7th CFO INNOVATION THAILAND FORUM 2021

A Road to New Reality: Successfully Navigating towards The New Normal

August 19, 2021 | Bangkok, Thailand

“No one knows how long the pandemic will last, but in time, business and daily life will find a new equilibrium. CFOs are key to ensuring that their organizations not only survive the current crisis but thrive in the next normal”.

-McKinsey

About the Event

The World Bank has revised Thailand’s 2020 growth projection down from 2.9% to a range of -3.0% to -5.0%, indicating a sharp economic contraction and will potentially make it the worst affected in the ASEAN region.

The Thai economy tends to be negatively impacted from COVID-19 and worse than other regional economies, owing to the high reliance on tourism, travel and hospitality industries, which then cascades to impact most other allied sectors.

The exports are precited to suffer a fall of 8% this year, rather than a rise of 1.4% as previously planned. Tourism has no better fate in their case as the 2020 forecast for foreign tourisst has been slashed to 12.7million, down from 37 million seen earlier, and last year's record 39.8 million.

CFOs are on a long journey to recovery and are responsible to make the right investment and continuity decisions and adapt quickly in order to successfully navigate the new reality of uncertainty. They are required to course-correct business strategies in response to the fast-emerging economic state, with cost containment measures and deferring or cancelling planned investments, taking center stage.

Furthermore, CFOs will also look at evaluating costs of facilities, general capital expenditures, information technology, and the changing nature of workplace and workforce.

This will be the defining period to integrate meaningful finance transformation and the true test for CFOs to build an agile, adaptive, and resilient finance function!

Key Focus Areas

• The regional economic outlook and Thailand’s road to recovery
• Examining the CFO’s reemergence plans for 2021 – 22: the pandemic, the faltering oil price, the US-China trade war
• Mitigating the fear of recession: how to course-correct strategies and backup plans 
• Building sustainable BCP and recalibrating business models 
• Making a move to a modern F&A to Increase efficiency in finance processes and workflows