| August 23, 2021 | 8:30-4:30 PM EDT | | CFO Series: Be the BestFocuses on key skills that will help you and your organization become the best. HighlightsAdvanced negotiating skills: Beyond getting to yes-
Anytime someone says, "I want," "I need," or "Will you," you are in a negotiation.
For decades, the negotiation techniques described in "Getting to Yes" by Fisher and Ury of the Harvard Negotiations Project were the world's standard negotiation methods. These techniques involved collaborative methods for discovering how to make the "pie" bigger and then split it.
More recent research on human psychology has revealed new methods that will allow you to do even better. Sometimes, you can't settle for getting half of what you want. Sometimes you have to have it all. This session explores negotiating's human side, to give you powerful people skills that will let you get more.
Driving performance with EOS-
Periodically a management consulting firm will package existing best practices in a new, organized way that grabs the business world's attention. The Entrepreneurial Operating System or EOS is a method of organizing a company's human energy in a disciplined, structured way. This session will discuss the six components of entrepreneurial operating systems and how some organizations are using them to drive better performance.
Risk management in a post-COVID world
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With each new crisis, surviving organizations revise their risk management plans, often modeling situations which look like the one just past. Whatever crisis troubles your organization next, it is not likely to be another pandemic, but may resemble some other crisis from the distant past.
Research shows that top performing organizations do no better than their mediocre-performing peers at predicting the next crisis. However, because they do a better job at planning for something, they are better prepared when something else happens because they have the most important pieces of the solution in place.
Get your organization, and your family, prepared for the next crisis that may affect you!
Corporate ethics: Cases for the real world-
Anyone who has ever attended a lecture-format ethics seminar knows there is a better way. This session provides an opportunity for lively group discussion of real world, ethical dilemmas.
Corporate Ethics examines five cases drawn from real-life business conflicts involving corporate financial managers.
Benefits- Understand how human psychology techniques can improve your negotiating skills.
- Understand what Entrepreneurial Operating Systems (EOS) are and how they can drive your organization’s performance.
- Understand the risk management lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Understand how to apply ethical standards to real-world situations.
Designed ForFinancial professionals who are, or aspire to be, chief financial officers. The discussions are targeted at those in midsize organizations View Full Event Details |
| September 23, 2021 | 8:30-4:30 PM EDT | | CFO Series: Preparing for GrowthLearn skills and techniques for growing your organizations. HighlightsAdvanced capital budgeting for effective decisions
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Since we operate in a dynamic, ever-changing market, why do we typically use static capital budgeting models? Traditional, static models are not enough. An integrated capital budgeting approach will result in greater overall returns and stronger impact to the bottom line.
• Identify impacting working capital level
• Describe policies associated with working capital management
• Ten ways to collect your money
• Make AP a tool to enhance our Supply Chain’s potential
• Use benchmarking metrics to manage and track the effectiveness of AR and AP in cash management
Optimizing working capital management-
Cash is “King”, but it does not manage itself. This session will explore short-term, mid-term, and long-term cash management techniques and attempt to answer these issues:
• How can we shorten the cash conversion cycle?
• How can we use technology to improve receipts?
• How working with vendors and customers can help cash management efforts.
• How working capital loans depend on our collateral and overall debt capacity.
• How banks and other lenders fit into our long-term cash and capital needs.
Preparing for the unexpected: look at what has happened-
Recently we all have experienced dramatic changes in business, society, and life. Were we really prepared? Have you ever heard the phrase, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you”? Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book The Black Swan, postulates that it is exactly what we don’t know that can hurt us the most. The risks we need to be most concerned about are the risks we cannot identify or predict. Taleb calls these risks “Black Swans.” This session will discuss some historical black swan events, understanding the biases that we all have, how statistics and heat maps can lead us to incorrect conclusions, and, more importantly, discuss how financial professionals and their organizations can prepare for a future we cannot even envision.
Closing best practices: Shorten month-end processes-
Surveys show that the average North American company completes its monthly financial statement closing in six days. However, some companies can close their books in one day or less. You don’t have to sacrifice accuracy for speed. This session will show you how to close month-end faster, better, and cheaper.
Benefits- Understand how to develop capital budgets in a growing company environment.
- Gain new ideas for managing your organizations working capital.
- Understand how to better prepare for an uncertain future and minimize risk.
- Understand how to perform your month-end closing faster, better and cheaper.
Designed ForFinancial professionals who are, or aspire to be, chief financial officers. The discussions are targeted at those in midsize organizations View Full Event Details |
| October 22, 2021 | 8:30-4:30 PM EDT | | CFO Series: Key Tax IssuesExplore recent federal tax issues that may impact your organization, including major ramifications of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), CARES Act and subsequent legislation. The session will address planning alternatives and the potential risks associated with those strategies. HighlightsThe AB5s of employees and independent contractors-
This session addresses the 20 factors the IRS uses to classify workers, with a focus on the severe tax penalties for misclassification. We will look at how Dynamex and AB5 will impact your organization. We will also examine the “Gig” worker, review the broader independent contractor workforce, and apply the worker classification on year-end reporting.
Expensing and depreciating business assets-
Recovering the cost of capital is a critical business skill, and Congress is constantly changing the rules to impact the economy. In this session, we will discuss the most recent tax depreciation rules and developments, as well as review the impact of TCJA and CARES Act changes. We will address Section 179 and 168(k) expensing, along with capitalization regulations and Qualified Improvement Property.
