Heading to CFO Magazine’s 2011 Corporate Performance Management Conference

As I write this I am winging my way to Dallas, Texas, and the Hotel Fairmont for CFO Magazine’s 2011 Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Conference. CFO Magazine has asked me—given me the honor—of providing blog coverage of the event.
Two other outstanding gentlemen have been invited by CFO Magazine to blog (and Tweet) live from CPM2011. One is blogger, author and founder of CFOwise®, Ken Kaufman, and the other is Gary Cokins, who—while being Principal of Global Business Advisors at SAS—is also an author and blogger. I am much looking forward to meeting these fine writers and, frankly, I find myself humbled to be in the company of such accomplished executives.

The Speakers

As always, CFO Magazine has gathered a stellar array of speakers for this conference:

• Thomas H. Davenport – President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College and co-author of Competing on Analytics and Analytics at Work
• Dr. Kasthuri Henry – Professor and president of KasHenry, Inc.; Assistant Professor at Southern Illinois University; and Adjunct Professor at North Park University
• Eric Lundberg – Chief Financial Officer at ALM
• Wayne Eckerson – President of BI Leader Consulting and author of Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business
• Christina Spade – Senior Vice-President of Affiliate Finance and Business Operations at Showtime Networks
• Christopher Poinsatte – Executive Vice-President and CFO of Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport
• Roger Blanken – Director of Finance at International Flavors and Fragrances, Inc.
• Curtis Neumann – Associated Director of FP&A at AT&T
• Jay Thompson – Managing Director at Protiviti

Supplemental Workshops

• 102 Improved Performance Management through a Unique Analytical Scorecarding System presented by Forrest Breyfogle, President & CEO of Smarter Solutions Inc.
• 201 Aligning Resources through Integrated Business Planning presented by John O’Rourke, VP Product Marketing at Oracle Corporation
• 301 Beyond the Numbers: Improve Your Company’s Performance in 30 Days with Visual Analytics presented by Kurt Lueck, Practice Director at Analytics8
• 303 Driving CPM with BPM: Unlocking Critical Information through Business Process Management presented by Vince Tornillo, Global Solutions Consultant at Ricoh Solutions Group and Evan McDonnell, VP at Appian

As you can see, it should be a great few days and I will do my best to bring you the highlights and value of the information being presented at this great conference.
For those of you with a special interest in supply chain metrics, pay particular attention to Roger Blanken’s presentation. He’s going to be talking about applying corporate performance metrics in the extended supply chain. International Flavors and Fragrances buys product from almost every area of the world and is wholly reliant on an broad and greatly extended supply chain. It should be interesting to hear what he has to say on the matter.
Also, I have this sense that I will be the irreverent one here. I expect to ask some tough questions and seek real answers from the experts.
One of the things that has me curious, for example, is this:

Who’s guarding the hen-house? CPM initiatives can involve a huge investment in capital and lead to increased operating expenses on an ongoing basis. What are the metrics that tell an organization that making that investment will provide real ROI; and what are the metrics by which the CPM initiatives themselves are measured as to success or failure?

Stand by for the next report soon.