutting should be aimed toward commoditizing costs.  

How Finance Leaders Can Play the Right Role in AI Initiatives

Speaker:

• Marco Steecker

Key take-aways

• CEOs expect finance leaders to deliver on many facets of AI, including collaborating with vendors, leading in-house AI initiatives and providing strategic guidance to IT. 
• When implementing finance AI initiatives, finance leaders should choose the most suitable role for each project: end-user advocate, co-developer or pioneer.
• The end-user advocate role mostly applies to AI solutions bought “off-the-shelf,” where finance leaders’ domain knowledge enables them to outline processes and preferences, get involved in testing and troubleshooting solutions, while understanding and documenting how to operate the AI solution.

Key Steps in Crafting a Compelling Finance Technology Roadmap

Speaker:

• Nisha Bhandare

Key take-aways

• “Typical finance technology roadmaps make the mistake of starting with a technology-first mindset without a clear link to the business strategy.”
• “Finance technology roadmaps should start with the business strategy, identify the capabilities needed in finance to support the strategy and then decide the technology to support it.” 
• “A common business strategy is to increase operating efficiency, a potential driver of that might be to improve employee efficiency, and this can point to a finance capability: digitize the billing process.” 
• Repeating this process will identify a range of finance capabilities needed to deliver the business strategy. Now it’s time to prioritise these finance capabilities, mapping them into three categories: core, differentiated and innovative."

2025 Emerging Trends in the Finance Technology Market

Speaker:

• Marcus Marion

Key take-aways

• The two most important things finance must get right in order to optimize the technology roadmap and drive real impact are having well-defined organizational needs and having a strong knowledge of the finance technology landscape.
• The top 5 finance technologies for 2025 are enterprise resource planning (ERP), financial planning software, business process automation (BPA), source to pay vs. accounts payable and customer resource management (CRM). 
• Technologies that enable speed and AI-augmented process transformation will dominate investment in 2025 and 2026.
• CFOs should explore new technology avenues to understand what’s available and formulate targeted questions to evaluate what’s best for the organization.

Succeeding as a New CFO

Speaker:

• Dennis Gannon

Key take-aways

• Outgoing CFO tenure reached a five-year low of 5.6 years in the fourth quarter of 2024, with new CFOs taking the helm at a time of great technological change and opportunity. 
• Today’s CFO role often extends well beyond traditional finance. New To Role CFOs should be strategic about this, clarifying the current and desired extent of the role with company leadership.
• Building strong C-suite and business leader relationships is key to a new CFO’s success. They should prioritize teaming up with the CIO to lead digital strategy, fostering forward-looking discussions with business leaders that focus on risk and performance drivers, and engaging with the head of sales to understand and support their engagement with customers.

How to Get the Digital Talent Finance Needs

Speaker:

• Mallory Barg Bulman

Key take-aways

• Gartner estimates that by 2027, about half of finance talent will need to be digital, requiring a major shift in workforce skills and staffing.
• Upskilling both core and digital finance talent is essential in a competitive labor market, with a focus on low- and no-code technologies.
• Finance leaders should first strive to find and develop hidden “citizen digital talent” because it has the dual benefit of filling talent gaps at a lower cost than hiring and providing a development path for existing employees that can boost engagement and retention.