Business insight through analytics, risk, compliance, governance, regulation, globalization, talent - never mind growth; the finance agenda is pretty jam-packed these days with no let-up in sight. Learn how the leading finance teams are prioritizing and executing in an environment of continued uncertainty. Through a combination of clear thinking, focused execution and judicious use of talent and technology finance teams have learned the lessons of the last few years. During this session, David Axson, author of The Management Mythbuster and the best selling Best Practices in Planning and Performance Management will describe the tactics, tools and disciplines finance is deploying to:

• deliver insightful analytics that can drive sustainable growth
• ensure effective management of risk
• reduce the cost and improve of the quality of compliance
• strengthen governance through improved transparency
• attract, develop and retain talented finance professionals

While signs of recovery from the global recession abound, heightened uncertainty is now part of the normal course of business – the new normal. Everything from consumer demand, to commodities prices and exchange rates remain volatile. How to grow revenue and profits, and improve return on invested capital while managing risk in uncertain times is on everyone's mind. Finance organizations must drive a smarter enterprise through improved analytics and operations efficiency. Surviving and thriving in the recovery means anticipating and shaping business outcomes, and driving transparency to manage risk and improve decision making.

Now more than ever, Finance organizations need new tools and disciplines to:

• Align metrics, initiatives, and resources with strategy
• Increase visibility into drivers of revenue, profit and working capital
• Create timely, reliable forecasts to align operating costs with new levels of business activity
• Evaluate the performance of products, customers, and channels, and shift resources to support the most profitable areas of the business
• Sustain cost-effective financial governance in response to increasing regulation and oversightImprove insight and responsiveness to the impact of external and internal risks on profits, balance sheet and cash flow

Now more than ever, this is the time to automate and transform critical financial performance management processes, to thrive in the recovery, out in front and stronger than ever.

In an increasingly volatile business climate, forecasting has never been more important, or more challenging. Many corporations have to confront the fact that their existing forecasting processes are not fit for purpose: unpleasant surprises are becoming more the norm than the exception. For finance executives seeking new tools and disciplines to mend broken processes this webinar offers some valuable guidance, in the form of Six Principles of Forecast Mastery, which point the way to a better future. It will focus in particular on the set of measurement practices which track forecast quality and open the door to speedy improvement.

This webcast will help you:

• Define forecast quality
• Measure the right things
• Measure at the right frequency
• Use these measures to drive quick improvements in forecast quality

See how IBM Cognos 10 solutions provide all the necessary capabilities to meet the diverse needs of Enterprise Planning & Analysis across your organization. Learn how the combination of IBM Cognos 10 enables dynamic, reliable planning and analysis that connects operational and financial performance management that drives better anticipation and action on risks and opportunities.

The integrated close, consolidate, report and file process is a primary focal point for companies ensuring quality and controls in financial statement reporting. Managing the complete end to end process from source to report across each stage is proving to provide the necessary level of coordination organizations need to eliminate the risks associated with errors, late filings and non-compliance. Special attention today is being focused on the final stage in this process, report & file external reports. External reports, whether they be SEC filings, regulatory reports, or board books are probably the most important reports produced by any company. Despite this, most companies are still manually creating these critical reports using Word and Excel. By relying on these manual tools, errors can occur, collaboration is difficult, and there is no audit trail. And that means companies (and their finance departments) are at risk of error, late filing, and non-compliance. Join this session and see how IBM is addressing the entire close, consolidate, report & file process and leveraging CLARITY FSR to automates the external reporting process (including XBRL tagging).

Traditional management reports tell you the score, but don't help you play and win the game. Why? Because playing and winning the game is all about strategy – without a strategy any gains are purely accidental. Learn how to use financial and operational KPIs to provide insights into what will dramatically impact your operational and financial performance. Understand how to communicate strategy in clear terms, enable clear and decisive leadership consistent with strategy and make the strategy meaningful to frontline employees.

Learn how IBM Cognos solutions can help finance organizations gain increased visibility and control over the levers of performance through a CFO dashboard that links relevant KPIs to critical transactional and decision support processes.

Finance executives and organizations are faced with increased demands for more timely and reliable financial and managerial information, while at the same time meeting new regulatory requirements, and improving transparency. These trends are expected to continue. Thus, it is imperative that organizations have appropriate reporting process(es), governance, data and technology in place to respond to these demands and to position for the future. Bill Marchionni, Finance Operations Advisory Global Practice Leader at The Hackett Group, will share perspectives on how World-class finance organizations are leveraging best practices to develop and maintain the necessary reporting capabilities. This includes a review of World-class integrated reporting strategy.

Reporting and analysis are integral parts of all the financial performance management processes needed to increase visibility, mitigate risk and enhance profitability. In this session, we discuss and demonstrate the impact of enterprise reporting with IBM Cognos Business Intelligence V10.1, when connected to financial processes for consolidation, planning, and analytics. You'll see how real-time coordination and synchronization of financial data with performance reporting provides company-wide access to critical financial information for decision-making. This session will also include background and software demonstrations.