Learn how Dow Corning tackled a challenging SAP General Ledger implementation. Step through the project plan and examine the lessons Dow Corning learned along the way. Understand the impact of implementing SAP General Ledger in March rather than January, as well as how the company achieved tight integration of scenario testing. Get tips from Dow Corning’s pre-migration master data clean-up phase. View a demo that compares and contrasts the classic SAP R/3 general ledger and the SAP General Ledger available in SAP ERP, and get tips on what to watch for in your migration. Find out what surprised Dow Corning during the implementation and hear why the company made profit centers a required field for all general ledger entries. Find out what the company’s next steps are, including an upgrade to SAP ERP 6.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation.

•  Session presented by: Agnes Khu, Dow Corning

Hear firsthand how Weyerhaeuser, a wood product and fiber manufacturer, integrated its financial accounting and materials management activities. Explore the strategy the company devised and its approach to requirements gathering for this integration project. Draw valuable lessons from Weyerhaeuser’s experience in building a custom account determination spreadsheet to configure, test, deploy, and validate financial accounting postings, and review a sample transaction to see how the spreadsheet is used. Get tips for changing existing account determinations. Step through a diagram of Weyerhaeuser’s materials management account determination process and understand how automatic account determination contributed to the success of the company’s SAP Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM) implementation. Take home a sample materials management account determination spreadsheet to use as a template for your organization’s integration project, as well as a cost center determination spreadsheet and a list of movement types and transaction keys.

This session goes beyond the basics, exposing frequently overlooked SAP functionality and showing you how to leverage it to reduce the time it takes to process electronic bank statements. Learn advanced tips and tricks to improve automation and accuracy of postings to the general ledger and sub-ledgers. Take home best practices for overcoming technical challenges, such as adding required fields to the accounting document, and learn techniques to improve your hit rate for matching payments with invoices. Explore popular options and get undocumented configuration tips for enhancing your current SAP capabilities via user exits, BTEs, and BAdIs.

• Session presented by: Jaime Ryan, e5 Solutions Group

Explore the many financial reporting choices available from SAP, including SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence, SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer, ABAP queries, drill-down reporting, ABAP reports, and the report painter tool. You will also learn about options from Business Objects. Explore the top 5 features of each and see a demo of each solution in action. Evaluate the criteria for using each tool to meet your specific requirements. Identify the types and sources of data required to support different categories of financial reports. Gain insight into the differences between reporting from a single source of data versus multiple sources, and get tips for reconciling different sources. Get best practices for cross-functional reports, including non-financial data in your reports, and for broadening your analytic capabilities. Take home a diagram of common tables used for analytics and a decision tree for choosing the best financial reporting tool for your organization.

• Session presented by: Matt Christensen, Phoenix Endeavors

Understand how to properly archive your financial data in SAP to maximize performance and ensure system integrity and audit compliance. Step through a 3-pronged approach to data archiving in SAP, including strategic, tactical, and logistical planning. Obtain best practices to design a winning archiving strategy; for example, find out how to align the archiving process with your organization’s business plan and how to maintain governmental, regulatory, and statutory compliance. Delve into the tactical planning component; learn how to develop, test, and implement SAP archiving functionality. Examine the logistical steps required to execute your archiving strategy, such as properly allocating resources like personnel and material. Gain a concrete understanding of SAP data archiving and the elements of a rock-solid archiving and data management strategy.

• Session presented by: Stephen Wright, Dolphin Corporation

In this joint session from Novell and Deloitte, learn how to better leverage your company’s investment in available governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) technologies to automate manual processes, lower operational costs, and greatly reduce IT security risk exposure.  Learn how leading identity, access, and reporting tools work together to help you better identify, respond to, and recover from security and compliance breaches. See how these new technologies, in conjunction with Deloitte’s IT Security Maturity Model, can be used to better integrate your SAP systems with third-party GRC and security solutions, which results in unified governance, integrated risk and compliance management, and common audit and reporting processes. Hear lessons learned from customer implementations that leveraged these solutions to cross the chasm from manual to automated GRC processes.

