The future of finance is all about managing across functions, building the right combination of capabilities, and establishing a strong data foundation. On-going FutureCFO dialogues with finance leaders across the function reveal a continued commitment to driving growth through digital transformation.
However, the maelstrom of non-aligned priorities, talent shortages, legacy processes and too many options when it comes to technologies make the road to growth in 2024 a formidable challenge for even the most seasoned finance professionals.
A Gartner’s research affirms that organisations face a medium-term environment characterised by tepid demand growth, stubbornly high costs and constrained access to capital – referring to the combination as a deadweight economic condition. “Absent fortuitous events such as a surprise end to geopolitical conflict, a swift halt to inflation or the quick realisation of dramatic productivity gains from AI, CFOs should expect many of the underlying economic trends contributing to the deadweight economy to persist across their strategic planning horizon.”
If there is a steady global economy that supports the overall growth path, Malaysia’s economic growth is projected to be at 4%-5% in 2024. With fiscal strengthening and consolidation as the focus of Malaysia’s 2024 budget, the current Malaysia’s government has set the largest budget ever tabled by any government in Malaysia’s history, with a total allocation of RM393.8 billion for this year. The Budget 2024 aims to address the twin challenges of a less robust global economic outlook and Malaysia’s financial constraints.
Malaysia government is also looking into to building an ecosystem and regulatory frameworks that support green and digital economies investments. While the current administration introduces new taxes and targeted subsidies this year, how would these new developments impact finance leaders in Malaysia?
This 2024, the FutureCFO Malaysia Conference will be held in Kuala Lumpur on 26 June 2024, bringing together seasoned finance professionals to uncover:
The challenges ahead present real and economic tailwinds that can derail ongoing efforts to transform organisations into engines of innovation and growth. For the finance team, there remains clear opportunities to lead by example out of the potential maelstrom that lies ahead to bring about sustained growth in the years ahead.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
CFOs, MDs, VPs, Directors, Heads, GMs, and Senior Managers, involved in:
The FutureCFO Conference aims to give CFOs, who also act as their company’s strategic business partner and catalyst, insights on ensuring corporate growth and successfully mitigating risks and challenges amidst the current economic and political uncertainties in their countries. The conference will also address strategies and best practices on how CFOs can reimagine finance functions and their organizations to survive and thrive in today’s fast-paced and digitally driven landscape.
This by-invitation only one-day event will gather over 120 senior finance leaders from multiple industries and offers the best opportunity to hear from the industry’s leading professionals, contribute questions from the floor, engage in incisive panel discussions that discuss real-life business cases, updates and strategies to meet the most pertinent challenges facing the finance function in 2020.
We gather 20+ industry speakers and experts from leading organizations for keynote presentations and incisive discussions so you can tap on their invaluable insights and best practices important to your finance function management and transformation.
Be part of our interactive panel discussions that address the current hot topics, share ideas and experiences and get the answers to your pressing questions from prominent finance leaders on stage.
Meet new business partners, engage and forge new connections with fellow finance and treasury leaders in the region, solution providers and many more at our event through luncheons, coffee breaks, one-to-one meetings and informal introductions.
8 hours of learning and networking opportunities packed into 10 in depth sessions. Listen to corporate-driven best practices and case studies sharing that are targeted to your profession through the personalized country-specific conferences we crafted for you - FutureCFO Conferences.
09:00
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
09:15
Dealing with overall macroeconomic conditions, increased interest rate, rising capital costs and geopolitical challenges will worry many senior finance executives in 2024. Finance leaders are under great pressure to bring costs down to anticipate volatile business landscapes in the coming years and yet, also tasked to preserve profitability for the business.
Interviewer:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Interviewees:
Ahmad Gazzara Czillich (TJ), CFO, AFFIN HWANG INVESTMENT BANK BERHAD
Vinayak Sasitharan, Asia CFO & Head of Japan, ARNOTT’S
09:40
Finance functions typically operate with separate inventory of tools which don’t talk to each other, thus creating silos of data. Connected finance is the process within finance operations that integrates financial services with digital technologies for interconnected workflow and seamless experience for businesses and their consumers.
