The increasing challenges of living in a global world and managing in a global economy are daunting, but here is one thing you can do about it: Attend the Finance and Procurement Globalization Conference November 14-16.

by Elliot Clark

If Frank Baum was writing the Wizard of Oz today, Dorothy would have emerged from the wreckage of her Kansas farmhouse and told her intrepid Cairn Terrier, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” Sound familiar? But in the new world order, the Munchkins would rush up to her responding, “Big deal, this is not Kansas, and you better figure out how to operate in Munchkin Land. And by the way, being tall will not get you favored treatment. Also, we expect you to obey all Munchkin regulations and respect our cultural norms.” And so it goes.

Operating in a global economy is different. The world is not getting smaller so much as it is getting more immediate and more immediately complex. In addition, competitive pressures require leveraging economies of scale and the servicing of multiple divisions of a company from a single department or center. Socio-economic forces are driving new demands for an educated breed of executives who can, as Robert Goizueta, former CEO of Coca-Cola , said, “Think global, act global.”

That is why FAO Today is joining forces with The Hackett Group to present the Finance and Procurement Globalization Conference November 14 to 16 at the Evergreen Conference Resort in Stone Mountain, GA.

One morning in late April, I was watching one of the morning shows on CNBC that featured four talking-head guests discussing a downward revision in guidance by a global consumer brand. As the group’s superimposed images crowded the screen like a pack of hungry vultures devouring the last savory morsels on a fallen carcass, one of the commentators began blaming the company’s problems in part on “runaway SG&A costs,” and the others joined in. Clearly, they opined the company had failed to leverage economies of scale.

The criticized company had higher general and administrative and, particularly, accounting and reporting expenses than its competitors. A lovely and colorful series of supporting charts and graphs was then thrust onto the screen. As I watched the continuing dissection, I sadly conceded that the talking heads had a point. As a former COO in a public company, I understand that you have to operate with tight margins and leverage every global opportunity to deliver shareholder value or take your beating gracefully. In today’s world, global brands have to be able to leverage their size for advantage.

Ironically, I was in Atlanta that morning for The Hackett Group’s Best Practices Conference. Less than two hours later, I was energized by case studies of companies that had outperformed their peers and their benchmarks. Uniformly, the companies with lower operating costs were performing well in many other areas of expense as well as revenue generation. Clearly, they had mastered management in the global economy.

The expert Hackett research team told me that many of these companies had reinvented their infrastructure globally using various resourcing strategies after a “deep dive” self-assessment. Some had developed significant outsourcing partnerships and others had blended models, but most had built shared-services centers designed with more than labor arbitrage in mind. The best companies had embraced pragmatism and measurements based on effectiveness beyond the simple ratios of efficiency such as error rate. In further discussions, Hackett and FAO Today realized that some companies do it better, and we had an obligation to help share their stories.

And that is how the Finance and Procurement Globalization Conference was born. Like so many things in business, it had its genesis in the tragic spectacle of business pundits hurling snarky comments at a fallen icon and also in witnessing new successes. Companies that have mastered the global economy also have proactively developed an executive team that allows them to work across borders, cultures, and subsidiaries. They bring together the diverse employee populations of global companies and build consensus around process and centralization, which reduces cost and enables success. At the conference, we will provide both presentation and more in-depth peer-to-peer learning opportunities from these firms.

How these companies and executives do it better and what steps it takes to begin this journey are the topics of the conference. We hope to see you there. For further information on the event, visit www.faotoday.com.