• Session presented by: Nick Nikols, Novell and Brian Parker, Deloitte & Touche

Gain a comprehensive understanding of how SAP supports International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in this special 3-hour session. Develop a working knowledge of how your organization can leverage SAP to meet IFRS requirements. Step through the SAP solutions available for IFRS reporting activities, including SAP General Ledger. Find out how to adjust your current reporting requirements, such as US GAAP, to align with IFRS reporting and walk through a proven approach to transition your organization. During the second half of the session, hear directly from a panel of accounting experts from Accenture, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and Pricewaterhouse Coopers on where your organization will most likely feel the impact. Leverage their expertise to address common challenges. Gain insight into the future of leveraging your SAP system to meet IFRS reporting requirements.

• Session presented by: Gary Fullmer, SAP Labs and Jim Daddario, SAP

Explore the built-in tools SAP provides that enable you to enhance your accounts payable (A/P) implementation, including user exits, business transaction events (BTEs), and business add-ins (BAdIs). Find out how you can reduce data entry efforts by utilizing default field values for master and transactional data. Understand when and how to make use of validation enhancements such as invoice entry and logistic invoice verification for master data and transactional data. Learn how to put user exits to work in the payment program to capture bank data or exclude items during the proposal run. Take home an overview of A/P user exits available in your SAP back-end solutions like SAP ERP. Learn how to create user-defined screens in the vendor master to quickly respond to ad hoc customer requests. Leave this session with tips for quickly locating SAP-delivered user exits.

• Session presented by: Martin Ullmann, DAP Consulting

Understand the functionality that SAP has in place to enable your organization to successfully meet the conversion to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) reporting requirements. Walk through a recommended timeline for transitioning from US GAAP to IFRS. Explore the functionality provided by SAP General Ledger to support parallel accounting and gain an understanding of how SAP General Ledger could impact your conversion process. Learn about the functionality that SAP provides to convert asset valuations from US GAAP to IFRS. Leave this session armed with the tools to start your organization on the path to transition to IFRS compliance and gain a solid understanding of SAP’s IFRS compliance roadmap.

• Session presented by: Gary Fullmer, SAP Labs and Mark Lombard, SAP

This session shows you how to use functionality within the integrated planning tool in SAP NetWeaver BI to achieve greater detail on profit and loss (P&Ls) statements and subsequently use that data to make more informed financial decisions. See examples of P&L statements based on attributes such as customer or product profitability. Learn how to allocate non-direct P&L items to lower data levels. Learn how to gather actual profitability data in SAP ERP and evaluate the options available for costing-based and account-based profitability analysis. Get tips to configure distribution functionality and understand the key considerations for designing a profitability allocation application to simplify the reprocessing of data and maintenance. Walk through examples of configuration, process chains, and resultant reports. Compare your options for reporting design and know what your data staging and processing options are in SAP NetWeaver BI.

• Session presented by: Graham Johanson, Breakwater Consulting

Understand how developing a remediation strategy of your organization’s segregation of duties environment prior to an upgrade or implementation of SAP solutions for GRC can streamline audits and reduce audit fees. Tackle common challenges such as handling unmanageable data and identifying the appropriate remediation strategy for each conflict. Learn how to identify conflict groups and understand the different remediation strategies for resolving each type of conflict group. Find out how to manage change within you environment to reduce the impact on business processes. Take home an example of analysis documentation and a diagram of the different conflict types and how to best resolve them.

• Session presented by: Jody Paterson, KPMG

This session offers the opportunity to explore the characteristics and qualities that define world-class financial organizations (e.g., agile, connected, and metric-driven). See how your finance and accounting practices measure up to your industry counterparts. Identify the quantitative and qualitative metrics you should focus on to evaluate and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of financial processes, including financial close and centralized risk and compliance. Learn how to use these metrics to identify and rectify areas of poor performance across your finance organization. Pinpoint repetitive and operational activities (including the generation of financial statements) that can be automated, integrated, or consolidated to allow financial organizations to focus on strategic planning and identify new market opportunities for the corporation. Step through real-world lessons from world-class financial organizations and gain insight into how your peers are leveraging SAP tools, such as shared services functionality, to centralize, reduce costs, and improve the consistency of their financial operations across all business units.

