NextGen Finance Transformation 2026 Day 2: Wednesday, 13 May 2026

9:00 am - 9:10 am Chair’s Opening Remarks | The Big Picture: What’s Next in Finance Transformation

9:10 am - 9:40 am Leadership Discussion | Leading from the Middle: How Finance Directors Are Shaping Transformation from Within

This keynote addresses the real leadership tensions facing mid-to-senior finance leaders: securing executive buy-in for transformation investments, navigating competing stakeholder demands, managing constrained budgets, and building credibility as strategic advisors. A seasoned finance leader shares honest insights on wielding influence, making impact, and advancing your career while leading meaningful change.

Key Takeaways:

• Influencing upward: proven strategies to secure CFO and executive sponsorship for finance transformation initiatives without formal authority

• The credibility equation: how finance leaders build trust and strategic positioning with business stakeholders and senior leadership

• Navigating constraints: delivering transformation results despite limited budgets, resistance to change, and resource limitations

9:40 am - 10:10 am Beyond Excel Maze: Modern Platforms Transforming Finance Reporting from Burden to Asset

Tsvetelina Naumova - Finance Controller, Universal Music Group
Tom Elkins - Finance Transformation & Digital Director, Lion

This tech talk showcases modern reporting platforms and tools that are fundamentally transforming how finance delivers insights—automating data consolidation, enabling real-time dashboards, reducing close cycles, and freeing finance professionals to focus on analysis and strategic decision support rather than report production.

Key Takeaways:

• The reporting burden quantified: how manual processes drain finance productivity and delay critical business insights

• Platform capabilities that matter: automated data integration, self-service analytics, real-time reporting, and intelligent variance analysis

• Real implementation examples: organisations that reduced reporting time by 50%+ while improving accuracy and stakeholder satisfaction

Tsvetelina Naumova

Finance Controller
Universal Music Group

See Bio

Tom Elkins

Finance Transformation & Digital Director
Lion

See Bio

10:15 am - 10:55 am The Tech Panel | From AI Pilots to Production: Embedding Intelligence Across Finance Operations

Yenny Dewi - Global Decision Support and Analytics Strategy Lead, Sanofi
Stephannie Jonovska - Head of Commercial Services and Transformation, BlueScope
Yulia Didenko - Technology Business Partner for Finance, The Lottery Corporation

This panel brings together finance leaders who've moved beyond experimentation to achieve enterprise-wide AI integration—revealing how they overcame organisational resistance, technical fragmentation, and capability gaps to weave advanced analytics and automation into the fabric of everyday finance operations, delivering faster insights and smarter decision-making at scale.

Key Takeaways:

• Why AI remains trapped in isolated pilots: the organisational, technical, and cultural barriers preventing enterprise-wide adoption in finance

• Integration strategies that embed AI across FP&A, close processes, reporting, and business partnering without creating technical chaos

• Change management approaches that drive adoption when finance teams resist new intelligent tools and workflows

Yenny Dewi

Global Decision Support and Analytics Strategy Lead
Sanofi

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Stephannie Jonovska

Head of Commercial Services and Transformation
BlueScope

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Yulia Didenko

Technology Business Partner for Finance
The Lottery Corporation

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10:55 am - 11:30 am Morning Break

11:30 am - 12:00 pm Panel Discussion | The Compliance Trap: How Finance Moves Beyond Risk Management to Growth Enabler

Shirley Hu - Finance Transformation Lead (ERP), Certis
Min Su - Finance Director and Company Secretary, Ascom Asia
Shervina Tjawir - Associate Director of Finance, University of Sydney

This panel explores how forward-thinking finance leaders are fundamentally rebalancing their functions to maintain robust controls while simultaneously enabling business growth, supporting strategic initiatives, and building stakeholder confidence that finance protects the enterprise without blocking innovation or opportunity.

Key Takeaways:

• The compliance overload problem: why risk-averse finance cultures stifle business agility and damage stakeholder relationships

• Operating model strategies that separate "protect" activities from "enable" activities without compromising control effectiveness

• Building trust and partnership: communication approaches that position controls as business enablers, not bureaucratic obstacles

Shirley Hu

Finance Transformation Lead (ERP)
Certis

See Bio

Min Su

Finance Director and Company Secretary
Ascom Asia

See Bio

Shervina Tjawir

Associate Director of Finance
University of Sydney

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12:00 pm - 12:30 pm Reimagining Finance: Our Path to Transformation

Jodie Obst - Centre of Excellence Finance Operations & Reinsurance Lead, Resolution Life Group Holdings

This session explores the transformation of Finance, starting with a reimagined vision for the function, followed by how innovation in processes and technology delivered measurable impact. It highlights the challenges encountered along the way and the adaptive strategies used to overcome them, before concluding with how these successes are being leveraged to drive continued innovation and strengthen Finance for the future.

Key Takeaways:

• Innovation in Practice: Processes, technology and resulting impact.

• Overcoming challenges: adaptive strategies and problem solving that drove success.

• The road ahead: leveraging transformation success to continue innovating and enhancing Finance.

