E-invoicing: Now a must-have process change (Case study)

Manual processing and paper are the kinds of things that prevent efficiencies and savings in an organisation and therefore e-invoicing is an obvious solution. But why the poor take-up by companies? Mainly it’s a result of technical challenges and the lack of a standard for invoice creation. There are around 400 providers of e-invoicing and loads of accounting packages but few networks working together. Step in Swift, which is now working with the entire e-invoicing community to make the interoperability issue a thing of the past, using its network to enable connectivity between the various parties. Is this a revolution on a similar scale that Swift entailed for bank connectivity? What are the implications for companies? Some are already involved in pilot projects – see what they are gaining and how fast you can take advantage of this new development. While SEPA and e-invoicing are separate issues, they are mutually beneficial and should also drive each other forward.

Tim Payne: ERP Business Process Manager - Finance & Purchasing, Spirax-Sarco, UK

Stephen Carter: Senior Product Marketing Manager, Bottomline Technologies, UK

Lunch

Sponsored by Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets

Richard Dallas: Transactional Banking Director, Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets

Making tax and treasury work together for the company bottom-line (Case study)

How can the relationship between the tax and treasury departments of a MNC work better together? This company's treasury over the past 10 years worked with its tax departments on a large number of acquisitions, divestitures, refinancing and tax-driven restructuring projects. The bottom-line impact of these projects was often far beyond those of the mainstream treasury activities like cash & FX-management. In this session, Sara Lee will talk about specific instances of joint management on projects and explain the significance of the decisions and focus.

Jan Schets: Director Treasury, Sara Lee International, The Netherlands

XML: Roll up your sleeves and dig in (Case study)

In the quest for standardisation, is XML (extensible markup language), as a message format, the Holy Grail? ISO20022 XML is ready and able in the banks, the TMSs and ERPs so what’s all the fuss about? The buzz is that companies now have a more efficient and automated method to have real-time communication with their banks. XML will get rid of the different standards in bank payment and reporting protocols. It will also eliminate the need to customise interfaces to your different banks. Like any new initiatives, this will probably take years to filter through to all companies, but early adopters sing its praises. Part of the problem is changing corporate infrastructure in order to support XML traffic. This case study will look at the business case for moving to XML now and how prepared your banks are. How does SEPA come into play?

Hans-Maarten van den Nouland: Director – International Treasury Services, Merck, UK

Refreshment break

Maximising tax efficiencies across Europe (Expert speaker)

Efficiency and eliminating costs in your value chain drive most corporations in Europe. This has a profound impact on the way corporations organise their corporate structure and defines the profit centres within the group. While locations depend on much more than just taxes, treasury needs to know which centres are currently hot and which are not for organisation entrepreneur structures and shared services centres. In our environment where governments need money to cover huge budget deficits, these structures need to be robust enough to withstand challenges from tax authorities. What are therefore the tax considerations when structuring your business? Is your cash management structure aligned and tax efficient? How best to navigate the challenges of taxation across Europe?

Philippe Vyncke: Tax Partner, PwC, Belgium

Global payment trends (Case study)

This session will look at what is happening across the payments landscape and how it affects corporatesvia the findings of the World Payments Report 2011. It will look briefly at regulatory impact, including SEPA and the PSD, and then delve into trends in global and regional payments in non-cash instruments, cash and cheque usage. What industry initiatives will drive further change in payments and how will this impact companies? How are new technologies and competition making the payments universe more complex? What are the challenges for the future?

Sergio Magnante: Vice President, Capgemini, Italy

Simon Newstead: Managing Director, Head of FI Market and Business Strategy, Global Transaction Services, RBS

Adjourn to Day 3