• Session presented by: Birgit Starmanns, SAP America

Examine the system components and implementation requirements for SAP BusinessObjects solutions for access control, process control, and risk management in this special 3-hour session. Gain familiarity with the technical architecture of SAP BusinessObjects GRC solutions, their Java front ends, ABAP back ends, real-time agents, system landscape requirements, and software logistics. See how SAP BusinessObjects GRC solutions leverage SAP NetWeaver® for scalability and security, and how they fit together with other solutions in your landscape. This session also provides guidance for installation and configuration. Leave this session with best practices for your system landscape design, along with recommendations to optimize that design for the SAP BusinessObjects GRC solutions you plan to implement. You will also learn the best ways to prepare your back-end systems for integration with SAP BusinessObjects GRC solutions.

• Session presented by: Frank Rambo, SAP BusinessObjects

This session provides an overview and best practice approach to leveraging SAP BusinessObjects enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions and risk management to mitigate supplier risk. Find out how to improve your organization’s sourcing decision strategy. Explore how you can proactively identify and act on savings opportunities, while mitigating the risks of a suppliers’ inability to meet demand. Avoid doing business with debarred suppliers and act upon risk adjusted sourcing decisions. Leave this session with a solid understanding of how you can leverage SAP BusinessObjects EPM solutions and risk management.

• Session presented by: Padmini Ranganathan, SAP BusinessObjects

This session enables you to identify end user characteristics — for example, SAP experience level and IT knowledge — to develop an appropriate training strategy for upgrading SAP financial applications to SAP ERP. Delve into real-word advice for building an enterprise-wide communication plan that keeps stakeholders, finance supervisors, and users informed on what training is required of them and what additional training opportunities are available to them. Get valuable tips to differentiate and subsequently prepare and structure training for experienced SAP end users versus those new to SAP. Walk away with a solid understanding of recommended post-training activities, including tips for evaluating the effectiveness of training, strategies to address identified gaps, and best practices to develop a plan for maintaining your organization’s training. Take home a checklist of factors that impact training retention to improve your organization’s end user training strategy.

• Session presented by: Ross Bendik, Accenture

Walk through Brainware’s best practices from organizations around the world that are using intelligent data capture solutions to become heroes within their finance organizations. Learn how increasing the speed at which you access and process information from paper and electronic documents will give you real-time visibility into finance operations such as accounts payable, accounts receivable and order-to-cash, while providing you with a better handle on your working capital. Understand how intelligent data capture tools integrate with your current SAP system, how to evaluate this type of automation, and how to implement it with minimal impact on your vendors and positive impact on your finance team.

• Session presented by: Charles Kaplan, Brainware

Moving forward, SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation is the SAP application for unified planning, budgeting, forecasting, and consolidation. Gain a thorough understanding of the functionality delivered with this SAP BusinessObjects application. Step through specific examples of how its use could lead to increased productivity, reduced budget cycle times, adaptation to changing business and market conditions, and improved statutory and regulatory reporting. Pinpoint the key differences between SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation and the integrated planning features of SAP NetWeaver BI. See what’s new in SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 7.0 — the first and only unified planning, budgeting, forecasting, and consolidation application natively integrated with SAP NetWeaver.

• Session presented by: David Williams, SAP

This detailed session prepares you to perform document splitting in the SAP General Ledger in SAP ERP. Walk through examples of financial transactions that illustrate the primary concepts of document splitting. Identify the critical rules and methods for document splitting in SAP General Ledger and find out why proper item category definition is required to correctly classify your organization’s chart of accounts. Determine whether document splitting on characteristics, such as profit centers or segments, is right for your company and learn how to activate each method. Differentiate between passive splitting, active splitting and splitting using zero balancing. Acquire expert recommendations for troubleshooting common document splitting errors. Receive best practices for correctly configuring document types and item categories and obtain valuable tips for defining constants.

