An Evening with The Financial Bigwigs at the CFO Summit, Delhi

Bangalore: With shareholders and the public demanding more and more transparency from companies, businesses are looking to their CFOs to help them improve their financial standing, enhance their reputation, and achieve sustained growth. As such, it becomes imperative on the part of a CFO to establish company-wide objectives, policies and procedures, processes to ensure that the company has a sound financial accounting structure.

The CFO Summit, Delhi, which took place on October 17, 2012 in The Surya Hotel, was one such forum that witnessed the conglomerate of distinguished financial executives from reputed firms, redefine their objectives and vision to meet the challenges posed by the global economy by exploring the extensive role of a contemporary CFO.

The event was kick started by Ramesh Swaminathan, President - Finance & Planning, CFO, Lupin Pharma who captivated the entire auditorium with his invigorating speech on the topic, 'Leaders need a vision: CFO as a transformation agent. Expectations to meet!'

The event then was shifted to a knowledge gaining panel discussion on 'Developing Effective Financial Risk Management Strategies In A Volatile Economy,' comprising of Ajay Kapoor, CFO, TATA Power Delhi Distribution, Ravi S Gupta, President & CFO, Jubilant FoodWorks, Aksh Rohatgi, Vice President & Global Head - Finance, EXL Service, Ramakanth Iyer, Planning Director, Pepsico - India Beverages and Anuj Aggarwal, CFO & Director-Finance, Canon India. The panel was efficaciously moderated by Arnab Roy, Director Finance, GE India Supply Chain.

It was followed by an intriguing session on 'Challenges for CFO Amidst Randomness and Clutter: Perspective from Global Organizations' by Rajesh Bang, Vice President, Resurgent India.

Gaurav Sundaram, Country Director, India, Egencia, who took up the session, delivered a speech on "Global Best Practice in Corporate Travel Spend: Generating the Optimal ROI," which was quite informative for the audience. He pointed out that ‘Corporate Enterprises in India have the potential to save over 12 percent on their total business travel spend by moving to Integrated Self Booking technology platforms like Egencia.’ Gaurav also presented three ways through which a corporate enterprise can optimize their travel programs, viz-a-viz

1) Automate Travel Policy Management & Compliance

2) Implement 100 percent Transparency in travel requisitioning & approval processes

3) MIS & Spend Visibility 24 x 7 x 365

A thought provoking session on 'Financial Frauds in The Changing World' by Gaganpreet Singh Puri, Partner, KPMG Forensic India, commenced soon after.

The event was concluded with a session on ‘Evolving role of CFOs in New Era.' The respective panelists who took part in this discussion were Sanjeev Handa, Vice President - Finance & Business CFO, Aricent and Arvind Goyal, CFO, Pitney Bowes India. It was moderated by Sayamdeb Mukherjee, Director - Finance, Ericsson India.

Samyadeb was of the opinion, “The CFO's role in an organization is evolving into a Business Partnering role rather than focusing on traditional functions like accounting and treasury. The compliance functions like audit, taxation are transforming to a Value Added Function and are required to be more pro-active than reactive. The CFO needs to build competence in his function because (s)/he alone cannot deliver value unless that percolates to each initial member of the team.”

All in all, the CFO Summit served as a quintessential platform where distinguished speakers from reputed firms discussed effective strategies to manage your cash, working capital and risks in a better way.

The event was sponsored by KPMG, American Appraisal, Ramco, Farsight, Resurgent India and Egencia.