10:45 - 11:30 Outsource Or Insource – You Can Do Both

Service Corporation International, North America’s largest provider of funeral, cremation and cemetery services, recently acquired its second largest competitor, growing overnight to 22,000 employees and 2200 locations. With a lean organization structure, they simply did not have the HR capabilities to accommodate the expansion. The options were to build or buy HR talent. The initial plan was to outsource everything, but after careful consideration, the company created a blended environment, outsourcing administrative functions such as payroll and benefits to focus internally on talent and performance management strategies.

• Evaluating outsourcing opportunities
• Building a business case
• Creating an RFP process and selecting potential partners

Outsourcing isn’t an all or nothing venture; learn how selective outsourcing can change the focus of HR to one that is positioned and performing as a strategic business partner

Donna Hastings
Managing Director, Organizational Development
SERVICE CORPORATION INTERNATIONAL

10:45 - 11:30 Transforming Accounts Payable From Cost Center To Business-Value Generator

The HM Prison Service (HMPS) Shared Service Centre in Newport, U.K. was created in 2005 to handle finance, HR, and procurement activities for the prison system.

Steve will discuss how the SSC is reducing costs and transforming their AP function from a cost center to a business-value generator by automating AP functions with software from Brainware. The AP solution provides HMPS with OCR-based data capture to handle large volumes and huge variations in paper-based invoices while accurately extracting, verifying, and exporting needed data into their Oracle ERP system.

Key topics to be discussed include:

• What were the goals they hoped to achieve with automation – how would they measure success?
• What other internal processes were addressed to achieve maximum efficiency in this process?
• What is the state of the center today – lessons learned, ROI?

Steve Hodgson
Head of Shared Services
HM PRISON SERVICE (HMPS) SHARED SERVICE CENTRE

10:45 - 12:25 ROUNDTABLE DOUBLE SESSION: Moving Beyond Scale To Shared Services’ Full Potential

The true service portfolio opportunity is just beginning to be explored. Innovative companies are now realizing significant results by moving beyond scale and the big four functions (Finance, HR, IT, Procurement) and outside the walls of service business units.

CASE STUDY: “Is Scale Important for Successful Shared Services and/or BPO?”

• Do you need to be a big player to succeed?
• What about smaller and medium sized companies?
• Are there in fact diseconomies of scale as well that are relevant?
• How does stakeholder management vary between smaller and larger companies embarking on Shared Services and/or BPO?

Phil Searle
Formerly Group VP and CFO
CENDANT TDS International

Moderated by:

Dr Leland I. Forst
CEO and Managing Director
THE AMHERST GROUP LIMITED

Holly Newsom Bush
Senior Director
THE AMHERST GROUP LIMITED

Thomas Clinton
Senior Director
THE AMHERST GROUP LIMITED

11:35 - 12:25 Differences Between Managing Knowledge Based Versus Transactional Processes

• Managing knowledge based staff inside a larger transaction based shared services centre
• Managing professionals and structuring career progression
• Standardizing knowledge based processes across 2 countries and 4-5 major product lines
• Measuring performance of knowledge based processes and incorporating SLAs and reverse SLAs
• Developing the culture of a shared services organization that has both professional staff and transaction based staff

This presentation will include a case study of Holcim/St. Lawrence Cement’s Book to Report function. Find out how the company succeeded in transitioning finance and accounting functions out of the business and into the shared services environment.

Blair Clemes
Director, North American Business Services (effective January 1, 2008)
HOLCIM (US)/ ST LAWRENCE CEMENT

11:35 - 12:25 PANEL SESSION: Continuous Improvement Approaches For Financial Governance

In today’s increasingly complex financial and regulatory environments, a sound strategy for Financial Governance will improve operational efficiencies, reduce costs, increase financial transparency, enhance risk management capabilities, and ensure strict regulatory compliance. Some of the most overlooked and underappreciated financial processes such as account reconciliations, managing key accounting activities, financial analytics and spreadsheet compliance can have the biggest impact on sound Financial Governance. This panel will discuss how companies can adapt processes and tools to streamline core financial controls for successful Financial Governance.