• Session presented by: Mitresh Kundalia, Quality Systems & Software

Learn the proper way to set up cost estimates when using SAP functionality for controlling and explore techniques to increase the accuracy of cost-of-sales estimates and improve planning processes. Navigate your master data options, and learn how cost estimates employ logistics master data to determine the standard price of assemblies and finished goods. Get tips for allocating overhead to product costs. Learn how to use cost components to assign a cost estimate to a group of similar components, such as materials, labor, or overhead. See how a costing variant enables your SAP solutions to use the right prices, bills of material, and routings. Step through a list of costing variant configuration settings. Find out how to create standard and preliminary cost estimates, and understand how they assemble and display price information. Get guidance to evaluate and resolve cost estimate warnings and error messages, and learn when these notifications should never be ignored.

• Session presented by: John Jordan, ERP Corp

Explore SAP Financial Closing cockpit functionality and configuration steps, including how to set up required authorizations and how to create a global template for the entire closing process. Learn how to generate a task list to schedule and monitor the steps in your close process. Learn how to make the task list available to stakeholders so that status updates and documentation are easily accessible. Examine how to use workflows to handle groups of objects, such as production orders that have been processed together, and learn how to configure them to escalate issues that may arise during the close. Uncover new reports, such as exception reporting, delivered with SAP enhancement package 4 to monitor the close process. Discover how the new Web Dynpro interface can be used to make financial close information available to anyone participating in the close.

• Session presented by: Janet Salmon, SAP AG

Participants in this informative session will gain insights and best practices from an overview of how SAP BusinessObjects Process Control can help build and sustain an effective governance, risk, and compliance program. Leveraging the application as part of a risk-based approach to establishing a control environment can help to identify the most effective and efficient controls for your business. In this session, we will discuss the key challenges facing corporate compliance programs today and what companies need to consider to drive value from these programs. We will discuss how to use this application to achieve better visibility into key business processes. Learn how to reduce time and compliance costs by improved balancing of manual control processes and automated business process controls and hear lessons learned and best practices related to SAP BusinessObjects Process Control implementations.

• Session presented by: Robert Clark, PricewaterhouseCoopers

Validations, substitutions, and rules (VSRs) are a powerful but infrequently used feature in SAP financial applications. Learn how to reduce the need for ABAP programming and user exits and simplify business rules with VSRs. Delve into VSR capabilities and typical business scenarios for using them, such as limiting the posting to a particular cost center for a specified combination of business area and general ledger accounts. Learn how with just a few simple steps, your organization can realize relatively uncomplicated business rules, such as defaulting the current date into the document date field for a specified document type, like a customer invoice. Learn how you can set up tracing for effective troubleshooting of VSRs. Get acquainted with the tips, tricks, and best practices involved in using VSRs.

• Session presented by: Anurag Barua, Ernst & Young

This session provides a comprehensive overview of the new functionality for SAP ERP Financials provided in SAP ERP 6.0 and enhancement package 4, including updates to SAP Credit Management, SAP Collections Management, SAP Dispute Management, and the accounting interaction center tool. Delve into important new functionality provided by the SAP Financial Closing cockpit and SAP General Ledger. Examine how enhanced cash management functionality within SAP Financial Supply Chain Management (SAP FSCM) allows for cash splitting of cash positions among profit centers (private sector) and allows split funds or grants (public sector). Walk through enhancements to SAP Treasury and Risk Management, including updates to hedge management. Look at how updates to SAP Bank Communication Management expand the number of SWIFT messages to increase straight-through processing rates.

