Elevate Your Accounting Game

Check in + Breakfast

Welcome + Housekeeping

Colleen Wanty

Director of Product Marketing, FloQast

Winning the Accounting Game: The Rise of Operational Accounting

As all businesses become digital the speed of business begins to move at the speed of light. This reality is placing a growing challenge on today’s finance and accounting functions to shift their focus from the tactical to the strategic and operational. It’s no longer the accounting function of years past. The modern accountant must meet these challenges head on and navigate forward. 

Operational excellence is the new mandate for accounting and that means faster answers with more certainty and better teamwork. Accounting processes can no longer run in traditional ways and must change to meet the new business realities. As we all know accountants have a lot on their plate, so how does a busy accounting team adapt to the new realities without causing massive disruption to their critical enterprise processes like the Close, FP&A, Reporting and Compliance.  

Join Mike Whitmire, CEO & Co-Founder of FloQast as he explores the impact of increasing digitalization across the office of the CFO, the rise of operational accounting, and how to navigate these changes without disruption.

Join this session to learn:

1. The impact of digitalization in the office of the CFO
2. The shift to operational accounting
3. Managing the need to modernize without disruption
4. Emerging skill-sets required for accounting success

Mike Whitmire

CEO & Co-Founder, FloQast

Break

Enabling the Modern Finance Function Through Continuous Accounting

Many senior finance executives say they want their department to play a more strategic role in the management and operations of their company. They want Finance to shift its focus from processing transactions to higher-value functions in order to make more substantial contributions to the success of the organization. The term “continuous accounting” represents an approach to managing the accounting cycle that can facilitate the shift by improving the performance of the accounting function. 

Join Robert Kugel, Senior Vice President at Ventana Research, as he explores the concept of continuous accounting across the office of the CFO to drive operational excellence.  Learn about the three main principles of continuous accounting:

• Automating mechanical, repetitive accounting processes in a continuous, end-to-end fashion to improve efficiency, ensure data integrity and enhance visibility into processes
• Distributing workloads continuously over the accounting period (the month, quarter, half-year or year) to eliminate bottlenecks and optimize when tasks are executed
• Establishing a culture of continuous improvement in managing the accounting cycle. Such a culture regularly sets increasingly rigorous objectives, reviews performance to those objectives and makes addressing shortcomings a departmental priority

Robert Kugel

Senior VP - Research Director, Ventana Research

Shift Happens: Explore How the Accounting Function is Evolving to Support the Insight Driven and Digital Enterprise

Today’s accounting and finance professionals are taking on new strategic and operational roles in guiding growth and building the digital enterprise in pursuit of operational excellence. But the accelerating pace of technological change and workforce shifts present new challenges to modernizing accounting operations. How can finance and accounting professionals lead the change required without disrupting critical core processes?

Join moderator Stefan van Duyvendijk, FloQast’s Accounting Operations Evangelist and a panel of FloQast customers, Andrea Jaffe, Controller, charity: water, Lucy Duggan Senior Accountant, Axonious, Rohit Lalwani, Controller, Bluecore, and Rene Jacques, Controller, Shapeways. Learn how these companies started on the path to meet these new challenges for accounting and finance teams.

Join this session to learn:

1. What were the challenges these customers faced with building accounting operations to support the digital enterprise.
2. What are the four key areas to focus on improving for modernizing your operations and driving accounting operational excellence? 
3. Identify the highest impact areas for automation across the record to report process driving measurable value and impact. 

Stefan van Duyvendijk

Accounting Operations Evangelist, FloQast

Andrea Jaffe

Controller, charity: water

Lucy Duggan

Senior Accountant, Axonious

Rohit Lalwani

Controller, Bluecore

Rene Jacques

Controller, Shapeways

Lunch

Material Impact Delivered: How to Avoid the Common Pitfalls Of A Technology Implementation While Achieving Faster Time to Value

Boston Consulting Group estimates that 70% of digital transformation efforts fall short of meeting targets. The Standish Group’s 2020 CHAOS report estimates that around 66% of software projects fail.  As Accounting teams pursue operational excellence with greater visibility, automation, collaboration, and documentation, these statistics can be disheartening, and the goal of modernizing operations without disruption can seem challenging. 