Navigating the new interest expense limitation-
Are you large enough to have your interest expense limited? This program will discuss how the new 30%/50% limit works and what happens to excess interest expense. We will examine how the new rules apply to partnerships, S and C corporations and their owners. This session will discuss reporting on Form 8990, as well as the 2022 problem.
COVID-19 losses: Going backwards and forwards-
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) made turning business losses into tax refunds far more difficult. The CARES Act suspended and modified many of those changes. This session will dig into the new rules for deducting business losses. We will also address the new 5-year carryback, as well as amended returns and “quickie refunds.”
Benefits- Learn about how standards are changing for classifying employees and independent contractors.
- Understand changes to the taxation of capital assets.
- Find out how to navigate federal interest limitation rules.
- Understand how the (TCJA) affects your organization’s ability to carryback and carryforward business losses.
Designed ForFinancial professionals who are, or aspire to be, chief financial officers. The discussions are targeted at those in midsize organizations View Full Event Details |
| November 22, 2021 | 8:30-4:30 PM EDT | | CFO Series: Corporate Performance ManagementLearn how corporate performance management (CPM) can seamlessly integrate many techniques including strategy maps, a balanced scorecard, and the alignment of KPI’s to identify and track your organization’s critical success factors. Gain insights into how to convert “too much data” into useful information and how to use metrics to create flexible budgets and rolling forecasts. Highlights Corporate performance management
- Poor strategy execution frustrates many executives as their organizations struggle with performance improvement, making decisions using intuition in the absence of hard data. Corporate performance management (CPM) seamlessly integrates many techniques including strategy maps and a balanced scorecard. Together they align manager and employee behavior, actions, and priorities using key performance indicators (KPIs) with specific targets to enable accountability.
Business intelligence and data analytics
- Volatility and complexity are the new normal. Most organizations are drowning in data but starving for information. The finance and accounting function has the opportunity to leverage Big Data and the continuum of analytics – descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive. All are useful for better decision making. Collecting, validating, and reporting data is not the same thing as analyzing information where we can glean valuable, actionable insights. In some ways the finance function is many years behind other disciplines such as marketing, sales, and supply chain managers, in applying analytics. How can the CFO’s function catch up?
Driver-based budgeting
- The annual budgeting process is often criticized as a fiscal exercise done by the accountants that is obsolete soon after it is published, prone to gamesmanship, cumbersome, not being volume sensitive, and disconnected from the strategy and needed risk mitigation spending. You can resolve these deficiencies using capacity-sensitive driver-based expense projections. Driver-based budgeting allows for quick scenario planning and far easier analysis of a growing organization whose future may look nothing like today. The budget can be periodically refreshed to create rolling financial forecasts extending beyond the fiscal year end.
Effective management accounting
- Critics have claimed that traditional managerial accounting is at best useless and at worst dysfunctional and misleading. Most line managers do not trust their management accounting data.
21st Century management accounting develops cost/unit metrics that are useful for budgeting, cost analysis and control. Current methods bring truly accurate fact-based costing visibility, tracing costs and identifying cause-and-effect relationships rather than broadly allocating overhead. This information provides the ability to reveal the true profit margins for products as well as for specific sales channels and customers.
Removing the barriers caused by your current management accounting techniques can provide huge rewards.
Benefits- Learn how to identify and track your organization’s critical success factors.
- Discover how to convert “too much data” into useful information.
- Explore ways to use metrics to create flexible budgets and rolling forecasts.
- Find out why “What causes cost?” is the most important question in management accounting.
- Understand how Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics (BA) can help you make sense of your organization's data.
- Learn how managerial accounting can become managerial economics.
Designed ForFinancial professionals who are, or aspire to be, chief financial officers. The discussions are targeted at those in midsize organizations. View Full Event Details |
| December 17, 2021 | 8:30-4:30 PM EST | | CFO Series: Numbers Rule the WorldIt is vital for today’s CFO to not only know how to read and analyze the numbers, but also how to present them to stakeholders. HighlightsNumbers rule the world, but they don't speak the words-
How can a numbers person master words and communication in an ever-changing and social dynamic? This session will reveal common communication mistakes financial professionals make and suggest practical solutions. We will discuss proven techniques to effectively deliver your numbers so your audience will understand.
Topics discussed include
• When should I text, email, phone, or meet?
• How to write emails that people read
• How to say “no” tactfully
• How to communicate information so others understand
• Identifying the big picture and your communications role
Ethics in the real world-
Business ethics is not just something “nice to do” but can mean the difference between success, failure, and survival in today’s increasingly competitive environment.
This seminar outlines eight steps to create an ethical business culture and provides specific ways for financial managers to make better ethical decisions.
Controlling management continuity risk-
Does your organization risk operational disruption due to a key personnel loss? Are your internal auditors and risk management personnel routinely assessing your exposure to loosing key skills? This session could help your organization prevent its next crisis.
Five marvelous business books in 100 minutes-
You know you should read some business books, but finding time is often hard to do. Come get a 20-minute executive summary of five business books. This session makes it easy to catch up with the latest thinking in five very different topics. This seminar will include: The End of Accounting, The Right and Wrong Stuff: How Brilliant Careers Are Made and Unmade, Big Potential, Pitch Anything and Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. Save time, learn the key lessons of five business books in just 100 minutes.
Benefits- Learn how to deliver your numbers so your stakeholders understand them.
- Learn how to assess the value of ethics in today’s business environment.
- Understand how to evaluate and manage management continuity risk.
- Understand the lessons of five recent business books.
Designed ForFinancial professionals who are, or aspire to be, chief financial officers. The discussions are targeted at those in midsize organizations. View Full Event Details |