• Session presented by: George Penton, SAP

Transform your business and financial data reporting to meet evolving global compliance rules, including SEC regulations, around Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). Explore how SAP solutions support the creation, validation, and publishing of XBRL documents for submission to global regulatory bodies. See a demonstration to get a clear picture of its practical application in your reporting. Examine proposed SEC guidelines for filing financial reports to understand why your organization should adopt XBRL now. Develop a working knowledge of XBRL. Find out how early adopters of XBRL are able to more accurately furnish their financial information to the SEC electronically, avoiding the need for costly, time-consuming, and error-prone manual data re-entry.

• Session presented by: Philip Mugglestone, SAP BusinessObjects

This session shows you proven techniques to optimize cash management. Learn which transactions should be examined first to optimize cash flow and reduce costs, data entry errors, and processing time. Discover frequently underutilized functionality in your SAP environment that you can readily leverage to improve cash flow calculations and forecasts, monitor operational cash flow, and reduce the costs of payments, transfers, and bank fees. Techniques for centralizing cash-related information will also be examined. Leave this session with expert recommendations to optimize your organization’s cash management strategy and avoid costly surprises, such as reconfiguration.

• Session presented by: Robert Lagrange, Deloitte

Come prepared to engage in a rigorous, interactive discussion with KPMG around 5 key lessons learned on realizing value through real-time assessment during an implementation of a governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) strategy. KPMG will relate real-world client experiences to illustrate how you can integrate your implementation with other critical business goals that can help you realize solid ROI while gaining competitive advantage in a demanding and turbulent economic environment.

• Session presented by: Tony Torchia and Rick Barrow, KPMG

Explore new models for utilizing shared services centers to automate financial processes and understand the reasons why more and more finance organizations are adopting them. This session also offers a comprehensive guide to finance shared services centers for SAP solutions. Learn about these capabilities and how SAP customers are leveraging them to streamline order-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes, reduce costs, make processes more transparent, and simplify process standardization activities. See how you can automate processes for dispute and collections management and invoice-to-pay. Examine the SAP model for shared services centers, how other SAP solutions factor into this model, and the degree to which shared services can be automated. Learn which activities are good candidates for automation and which are not. New functionality offered in recent enhancement packages will be covered.

• Session presented by: George Penton, SAP

This session offers an overview of the SAP tools designed to streamline the cash management process, generate more comprehensive cash reports, and provide more detailed forecasting information. Evaluate different SAP configuration options for liquidity forecasting, cash management position, and bank account general ledger structure. Get best practices for automating cash management activities, such as bank-to-bank transfers, electronic payment file generation, and electronic bank statement processing. Get a definitive list of SAP transactions and their  functions for day-to-day cash management activities that you can use to ensure your organization is getting the most out of SAP cash management functionality. Receive practical instruction for building and maintaining electronic payment file formats. Identify the tools and techniques you will need to effectively test your solution before it is deployed.

• Session presented by: Quentin Hurst, Virtuoso

Examine the resources that are required to correctly install and support SAP BusinessObjects GRC solutions in a variety of SAP landscapes. Learn the core technical concepts and architectural considerations that must be factored into pre-installation, installation, and post-installation activities to successfully implement access control, process control, risk management, and global trade services functionality. Step through the compatibility and integration issues that arise depending on what SAP software you are already running. Get detailed strategies and best practices for consolidating SAP BusinessObjects GRC solutions onto a single SAP NetWeaver system or landscape. Take home a list of common technical problems and their associated solutions, along with implementation checklists that go beyond standard SAP documentation.

• Session presented by: Kurt Hollis, Deloitte Consulting

This session delivers a comprehensive introduction to SAP applications for profitability analysis (known as CO-PA). Walk through a detailed overview of CO-PA functionality and structure. See how data from various activities, including sales and distribution and finance, affect your profitability analyses. Learn how to leverage functionality for profitability analysis for integrated planning and forecasting. Explore ways you can use profitability analysis reporting capabilities, such as drill-down reporting, for market segments based on customer, customer group, product, product group, and region. Know your options for transferring profitability data to SAP NetWeaver BI for more robust reports and analyses. Hear how your peers are leveraging profitability analysis functionality for tracking and for focusing resources on the most profitable customers.

