Finance Leaders Focus on Transformation at Accelerate Sydney 2023

New mandates and increasing investor expectations have caused a paradigm shift in corporate reporting. On 17 October, CFOs, controllers, directors and other business leaders gathered to discuss the future of finance, risk and sustainability at Accelerate Sydney 2023. 

Workiva hosted Accelerate Sydney to provide an opportunity for reporting and compliance professionals from across industries to unify as we navigate the next wave of change. With new regulations and their impact on reporting cycles, the need for assured integrated reporting has never been greater. Thought leaders and technology demonstrations were center stage as teams focused on how they can better integrate data, people, process and technology. 

Throughout the event, speakers shared market insights and exchanged practical advice about how to tackle new mandates, meet requirements and evolve their disclosures. 

Below are highlights from Accelerate Sydney 2023.

Deep dives into the finance transformation journey

Speakers at Accelerate Sydney shared their experience and expertise on finance transformation. As more organisations look to modernize the office of the CFO and accelerate change, often the best advice comes from peers who have already navigated their teams through the process. 

Chief Customer Officer Penny Ashley-Lawrence held a fireside chat on the transformation journey with several guest speakers, including Global Chief Financial Officer Guillaume Leger of Omni Bridgeway, Head of Reporting, Forecasting and Analytics Jay Sharma of Transurban, and Head of Group Finance Operational Risk and Assurance Daniel Cross of QBE.

Additional topics discussed during the event included: 

• What the future of assured integrated reporting holds
• Building regulatory resilience, readiness and agility with financial reporting
• How teams are creating bold and beautiful designed reports in Workiva

Bringing assurance to financial and non-financial reporting

Attendees at Accelerate Sydney were among the first to see several new Workiva innovations, including:

• Automated table of contents that will update with any changes to document headings
• Comment permissions, which allow you to have sensitive, private conversations with select collaborators without locking down entire documents
• A new in-app certifications experience, which gives you the power to collect signatures, exceptions and evidence all in the same place and automatically track progress throughout the process
• Links overrides and Smart Links, which will give users more control over how they use and share data points across workspaces
• Enhanced designed reporting capabilities, which give internal or external designers more freedom to bring branding, images and other design elements to reports directly in the Workiva platform, so you can retain full data integrity

As the only platform that unifies financial reporting, environmental, social, and governance (ESG), audit, and risk in a single, secure cloud environment, Workiva continues to develop new technologies that simplify your work that matters most. 

Award winners announced at Accelerate Sydney

At a special ceremony during Accelerate Sydney, we recognised partners who made significant impact for the benefit of our mutual customers. Deloitte was named Workiva Partner of the Year, while KPMG was named Workiva Emerging Partner of the Year. 

According to Corey Wells, SVP, Partners and Alliances at Workiva, “Our partners play a critical role in extending the value of the Workiva platform for customers. Workiva partners provide customers with guidance and expertise so they can streamline processes, foster collaboration and achieve unparalleled efficiency. Each year we come together to celebrate our global community, the work we’ve achieved together and our most impactful partners. Thank you to all our partners that continue to build their Workiva practices and leverage our platform to drive significant value for our mutual customers.”

We also recognised several customers who embrace the Workiva spirit of innovation within their own organisations, and who are using the platform in exciting and inventive ways. 

Omni Bridgeway earned the Efficiency of the Year award for helping position the platform to others within the organisation. Their efforts were an example of the power of sharing their success to help others do the same.

The On the Rise award went to Qantas, a new customer who has gone above and beyond to embrace working alongside Workiva, serving as a champion for the platform both internally and externally.

QBE was named the GRC Powerhouse for implementing and adopting Workiva’s self-service tool for governance, risk and compliance (GRC). This winner is a true powerhouse in understanding Workiva’s database capabilities. 

“Our customers are constantly improving and innovating. They're redefining how things are done. This is why we are honored and humbled to be on the forefront of digital transformation with our customers, and be their trusted resource to navigate the evolving and complex data disclosures and business reporting processes,” said Penny. “The winners of this year's customer awards set the example for how to use Workiva’s unified platform to enhance the connectivity between teams, solutions and data to seamlessly merge accuracy, efficiency and agility, which are vital in today's evolving environment.”

Thank you to all who joined Accelerate Sydney 2023. For more opportunities to hear from thought leaders in reporting, risk and sustainability, please visit our calendar of events.