10:05
Moderator:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Panelists:
Diana Cheang, Asia Regional CFO, FOSROC
Sharon Ng, Finance Director, MARY KAY
Guillaume Jest, Group CFO, YINSON
10:40
11:10
On 22 May 2023, the Malaysian Inland Revenue Board (IRB) announced that a total of 4,000 companies with revenue of more than RM100 million are set to become the first group to implement the new electronic invoicing (e-invoice) system, of which implementation is slated to commence in June 2024. As digital revolution has allowed tax administrations to reimagine the future of tax collection, tax compliance has become the focus and e-invoicing is now an essential part of enterprise’s tax function.
11:35
According to EY, CFOs saw a new priority on C-Suite agenda as they steer their organisations through an uncertain growth outlook in 2024: Generative AI (GenAI).
As much as this transformative technology is a powerful ally in shaping enterprise’s sustainable and prosperous future in the age of innovation, there are considerations that CFOs need to ponder before they confidently embark on adopting GenAI for their business.
Moderator:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Panelist:
Dajmarehan Zolkipli, Acting CEO, TUNE TALK
12:10
Constant market disruptions and skill shortages prompt finance leaders to work smarter. With automation taking over the rote tasks and AI provides forward-thinking and predictive analytics, finance leaders are poised to become powerful strategic advisor and partner to business. With AI as the game changer, how should CFOs leverage on AI-embedded automation capabilities to improve enterprise’s cost efficiency and performance?
Interviewer:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Interviewee:
Luke Bebbington, Strategic Industry Advisor, Asia Pacific and Japan,WORKDAY
12:35
13:35
Senior Representative, TUNGSTEN AUTOMATION
14:00
VUCA or not, cash flow is indisputably the lifeblood of the business. Fulfilling short-term payment obligations have become challenging to some organisations, yet leveraging on credits or borrowing is not quite an answer either as interest rates continue to grow.
Making data-based forecasts and financial strategy will equip finance leaders to tackle obstacles and provide a clear picture of their financial trajectory throughout the coming year.
Moderator:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Panelists:
Azleen Waris, Group Financial Controller, EDOTCO
Nusaybah Bt. M. Sofian, Head of Management Reporting & Budgeting, PETRONAS
14:35
As companies generate more data each day, finance teams have limitless opportunities to glean new insights and increase their value to the business. Data management tools are evolving rapidly; however, sophisticated F&PA tools are only effective if the data that fuels them are accurate. Also, as transparency over industry data increase, lack of proper data governance and management will critically impact business performance.
Senior representative, CYGNET DIGITAL
15:00
15:30
Attack volumes are up and attackers are finding new ways to compromise enterprise security, with finance functions as the prime target of cybercriminals. Check Point Research reports that there is an 8% surge in global weekly cyber-attacks in the second quarter of 2023, the most significant increase in the two years. With cybersecurity threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated and disruptive especially in the era of AI technologies, what does CFO stand for in cybersecurity?
15:55
Interviewer:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Interviewee:
Adrine Ong, Finance Director, CLASSIC FINE FOODS MALAYSIA
16:20
A recent 2023’s Corporate Finance & Accounting Talent Study reveals that 68% of CFOs and Controllers find it difficult to find finance and accounting talent for their organisation.
Talent war was a big issue in the past few years and the growing talent competition is still expected to be a hot topic for many CFOs in 2024. This said finance leaders will need to overhaul their hiring and retention strategies to address staffing shortages.
Moderator:
Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief, CXOCIETY
Panelists:
Paul Puspanathan, Director Supply Chain Global Finance Operation, BAKER HUGHES
Shivam Kumar, CFO – South East Asia and Taiwan, HALEON
Nor Adni Ismail, Vice President Finance & Business Ventures/ CFO, MULTIMEDIA UNIVERSITY (MMU)
16:55
17:00
Finance Director
CLASSIC FINE FOODS MALAYSIA
Group Editor-in-Chief
CXOCIETY
Group Financial Controller
EDOTCO
CFO
TUNE TALK
Asia Regional CFO
FOSROC
Group CFO
YINSON
Finance Director
WARNER MUSIC MALAYSIA
Vice President Finance & Business Ventures/ CFO
MULTIMEDIA UNIVERSITY (MMU)
Head of Management Reporting & Budgeting
PETRONAS
Director Supply Chain Global Finance Operation
BAKER HUGHES
Finance Director
MARY KAY
CFO - South East Asia and Taiwan
HALEON
Asia CFO & Head of Japan
ARNOTT'S
Speaking Opportunities:
We will help you GENERATE quality business leads.