• Session presented by: Mitresh Kundalia, Quality Systems & Software

This session reveals how organizations design and manage their audit departments. Explore emerging practices in risk-based audits, continuous risk assessments, periodic refreshes, and the coordination of tasks and communication across risk management functions. Learn how to use a risk assessment to develop an annual audit plan that is appropriate for your organization’s risk profile and complements both management’s approach to and tolerance for risk. Find out why and how you should communicate your internal audit purpose and mandate to key stakeholders. See firsthand how leading audit departments measure their own performance and demonstrate their value-added contributions through metrics and dashboards, audit reports, quality assessment reviews, interaction with the audit committee, and reporting. Take home the Ernst & Young 2008 global internal audit survey.

• Session presented by: Dan Sernett, Ernst & Young

Learn how your counterparts leverage the report painter within their SAP ERP reporting landscapes, and take a detailed look at the techniques that have proven to be most valuable. Determine when the report painter provides a more efficient, cost-effective alternative to custom ABAP report development. Step through an example that shows you how to create a financial statement with report painter. Learn how to set up currency translations so that you can run and view single reports in multiple currencies while controlling the exchange rate. Get tips to properly maintain your reporting libraries, currency exchange rate tables, and currency settings, and find out why this is key to running multi-currency reports. Gain greater proficiency working with variables and user exits.

• Session presented by:Bulent Alev, Independent Consultant

Find out how to add an additional layer to your organization’s segregation of duties analysis to eliminate false positive results. Walk through a 5-step process to deploy organizational rules in your compliance environment using the functionality of SAP BusinessObjects software for risk analysis and remediation. Get tips to enable the organization level variables functionality and walk through the steps to create an organizational rule. Get expert recommendations for including organization rules and mitigations during risk analysis. Leave this session with a list of the key considerations necessary for employing organization rules and reporting with SAP BusinessObjects solutions to perform risk analysis and remediation.

• Session presented by: Jayne Gibbon, SAP BusinessObjects

This session offers you the opportunity to look at the research findings of Ernst & Young’s recent fraud survey and take a detailed look at the top challenges facing risk compliance officers. Explore strategies deployed by leading compliance officers to build a sustainable compliance program in a dynamic regulatory environment. Learn how to adopt both a bottom-up and top-down approach to achieving compliance to ensure both current and continuous compliance, while taking into account your organization’s evolving technology needs. Take home a copy of Ernst & Young’s fraud risk survey.

• Session presented by: Robert Merrill, Ernst & Young

This session offers an introduction to environmental sustainability applications from SAP. Walk thorough an overview of important functionality and learn how to develop sustainability strategies by leveraging more efficient and environmentally sustainable business processes. Walk through SAP’s current set of environmental sustainability solutions – SAP EHS Management, recycling administration software from SAP, and SAP Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM). See how your peers at leading organizations are using these solutions to better address environmental issues, regulations, risk requirement, and product safety recalls.

• Session presented by: Marty Etzel, SAP

Explore the different types of variance calculations that SAP makes available, including total variance, production variance, and planning variance. Learn when and how to use each to enhance your analysis activities. Walk through variance configuration settings and understand their impact on your variance reports. See how variance categories can be used to examine and determine the root causes of production variances. Optimize message analysis of the four input and four output variance categories, including input price, resource usage, and input quantity variance, and walk through clear definitions and real-world examples of period-end variance analysis. Learn how to identify the typical problems that can occur with total, production, and planning variance calculations and get expert advice for corrective action.

