Photos: Patrick Furter
Fulu Ravele, Renergen CFO, Senele Mbatha, Discovery Vitality CFO, and Mhanqwa Khumalo, Pfizer SSA FD
CFO of the Future Summit How businesses are using technology to keep up
CFO South Africa hosted special guests Graeme Codrington, Jan Hofmeyr, Mikateko Tshetshe and Ian Russell at the Equinox Innovation Centre in Sandton. The speakers shared how technology is changing the way we live and the way we do business.
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n 5 November 2019, CFO South Africa – in partnership with Oracle – hosted the CFO of the Future Summit at Absa’s Equinox Innovation Centre in Sandton. Close to 100 of South Africa’s top CFOs gathered to learn, network and share their experiences and concerns around digital transformation.
tems they would consider to be ridiculous. Doctor visits, parking garages and office blocks were put forward as concepts we’d move on from in the not-too-distant future by the audience. Graeme then challenged the audience to think about what this would mean for their own roles in the future of business.
After CFO South Africa MD Joël Roerig kicked off the evening, CFO South Africa community manager John Deane opened the floor to TomorrowToday Global CEO and futurist Graeme Codrington.
The costs of developing vs the cloud
Graeme pointed out that the 2020s are a few short weeks away, saying that everything we’ve done in the past two or three decades has been building blocks. “What will happen in the next 10 years is that those systems will develop a life of their own,” he said. Graeme then asked the CFOs to imagine themselves in 2050 and look back on the 2020s and consider the sys-
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CFO MAGAZINE • CFO.CO.ZA
The audience was then split into two groups to hear from two CFOs who have undergone a finance transformation in their organisation. OUTsurance CFO Jan Hofmeyr explained how the insurance company is now embarking on a cloud journey. “Wearing a CFO hat, I have to look at the cost of developing systems when they are available in the cloud.” About the journey, he says that it’s daunting, but then you find your rhythm. “We don’t bet the farm on new technology, but run the systems concurrently for a few
