An elite gathering of TOP 100 CFOs from the leading companies In India

PIKE ELECTRONIC, spol. s r.o. - Czech software company - was a proud Platinum partner of one of the most prestigous business event in India. PIKE ELECTRONIC already realised several projects here in India in the area of Industry Process  Automation and it is the mission of PIKE ELECTRONIC to strengthen the solution partner position to the leading companies in India.

The president of PIKE ELECTRONIC, Mr. Josef Fischer said: „Such impressive opportunity to meet financial leaders from India, one of the prime economic countries in the Word at the present time, and discuss their current situation and real needs in the actual hyper turbulent age."

The second edition of CFO Strategies India, organized by Naseba, a leading international business information company, was in Mumbai on September 15-16, 2008. The forum focused on responding to the new major needs of Chief Financial Officers (CFO) and on helping their organizations became more efficient and competitive. Working in strategic partnership with TIME and Business Wire India, CFO Strategies India gathers up to 100 CFOs from India with leading solution providers, including PIKE ELECTRONIC.

The CFO now has a broader and multifaceted role within the company. The CFO is indeed getting involved in decisions related to IT, human resources, investor relations, risk management as well as taxation. On top of those new changes, the economic growth is forecasted to slow down for the year 2008, putting Indian CFOs under increased pressure to maintain the efficiency and to increase the corporate performance and internal structures.

Throughout the forum, five main themes was developed during keynote presentations and workshops:

• The changing pressures on the CFOs as the role extends: Increased complexity with the role.
• How the forecasted economic slow down will affect the Indian market.
• The globalisation drive in India and competing in Global Markets.
• Cross-boarder mergers & acquisitions:
• Human capital management - a key to the success of the organization.

The other topic areas for 2008:

• Gaining control over regulatory requirements.
• International company structures for effective financial management.
• Driving growth through corporate performance management.
• Managing and retaining people in the finance fiction.
• Information security: how to secure information and analyze it for business performance.
• Are we heading towards a downturn? The CFOs perspective.
• Transforming the finance function: Taking a look at the best companies from India.
• How Indian corporates can prepare themselves for XBRL reporting?
• Better business decisions: Its all about business intelligence.

Keynote presentations and panel discussions have been led by the best industry-renowned speakers, such as:

• Alok Agarwal, CFO, Reliance Industries Limited(RIL)
• Marc Rudolf, Director, Greater Zurich Area AG
• Prof J Ramachandran, BOC -Policy, IIM Bangalore
• S K Venkatraman, CFO, Apollo Hospitals
• Kaushik Chatterjee, CFO, TATA STEEL
• Patrick De Royer, CFO, SIEMENS INDIA
• S Chakraborty, CFO, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories
• V Balakrishnan, CFO, Infosys Technologies

CFOs had the opportunity to attend the workshops of their choice where they should discover the latest business information solutions in an interactive environment. CFO Strategies India has been designed to ensure that all participants are able to discuss and interact with their peers.

The role of the CFO has been discussed time and again over the years. With the markets opening up, the responsibilities of the CFOs have become complex and demanding and require constant reinvention of the role. Mr D D Jalan, CFO, Vedanta Resources PLC set the scene by discussing the changing pressures on the CFOs as their role extends. He emphasized the need for creating shareholder value, which includes striking a balance between growth and non-dilution of controls. Mr Jalan said, "For companies which are expanding their footprints in the global markets - multiple governance requirements assume huge importance considering it's presence in various geographies. Striking an example, he mentioned that Vedanta is perhaps the first Indian company to be reporting under three different accounting standards - Indian GAAP, IFRS and US GAAP".

Taking the discussion further, Marc Rudolf from Greater Zurich Area AG highlighted the trend of Indian companies using Europe as a destination for freeing up profits through tax effective structures. According to Marc, the large revenue-generating markets are usually also high-tax jurisdictions: "Smaller European countries are more flexible and provide better conditions for European Headquarters and Shared Services Centres, especially Switzerland which politically is not a member of the EU and can set its own tax rates."

