CFO as Business Integrator

Cedric Read currently acts as a strategic advisor to SAP on the impact of eBusiness and technology on the finance function. He also works with Atos KPMG, providing consultancy services to CFOs in leading companies ranging from Shell and BP to Diageo and GlaxoSmithKline. Cedric Read served as a management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for close to 25 years. In his position as Global Leader of PwC's Financial Management Consultancy, he wrote two books, CFO: Architect of the Corporation's Future and eCFO: Sustaining Value in the New Corporation. Hans-Dieter Scheuermann is senior vice president of SAP's General Business Unit Financials group, which has global responsibility for developing leading-edge new software products to support financial and managerial accounting, strategic enterprise management (SEM), and business analytics. Most recently, he has spearheaded an initiative to development sophisticated software solutions in financial supply chain management. Prior to his current position, he coordinated SAP software solutions for the financial services industry.

• 1 From Complexity to Simplicity 1What Issues are Today’s CFOs Grappling With? 6Best Practices in Finance: What’s Next? 12The New Finance Value Proposition 16Integration: What it Means for You as CFO 20CFO Checklist 252 Leveraging your ERP Investment 27What does Integration Mean for the CFO? 32Unravelling System Spaghetti 36Beyond ERP 42Reducing Complexity 46A Vision for the Post ERP Era 49Making Integration Work for You 57CFO Checklist 603 Streamlining the Financial Supply Chain 63What is the Financial Supply Chain? 66Leveraging the Benefits 66In-house Cash and Banking 73Order-to-cash/Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment 80Purchase-to-pay 90Simplifying Billing and Payment: Bill Consolidation 91e-Financing and e-Settlement: A Promising New Tool 93The Future: Integration and Collaboration 96CFO Checklist 1004 Moving from “Shared” to “Managed” Services 103Why Move to Shared Services? 106Shared Services Today 111Physical versus Virtual SSCs: The Lights Are Still On! 113To Outsource – or Not to Outsource? 115Evolving Technology: What’s New, Faster, Better 122Applications Management and Managed Services 124Evolving Exchanges: Huge Promise and Tough Reality 130The Potential for Web Services 137Making it Happen 144CFO Checklist 1505 Connecting Strategy with Operations 153Introducing Strategic Enterprise Management (SEM) 157Tracking Corporate Performance 160Integrated Risk Management 166Blow Up the Budget! 171Operational Planning and Simulation 177Business Consolidation and Integration 179Implementing Integrated SEM 185CFO Checklist 1946 Analytics: Converting Data into Action 197Broader Bottom-line Demands 202Integrated Analytics: Transforming Data into Decisions 205Increasing Customer Value through Analytics 207Bringing Analytics to Supply Chain Management 214Analytics: Transforming the Finance Function 220Enriching Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) 227Improving Human Resource (HR) Analytics 232Getting Started: Analytics Critical Success Factors 235CFO Checklist 2417 Collaboration via the CFO Portal 243Doubling Productivity 246Choosing the Right Portal 249Integration Outweighs Best-of-breed Technology 254The Personalized Desktop 255Why should the CFO Drive Portals? 258A Journey, not a Destination 265Growing your Finance Community 272CFO Checklist 2778 Managing Intangibles 279Intangible Assets: The New Value Drivers 282The Problems with Traditional Accounting 283A New Approach to Performance Management 287The Enterprise Control Panel 293Harnessing Innovation and Customer Relationships 295Value Creation through Value Networks 299New Processes, New Skills, New Systems 304Communicating Value Internally and Externally 305CFO Checklist 3139 Integrating for Corporate Integrity 315Global GAAP and Accountability for Value 319Rebuilding Public Trust 322CFO as Independent Business Partner 326The Corporate Reporting Supply Chain 327Closing the Information Gap 331Timely and Accurate Financial Reporting 333Integrating Processes, People, and Technology 337CFO Checklist 347Epilogue 349Biographies 353Notes 359Index 363