Jodie Obst, Centre of Excellence Leader – Finance Operations and Reinsurance, Resolution Life

Jodie Obst

Centre of Excellence Finance Operations & Reinsurance Lead
Resolution Life Group Holdings

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12:30 pm - 1:00 pm PANEL DISCUSSION | Garbage In, Garbage Out: Solving Finance's Persistent Data Integrity Problem

Thomas Lynch - Financial Controller and Head of Finance Transformation, Retail Food Group Ltd

This session confronts the data quality crisis plaguing finance organisations, exploring root causes of data inconsistency and revealing practical strategies to establish robust data governance, automate validation, create single sources of truth, and build stakeholder confidence in financial

information.

Key Takeaways:

• The hidden cost of poor data quality: quantifying time wasted, decisions delayed, and credibility lost due to data inconsistency

• Data governance frameworks that establish ownership, standards, and accountability across source systems and business units

• Technology solutions for automated validation, exception management, and continuous data quality monitoring in finance processes

Thomas Lynch

Financial Controller and Head of Finance Transformation
Retail Food Group Ltd

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1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Lunch Break - Savor, Share, and Socialise

2:00 pm - 2:30 pm Doing More With Less (Again): Managing Finance Transformation on Shrinking Budgets

This session tackles the investment dilemma head-on, exploring how finance organisations secure funding for critical transformation initiatives, make smart trade-offs between competing priorities, demonstrate ROI that justifies investments, and achieve genuine efficiency that funds future capability building without perpetual budget cuts.

Key Takeaways:

• Building compelling business cases: ROI frameworks and value narratives that secure transformation funding in cost-constrained environments

• Smart prioritisation: deciding which transformation investments deliver maximum impact versus which initiatives to delay or eliminate

• Self-funding strategies: using quick-win automation and efficiency gains to generate savings that finance future capability investments

2:30 pm - 3:00 pm Breaking the Close Bottleneck: Strategies for Faster, Smarter Period-End Processes

This session reveals how leading organisations have dramatically reduced close timelines through process redesign, continuous accounting practices, automation, and cultural shifts that maintain accuracy and control while delivering results in days, not weeks, freeing finance capacity for higher-value work.

Key Takeaways:

Close cycle diagnostics: identifying the specific bottlenecks, dependencies, and inefficiencies extending your period-end timeline

Continuous accounting approaches that spread close activities throughout the month, eliminating period-end crunches

Automation opportunities: technology solutions for reconciliations, journal entries, intercompany eliminations, and reporting that accelerate close

3:00 pm - 3:30 pm Global Finance Delivery at a Crossroads: When Automation Challenges the Offshore Business Case

Tom Elkins - Finance Transformation & Digital Director, Lion

This session tackles the difficult decisions finance leaders face: continue investing in offshore centers, bring work back onshore with automation, or find hybrid models that balance technology and location arbitrage while managing workforce transitions and political sensitivities.

Key Takeaways:

• The economics shift: how RPA, AI, and intelligent automation are changing the cost equation for offshore versus onshore finance operations

• Strategic decision frameworks: evaluating which finance activities stay offshore, which return onshore with automation, and which require hybrid approaches

• Workforce transition challenges: managing talent implications, morale, and retention when automation threatens offshore center viability

This session tackles the difficult decisions finance leaders face: continue investing in offshore centers, bring work back onshore with automation, or find hybrid models that balance technology and location arbitrage while managing workforce transitions and political sensitivities.

Key Takeaways:

• The economics shift: how RPA, AI, and intelligent automation are changing the cost equation for offshore versus onshore finance operations

• Strategic decision frameworks: evaluating which finance activities stay offshore, which return onshore with automation, and which require hybrid approaches

• Workforce transition challenges: managing talent implications, morale, and retention when automation threatens offshore center viability

Tom Elkins

Finance Transformation & Digital Director
Lion

See Bio

SSOW ANZ 2026: The Next Frontier for Shared Services

NextGen Finance Transformation 2026 Day 2: Wednesday, 13 May 2026

9:00 am - 9:10 am Chair’s Opening Remarks | The Big Picture: What’s Next in Finance Transformation

9:10 am - 9:40 am Leadership Discussion | Leading from the Middle: How Finance Directors Are Shaping Transformation from Within

9:40 am - 10:10 am Beyond Excel Maze: Modern Platforms Transforming Finance Reporting from Burden to Asset

Tsvetelina Naumova

Tom Elkins

10:15 am - 10:55 am The Tech Panel | From AI Pilots to Production: Embedding Intelligence Across Finance Operations

Yenny Dewi

Stephannie Jonovska

Yulia Didenko

10:55 am - 11:30 am Morning Break

11:30 am - 12:00 pm Panel Discussion | The Compliance Trap: How Finance Moves Beyond Risk Management to Growth Enabler

Shirley Hu

Min Su

Shervina Tjawir

12:00 pm - 12:30 pm Reimagining Finance: Our Path to Transformation

Jodie Obst

12:30 pm - 1:00 pm PANEL DISCUSSION | Garbage In, Garbage Out: Solving Finance's Persistent Data Integrity Problem

Thomas Lynch

1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Lunch Break - Savor, Share, and Socialise

2:00 pm - 2:30 pm Doing More With Less (Again): Managing Finance Transformation on Shrinking Budgets

2:30 pm - 3:00 pm Breaking the Close Bottleneck: Strategies for Faster, Smarter Period-End Processes

3:00 pm - 3:30 pm Global Finance Delivery at a Crossroads: When Automation Challenges the Offshore Business Case

Tom Elkins

3:30 pm - 3:40 pm Chair’s Closing Remarks and Close of Conference

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