We will help you INCREASE your regional profile.
We will help you CREATE new business opportunities.
Sponsorship Opportunities:
Anaplan (NYSE: PLAN) is a market-leading, cloud-native, enterprise SaaS company, transforming how enterprises across industries see, plan, and drive business performance. Powered by our proprietary Polaris Calculation Engine™ and Hyperblock® technology, our platform lets customers model “what-if” scenarios, contextualize current performance in real time, and forecast future outcomes for faster, more confident decisions.
In a world where market conditions inevitably change, enterprise leaders must connect strategy and plans to actions and results dynamically. Embracing constant change and volatility, Anaplan customers gain digital-led agility to rapidly pivot strategies, redeploy resources, and optimize plans for growth, efficiency, demand, and profitability. With Anaplan, you equip teams to overcome obstacles and seize opportunities ahead of competitors.
cbs is a global consulting practice that originated in Germany with over 3000 international projects over the last 25 years. We advise the world’s most notable companies: renowned, highly innovative customers and hidden champions of the global manufacturing, pharma, life science, chemical, and automotive industries.
We have expanded into Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and China in the Asia Pacific while delivering global roll-out projects in other countries. cbs share the same goals, passion, and value in driving our customer’s digital transformation agenda. We take a business-driven, technology-enabled approach in delivering our digital transformation, focused on solving critical business problems. From an end-to-end perspective, we cover people, structure, process, and technology with our highly skilled and dedicated process and technology consultants developed and trained from our global programs.
Over the years, cbs have developed our methodology, frameworks, tools, and assets to accelerate delivery, de-risking projects, optimize total effort and cost, and ensure success for our customer’s investments. We are one of the few SAP partner’s globally that develops, owns, and operates our complex transformation tool to enable a seamless transition to S/4HANA with Near-zero downtime while retaining historical data, adopting new capabilities, and process improvements that maximize the value of investments.
We also have a close partnership with SAP and their product teams in Walldorf, jointly innovating and aligning our products to SAP’s latest technologies, making us the few partners with technical depth and excellence in solving complex problems.
cbs is part of the Materna Group – Headquartered in Heidelberg, with international offices including Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, China, Switzerland, Spain, Finland & the USA.
Visit our website today: www.cbs-consulting.com/apac
The Oracle Cloud offers a complete suite of integrated applications for Sales, Service, Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, Supply Chain and Manufacturing, plus Highly-Automated and Secure Generation 2 Infrastructure featuring the Oracle Autonomous Database. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), visit us at www.oracle.com
Alteryx powers actionable insights with the AI Platform for Enterprise Analytics. With Alteryx, organizations can drive smarter, faster decisions with a secure platform deployable in on-prem, hybrid, and cloud environments.
More than 8,000 customers globally rely on Alteryx to automate analytics to improve revenue performance, manage costs, and mitigate risks across their organizations. To learn more, visit www.alteryx.com.
Cygnet Infotech is dedicated to excellence and is re-evolving as CYGNET.ONE to help consolidate its specialized offerings in Compliance transformations, Digital & Quality Engineering, Enterprise Modernization, Data, AI & Analytics Hyper Automation, Test automation, Digital signature, and a myriad of other offerings across Americas, the UK & Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific.
Through Cygnet Cosmos, our digital transformation framework, CYGNET.ONE empowers organization to achieve business process digital transformation through co-ideation, co-creation, co-innovation, and co-evolution. With a global presence spanning across diverse markets and industries, Cygnet One serves as a one-stop destination for intelligent solutions, delivering value from ideation to execution, ultimately driving success for clients and partners worldwide.
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, helping customers adapt and thrive in a changing world. Workday applications for financial management, human resources, planning, spend management, and analytics have been adopted by thousands of organizations around the world and across industries – from medium-sized businesses to more than 50% of the Fortune 500. For more information about Workday, visit workday.com/en-sg.
Wolters Kluwer is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the healthcare; tax and accounting; governance, risk and compliance; and legal and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with technology and services.
Part of the Wolters Kluwer’s CP & ESG division, our award-winning CCH® Tagetik corporate performance management solutions are built to digitally transform the office of the CFO. Through leading-edge technology and meaningful customer relationships, our comprehensive solutions for the financial close, enterprise planning, regulatory compliance, reporting, predictive analytics and supply chain planning empower process efficiency and fast, data-driven decision making. In a word, we empower finance to go beyond traditional CPM.
