It is well known that when crisis strikes, it is time to change, adapt, and even make crucial strategic decisions and reorientations. Most companies are reviewing their business models and focusing more on innovation and new ways of doing business. The same applies to controlling. Times of crisis provide controlling with the opportunity to give its greatest contribution as fast, and agile information, quality advice, and analyses are now more important than ever, and controllers who are capable of creating a number “what if” simulations are in high demand. That is why we have prepared 13 presentations for you that will offer useful advice on what controlling can offer at this moment and how controlling tools provide concrete help in times of crisis.

Controllers have an important but challenging role in times of crisis. Many controllers are crisis-tested and have concepts and measures for typical corporate crises in place. COVID-19, however, is an unprecedented form of crisis that confronts controllers with new challenges. The presentation will highlight the role of controllers in times of crisis, successful steps for successful crisis management and the specifics of Covid-19.

The presentation will show the RPCA - Implementation of Resource and Process Consumption Accounting in the production company. The RPCA concept is a part of the latest trend in research on cost accounting, and the essence of the RPCA concept (Controller + Manager = Controlling) is a fixed cost downward spiral. The participants will see the key success factors of the RPCA implementation. Special emphasis will be on how COVID 19 affected cost accounting systems.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) have a reputation for being complex, confusing, and boring. They are also the secret weapon that can help you deliver on your strategy through stunning results. In this session, Bernie Smith will walk you through the seven steps of the ‘Results Orientated KPI System’ (ROKS), a method designed to allow any business to develop meaningful, relevant, and effective KPIs. The talk will cover… • A visual approach for developing KPIs that will guarantee you spot the KPIs you have missed and help you engage your whole team in KPI selection • A bullet-proof method for shortening your final list of KPI down to the bare minimum and make sure you don’t skip your ‘gold bar’ measures. • A simple for approach for defining KPIs. Who is the session aimed at?: Any organization that needs to find a small selection of meaningful key performance indicators (KPIs) that are guaranteed to deliver the results you are looking for.

In ten minutes, Mario will let us in on the secret of a fast and simple workout that we can regularly do at the office to avoid back pain. Mario will demonstrate some simple exercises that can be done at the office whenever we feel the need, and which are particularly important for people who spend a lot of their time sitting.

Lunch break

The critical roles of the board of directors are: company strategy approval, CEO nomination and directors training and evaluation, key investment and M&A decisions, overseeing management performance, compliance, ethics, and risk management. The main obstacles for achieving these roles as a board are: lack of clarity about board roles, inadequate information, inadequate board composition, and dysfunctional board dynamics. Concerning inadequate information, in this session, we will see how to use semantic notation (IBCS) when preparing the board book and enlarge board vision by conveying additional information on social and environmental matters. Finally, we’ll share of to align Roles-Agenda-Analysis and Reporting through the RAAR Model. How to establish an Annual Agenda that will cover the five leading Board Roles, how to do an Analysis that goes from a) Strategy to b) Capabilities & Processes to c) Value for the Customer to d) Company Results, and how to build a board book that will convey information for the enlarged analysis proposed.

Do We Really Understand the Roles Played by Our Customer?

Companies usually tend to focus mostly on the income statement, and on how to grow revenues and keep expenses under control, while cash flow is often taken for granted. However, in times like these, we become aware that cash is the lifeblood of a company. Therefore, it is very important to have processes and tools in place that make it possible to properly report and forecast cash flow. In this presentation, we will share with the audience an approach to implementing the direct method of cash flow reporting on top of MS Dynamics NAV ERP, using DataSense.BI (product by Data Sense, Croatia), together with the implementation of cash flow forecasting using the Power Planner (product by Power ON, USA). Both solutions rely on Microsoft Power BI, a world-leading analysis and business intelligence platform.

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In large companies, the trend towards standardization of accounting has dominated for some time. One aspect is the standardization of software systems. However, in some cases, this also includes a declining importance of cost accounting. The flow of values is determined by the rules of the balance sheet and income statement. However, the specifications of transfer pricing generate figures that are neither suitable for controlling nor for motivation. It can also be shown in the subject area of imputed costs, WACC, and investment calculation that a limitation to statutory accounting is not always the best decision. Supplementary cost accounting remains important in order to provide management with figures that provide good decision support.

Variance analysis is one of the most fundamental and decisive tasks of every business analyst or FP&A professional. Every month you're expected to explain the sales or cost variances vs budget or previous year in a meaningful and convincing way. And it's not always easy. The Price-Volume-Mix (PVM) variance analysis is an extremely helpful method for explaining variances that will add a lot of value to your dashboards and reports. It's an excellent tool that every analyst should add to his toolbox. Join our session to learn how to implement it efficiently in Excel and/or Power BI.

In our presentation, we want to draw attention to the set of IT skills that helped our company become a data-driven organization. We would like to elevate controlling professionals to data controlling professionals. It is crucial to overcome IT barriers in the simplest possible way using graphical data modeling and reporting. Using open data, we will show you how easy it is to obtain insightful information from the DRG model (Diagnosis Related Group) in the interactive cost and income quadrant. We also want to show where we stand as a hospital compared to other healthcare institutions (benchmarking). For the closing part of the presentation, again with open data, we made an interactive dashboard with infographic elements that show the utilization of ER in Croatia.

In ten minutes, Mario will let us in on the secret of a fast and simple workout that we can regularly do at the office to avoid back pain. Mario will demonstrate some simple exercises that can be done at the office whenever we feel the need, and which are particularly important for people who spend a lot of their time sitting.

Lunch break

Integrating Sustainability Indicators

The presentation explains controlling from the point of view of artificial intelligence. Is there a way to predict the most common mistakes, plan the best way forward and use AI as support for making the biggest decisions? We will explain the state-of-the-art status of AI-backed systems and their flaws. The lecturer will also present the most popular predictions in the field.

In my presentation I will convince the audience that business is not just acting as planned. Business results are good when we are getting better and better. Not every day, not every month, but on average. Parallel, we have to do our business better than others. This is the essence of a successful business. Valuable controlling shows properly if the business results are better in timeline, and better that others. Managers are our internal customers. We must respect the time they spend on understanding information we prepare for them. And the only way is to be simple and consistent. It is not easy to be simple. Good controlling is not easy because it has to be simple.

Closing the Conference

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