• Session presented by: John Jordan, ERP Corp

Identify key decisions you’ll need to make, challenges you’ll face, and critical success factors you need to know to prepare your organization for International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) compliance. Determine how your SAP landscape will be affected and learn how to build an IFRS conversion strategy that maintains your organization’s financial integrity and transparency. See how SAP functionality such as the ledger concept and valuation options within financial accounting support parallel accounting and IFRS, and explore 3 key areas in greater depth: fixed assets, inventory, and currency valuation. Step through key configuration settings to enable automated IFRS compliance. Uncover critical considerations — such as whether to use account mapping or ledgers — for achieving IFRS compliance with new and existing SAP installations and upgrades. Walk through the steps and considerations for developing an IFRS roadmap for your organization, including preparation and assessment activities, program structure, staffing considerations, and integration with existing or ongoing SAP projects. Walk away from this session with a sample IFRS implementation roadmap.

• Session presented by: John Steele, Deloitte

Examine the important choices and key questions to consider when converting and migrating master data during an SAP BusinessObjects Process Control software implementation. Learn the essential principles of master data elements in the SAP BusinessObjects application for process control and gain an understanding of how master data conversion and migration will impact your SAP landscape. Walk step-by-step through the data conversion process. Walk through a real-world control data example using the Risk and Control Tracking System (RCTS) as a source system to execute data extraction, conversion, and migration.

• Session presented by: Jeff Hansen, Deloitte & Touche

This session arms you with expert tips and techniques to successfully prepare for the risks and controls that external auditors look for in change and system transport processes. Walk through a step-by-step approach to implementing and transporting changes, and receive best practices for implementing effective change and transport procedures, configuration settings, and security controls. Review the 4 types of changes that occur in SAP solutions — customization, new repository objects, enhancements, and modifications — and examine which types of changes can be effectively performed through the transport system. Find out why it’s key to do your homework at the Basis level to ensure that changes are appropriately logged and have an adequate audit trail. Take home an SAP ERP change and transport management process user guide, including a list of key tables, transaction codes, and authorizations.

• Session presented by: Marta Ruiz Alfaro, Ernst & Young

This session offers an expert plan to ensure that your organization’s financial processes continue to run smoothly during an SAP ERP 6.0 upgrade. Proactively identify areas of risk to finance functions and develop an action plan for minimizing risk and disruptions during the upgrade. Walk through risk mitigation strategies and get tips for tailoring your strategy according to your system landscape, the scope, and the timing of the upgrade. Gain insight into landscape changes that you will need to account for, such as the new method for customizing table structures. Get dos and don’ts for executing process validation during the upgrade. Obtain answers to the most frequently asked questions by SAP customers preparing their financials systems for an upgrade to SAP ERP.

• Session presented by: Ian Wright, Deloitte

 This session explores new financial master data governance functionality available with SAP ERP 6.0 using new features found in enhancement package 4. Find out how to ensure consistent financial master data from multiple accounting systems to efficiently produce consolidated financial statements. Learn how to maintain financial master data for group chart of accounts, profit centers, and cost centers. Understand what kind of financial data can be modeled and maintained in a central master data system and how the SAP predelivered data model can be enhanced. Receive best practices for implementing a compliant and auditable change process for financial master data. Find out how to configure workflow approvals for master data change requests. Understand how to distribute financial master data from a central master data system to other applications, such as SAP ERP, to other financial accounting systems, or to the financial consolidation software in your SAP landscape. Catch a glimpse of future financial master data governance enhancements, including predefined data models for companies, profit centers, and cost centers.

• Session presented by: Janet Salmon, SAP AG

Take a guided tour of goods receipt/invoice receipt (GR/IR) functionality in SAP environments and review, in detail, how financial entries are posted to the GR/IR account. Obtain expert advice on process problems that can cause costly issues, including inaccurate financial reports. Hear a real-world example of how one company’s price per share was impacted by uncleared entries in its GR/IR account and find out how to avoid this same fate. Get tips to proactively manage the GR/IR account, from identifying who is responsible for clearing blocked entries to mitigating the risk of neglecting the GR/IR account. Walk through GR/IR account configuration, get tips to ensure its proper setup, and see how your setup impacts account master data. Learn how to report GR/IR balances using standard reports. Find out how to determine if your organization has undetected GR/IR challenges, and leave this session knowing the proper tools to resolve them.