Financial Close with SAP S/4HANA

Piotr Góreckiis a program manager and enterprise architect in the IBM Global SAP Center of Competence (CoC). He is the co-author of SAP S/4HANA: An Introduction and has nearly 30 years of experience in planning and delivering complex global business transformation programs enabled by SAP solutions. His success comes from his business process, technical, and industry expertise, which includes consumer products, life sciences, retail, and telecommunications. In his current role, he helps customers define their SAP S/4HANA roadmaps and identify new solutions and technologies that enable them to reach their business goals.

Francisco da Cunhais an associate partner and leader in the Europe Middle East and Africa Center of Competence (EMEA CoC) and TruQua EMEA, an IBM company, focused on finance transformation and SAP S/4HANA global sales and delivery. He has wide-ranging business consultancy experience and has delivered more than 19 projects and advised on scoping and roadmap initiatives of more than 20 clients from SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA and Central Finance. Francisco’s strong finance background, proven project management experience leading large teams, and SAP S/4HANA expertise enable him to ensure clients have the right solutions and business processes that leverage market-leading practices and the best, recent technology innovations and trends to support their growth and success. Since 2018, Francisco has specialized in SAP S/4HANA and has delivered four full lifecycle SAP S/4HANA projects (three greenfield, including an SAP S/4HANA public cloud implementation, and one brownfield system conversion), as well as serving as the functional integration lead for a Central Finance project. His clients consider him a trusted partner with the required experience to shape and deliver any SAP S/4HANA-based initiative.

Howard A. La Kierassists clients in their digital transformations enabled by SAP ecosystem solutions as the financial transformation go-to-market leader for TruQua, an IBM company. He is the co-author of Introducing SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Advanced Financial Closing (AFC) and has more than 28 years of experience focusing on finance and upstream processes from source to pay, lead to cash, plan to fulfill, acquire to decommission, idea to market, and hire to retire and the solutions that enable them. Howard has worked with some of TruQua and IBM’s largest clients and implementation programs globally in a variety of roles, such as project executive, program manager, advisor, global integration lead, and global finance lead with SAP ERP products ranging from SAP R/3 to SAP S/4HANA, Central Finance, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, group reporting, SAP Concur, and close automation, include SAP Ad-vanced Financial Closing. His deep business process and technology expertise affords him a strategic view to uncover business requirements, translate technical topics in easily con-sumable business language, and simplify complex scenarios to drive clarity and facilitate decision making to yield desired business outcomes. His clients consider him a trusted busi-ness partner and coach enabling their professional and business success.

Sonam Pawaris a senior managing consultant with extensive experience running business transformation programs enabled by SAP finance and related solutions. She works with record-to-report and financial planning and analysis executive management and business teams to optimize business processes and drive value for finance organizations. Sonam has expertise in designing and delivering period-end close and close automation projects with SAP and Blackline solutions, including developing and delivering end user training for business and IT teams. She has spoken at SAP events across the globe covering a wide range of topics, making the latest trends in finance transformation more accessible to business and IT users alike, and breaking down upcoming features of SAP Central Finance and SAP S/4HANA Finance. Sonam’s industry exposure spans professional services, banking, insur-ance, oil and gas, energy, CPG, and pharmaceuticals and SAP S/4HANA implementation approaches from greenfield to brownfield and SAP Central Finance projects.

Marc Sixis a partner at TruQua, an IBM Company. He has been a featured speaker at worldwide SAP Finance conferences, broadcasts, and shows over the last decade, and co-authored the book Introducing SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Advanced Financial Closing (AFC) and other finance thought leadership material focused on business transformation and change. Marc began his career in 2014 as a financials and controlling consultant at SAP specializing in SAP S/4HANA, Central Finance, and the managerial accounting, period-end close and consolidation process areas. While he is an SAP functional and technical expert, Marc also has experience in management consulting gained during time spent at KPMG as a senior consultant in the advisory practice. Marc has helped dozens of Central Finance customers implement high-value global solutions since the products earliest versions and continues to be a proven industry leader in project roadmap construction, business case development, and business process optimization and improvement.