At FloQast, our customers have an entirely different experience. In a 2021 customer survey, FloQast customers reported a 98% success rate of implementing FloQast to deliver targeted business value. 

Join Justin Smith, VP of Customer Success at Floqast, to learn what is different about the FloQast Solutions, implementations, and Customer Success organization that drive this level of success for our customers. Learn more about:

1. What are the common pitfalls that drive the failure of technology projects to deliver business value.
2. What is the approach and methodology to avoid those pitfalls 
3. How FloQast solutions and implementations drive results measured in less than a quarter.  

Justin Smith

Global Vice President, Customer Success, FloQast

Prepare for Any Track: How Financial Reporting Drives Efficiency, Readiness and Opportunity for Both the Private and Public Markets

A company’s journey may include multiple fundraising efforts or private equity ownership, both of which lead to a future exit such as a strategic sale, secondary buyout, or public debut through an IPO, Reverse Merger, or Direct Listing. Regardless of where a company is in its journey, it is extremely important to report financials accurately, efficiently, and effectively. Making the right investment in people, processes and technology are crucial for “Public Company” readiness or financial reporting requirements to new lenders and stakeholders.

Join Donnelley Financial Solutions (DFIN) President, Global Capital Markets Craig Clay for an informative session on preparing for fundraising or an exit, and hear real-life experiences, considerations, and best practices for the transition.

In this session, you will:

• Gain insights into the current regulatory environment and trends
• Discover the people, processes, and technology investments companies should make in preparation for their next stage
• Learn how to scale your accounting and finance team using technology as an enabler

Craig Clay

President, Global Capital Markets, DFIN

Joel Quall

Chief Financial Officer, tZero

Stefan van Duyvendijk

Accounting Operations Evangelist, FloQast

Derek Steinhiser

Financial Accounting Advisory Partner and US-East IPO Leader, EY

Break

Achieving Greater Financial Velocity and Control With the FloQast Accounting Operations Platform

Colleen Wanty

Director of Product Marketing, FloQast

Genius Bar: FloQast Solutions

The FloQast Accounting Operations Platform offers a wide range of solutions designed to deliver improved automation, collaboration, visibility, controls, and documentation to accounting teams everywhere. The FloQast Genius Bar will be hosted by FloQast’s “genius” product experts who can answer all of your questions in a casual one-on-one setting.

Join to learn more about the lineup of FloQast Solutions:

FloQast Close Management is an advanced workflow solution that provides a single place for teams to automate month-end close tasks, enhance accountability, improve transparency and accuracy, and collaborate effectively from anywhere. 

FloQast Flux is an advanced workflow solution that automates the time-consuming process of building a Flux Analysis report to identify material balance fluctuations and risk areas.

Reconciliation Management is an advanced workflow solution to expedite the highly-repetitive, tedious process of reconciling accounts using an AI powered solution purpose-built for and trusted by accountants and auditors worldwide. 

FloQast ReMind is a Request Management Workflow that saves time by automating manual requests for information and manage-by-exception within a centralized dashboard.

FloQast Ops is a Workflow Manager that extends the power of FloQast Close to help accounting teams take control of accounting operations beyond the close like AP/AR, Payroll, Sales Tax, Compliance, FP&A, and Reporting. 

Donnelley Financial Solutions (DFIN) is a leading global risk and compliance solutions company. DFIN helps you make smarter decisions with insightful technology, industry expertise and data insights at every stage of your business and investment lifecycles.

User Interface Testing – We want to hear from you about how to make FloQast even more intuitive. We are looking for customers to participate in a structured, 30 minute user interface interaction and testing.

Cocktail Reception at Bar 54, the rooftop bar at Hyatt Centric Times Square