Moderator:

Heather Lynds
Director, Accounting Compliance Technology
ASSURENET GL, TRINTECH, INC.

Panelists Include:

Mary Ferry
Director Financial Accounting, Financial Service Center
CONAGRA

Dave Griebl
VP Shared Services
MONSTER WORLDWIDE

4:05 - 4:50 Next Steps For Shared Services To Deliver Increasing Value

Many Shared Services organizations are successful at delivering the initial economic benefits of administrative cost reduction. But what are the next steps? Shared Services is uniquely positioned to identify and deliver increasing value as it evolves. In this session, we will discuss:

• Strategy options for future value creation
• Competencies required within Shared Services to move-up the value chain
• Communicating the value of Shared Services to your customers

Ira Fialkow
Vice President, Shared Services
CEMEX USA (formerly Rinker Shared Services)

4:05 - 4:50 Auditing Corporate Cards And T&E - Use Of Continuous Transaction Monitoring To Ensure Consistent Policy Enforcement And Reduce Risk

With around 5,000 corporate cardholders at all levels of the organization, McDonald’s Corporation has implemented a continuous transaction monitoring solution from Oversight Systems to automate the process of reviewing and auditing its employee travel and entertainment expenses and American Express corporate card transactions, to ensure compliance with company policies. Find out how McDonald’s used the solution to:

• Automate across-the-board review
• Get a better picture of risk and policy enforcement issues
• Focus remediation efforts on areas of greatest risk
• Gain executive recognition and buy-in,

Debbie Ekhomu
North America Shared Services Senior Director, Real Estate Accounting
McDONALD’S CORPORATION

Patrick Taylor
CEO
OVERSIGHT SYSTEMS

4:05 - 5:40 ROUNDTABLE DOUBLE SESSION: Moving To New Solution Sets

Shared services organizations have applied numerous approaches and processes to creating best in class service delivery. Harnessing those experiences and learning the opportunities for breakthrough competencies and capabilities will take shared services to the next level.

CASE STUDY: “Lift and Shift Versus Transformation”

• When do you apply a transformation then migration or migration then transformation?
• Conducting an evaluation process

Michael Frankel
Vice President Finance Operations
DEUTSCHE POSTWORLD NET GLOBAL BUSINESS SERVICES

Moderated by:

Dr Leland I. Forst
CEO and Managing Director
THE AMHERST GROUP LIMITED

Holly Newsom Bush
Senior Director
THE AMHERST GROUP LIMITED

Thomas Clinton
Senior Director
THE AMHERST GROUP LIMITED

4:55 - 5:40 HR Shared Services – Human Capital Management: How To Become Strategic Business Partners

Human capital is a C-suite business discipline that develops enterprise human capital strategies and ensures the human capital portfolio is effectively managed. Find out how to view shared services, outsourcing and analytics as enablers. The fact that you have them doesn’t enable anything; you just have the potential for enablement.

• Focusing on retraining and coaching the hr generalist to help people move into their new role
• Hiring new talent with the skill sets your company might be lacking
• Becoming the business partner that is equal to the CFO

Find out what HR needs to do to get up to speed fast enough to have that empty seat at the C level table.

Linda Merritt
HR Director
AT&T (retired as of 11/07)

4:55 - 5:40 Incorporating Shared Services Into End To End Process Management

For shared services to succeed, it’s critical to have clarity in the functions expected to be delivered. It’s important to also understand how functions fit in a process and with the organizational goals.

• How shared services fits in with managing by process
• Learnings from quote to cash, procure to pay and plan to make
• Clarifying the role of functional shared services in a process world

This presentation will demonstrate an important principle of Michael Hammer, “Process owners own the process. Function owners own the organization.”

Maro Imirzian
Controller
WEYERHAEUSER COMPANY