Companies come to BlackLine (Nasdaq: BL) because their traditional manual accounting processes are not sustainable. BlackLine’s cloud-based financial operations management platform and market-leading customer service help companies move to modern accounting by unifying their data and processes, automating repetitive work, and driving accountability through visibility. BlackLine provides solutions to manage and automate financial close, accounts receivable and intercompany accounting processes, helping large enterprises and midsize companies across all industries do accounting work better, faster and with more control.
More than 3,800 customers trust BlackLine to help them close faster with complete and accurate results. The company is the pioneer of the cloud financial close market and recognized as the leader by customers at leading end-user review sites including Gartner Peer Insights, G2 and TrustRadius. BlackLine is a global company with operations in major business centers around the world including Los Angeles, New York, the San Francisco Bay area, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore and Sydney.
For more information, please visit blackline.com.
Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI) is a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner. The Company offers premium, ultra-responsive and integrated application management and support services that enable enterprise software licensees to save significant costs, free up resources for innovation and achieve better business outcomes.
To date, nearly 4,700 Fortune 500, Fortune Global 100, midmarket, public sector and other organizations from a broad range of industries have relied on Rimini Street as their trusted application enterprise software products and services provider. To learn more, please visit http://www.riministreet.com, follow @riministreet on Twitter and find Rimini Street on Facebook and LinkedIn. (IR-RMNI)
Grab For Business brings the best of Grab’s services and technology to companies and businesses of all sizes across Southeast Asia. Thousands of companies across the region already easily customise, budget, manage and track spends across corporate rides, employee food programs and more using Grab’s platform. These solutions improve employee engagement and enable their workforce to save countless hours on tedious manual processes so that they can focus on what’s most important – driving businesses forward. Grab For Business also offers digital gifting solutions for loyalty and reward programmes.
SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables our customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. At SAP, our purpose is to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. Our promise is to innovate to help our customers run at their best. SAP is committed to helping every customer become a best-run business. We engineer solutions to fuel innovation, foster equality, and spread opportunity across borders and cultures. Together, with our customers and partners, we can transform industries, grow economies, lift up societies, and sustain our environment.
Jedox simplifies planning, analysis, and reporting with one unified and cloud-based software suite. Jedox empowers decision makers and business users across all departments and helps them work smarter, streamline business collaboration, and make insight-based decisions with confidence. Already 2,500 organizations in 140 countries are using Jedox for real-time planning on the web, the cloud, and on any device. Jedox is a leading Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management solutions provider, available worldwide with offices in four continents and over 250 certified business partners.
Kyriba empowers CFOs, Treasurers, and their IT counterparts to transform treasury, payments, working capital, and connectivity solutions to activate liquidity as a dynamic, real-time vehicle for growth and value creation. Kyriba is a secure, scalable SaaS platform that leverages artificial intelligence, automates payments workflows, and enables thousands of multinational corporations and banks to maximize growth, protect against loss from fraud and financial risk, and reduce operational costs. With 2,000 clients worldwide, including 25% of Fortune 500 and Eurostoxx 50 companies, Kyriba manages more than 1.3 billion bank transactions per year, and 250 million payments for a total value of $15 Trillion annually. Kyriba is headquartered in San Diego, with global offices in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and other major locations. For more information, visit www.kyriba.com.
Laiye is a leading robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) provider with a global presence across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Latin America, and Asia Pacific. Laiye’s integrated suite of AI-powered RPA, intelligent document processing (IDP) platform, and Chatbot solutions help organizations in the insurance, communications, electric power, finance, retail, and healthcare industries operate at new levels of productivity and efficiency to drive new levels of success.
Esker is a global cloud platform built to unlock strategic value for finance and customer service professionals, and strengthen collaboration between companies by automating the cash conversion cycle. Esker’s solutions incorporate technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive increased productivity, enhanced visibility, reduced fraud risk, and improved collaboration with customers, suppliers and internally. Esker operates in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific with global headquarters in Lyon, France, and U.S. headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information on Esker and its solutions, visit www.esker.com. Follow Esker on LinkedIn and join the conversation on the Esker blog at blog.esker.com.