The forum also had an interesting educational case study on M&A presented by Kaushik Chatterjee, Group CFO, TATA Steel, highlighted the various cultural, financial and strategic challenges that a CFO faces during an M&A deal and the post integration challenges.

The event also had Bruce Rigby, the global retirement business leader, Mercer UK emphasizing on the changing landscape of pension plans and liabilities. As Indian companies grow, they acquire the features of a multinational firm and face similar challenges, including those of pension and liabilities. Bruce further mentioned, "There are issues that need to be considered for the Indian market, including changing healthcare costs, the need to engage the employees in order to keep committed workforces and also the application of technology to improve the benefit and HR processes generally. These are all global challenges which face all global businesses. What perhaps may be unique about India is the speed in which these issues are increasing in importance."

A panel discussion led by S Sreenivasan, CFO, Bajaj Alliance and V Balasundaram, CFO, Frost and Sullivan and moderated by Saurav Majumdar, Deputy Executive Editor, Financial Express, debated the current market situation as a signal towards the downturn. There was a consensus that the Indian market being led by domestic consumption witnessed a slowdown/blip, but not a downturn. S Sreenivasan also suggested that the inflation will not dampen the current investment pipeline.

The growth and future of debt market in India was discussed by D R Dogra, Deputy Managing Director, Credit Analysis and Research Ltd wherein he underlined the role of credit rating in debt market development and focused on the importance of debt market as an alternative source of funding.

Naseba's CFO Strategies India had a unique format where in apart from attending keynote presentations and interactive panel discussions, the CFOs also had the opportunity to attend educational workshops led by an industry specialist or expert trainer, designed to provide an in-depth analysis and strategic approach for the specific topic concerned and encourage one-on-one interaction with the participants that enables them to discuss their specific concerns in an exclusive, problem solving and interactive environment. These workshops led by PIKE ELECTRONIC, BT India and Pricewaterhousecoopers (PWC), focused on 3 different streams each led by a specialist from topics revolving around Technological investments, network IT infrastructure and Mergers and Acquisitions.

About PIKE ELECTRONIC workshops:

The PIKE ELECTRONIC representatives Mr. J, Mazurek (Business Unit Director) and Mr. S. Kazda (Chief Operation Officer) presented several topics  how to make the life of financial decision makers more easier. They focused on four key point of talk:

• How To Keep Costs Under Control with Service Oriented Architecture
• How to reduce time and how to get permanent control of business integration projects by using Automated Documentation Generation
• Trends in Business Intelligence for 2008 - Pre-build BI as the cost-effective solution
• How Process Automation Tools and Plant Management can help you significantly improve KPI and financial figures

Working in partnership with BT India, PIKE ELECTRONIC and PricewaterhouseCoopers as platinum sponsors and Credit analysis and research ltd, Sybase, Greater Zurich Area AG and Mercer as keynote sponsors. The 2 day Naseba event hosted the leading CFOs from different industry vertical attending educational workshops, keynote presentations and interactive panel discussions.

About PIKE ELECTRONIC

Czech company PIKE ELECTRONIC founded in 1991 provides solutions in the field of software application development. It has succeeded in foreign ICT markets due to deep technological knowledge and focuses on quality of provided solutions. Company offers solutions implemented in compliance with international standards proofed by practice usage in many countries all over the world. PIKE has more than 150 experienced software analytics and developers, professionals in the field of software product development and team of specialists to its product implementation. PIKE is ISO9001:2001 certified and is a member ORACLE Partner, TIBCO Partner, HP Preferred Partner and Microsoft Certified Partner.

Company focuses on following areas:

Health Insurance:

Services are aimed to large database applications, information´s system support and development mainly in the field of health insurance. In cooperation with Hewlett-Packard company the task of PIKE ELECTRONIC is to develop and support strategic information system of General Health Insurance Company Czech Republic (VZP- CR). This health insurance company has been one of our biggest customers since 1997. In the present it has records of approximately 8 million clients.  Based on the fact that every single act of customer (e.g. issued prescription) is stored in the database, it is one of the largest databases in Czech Republic - about 20TB.

Process Automation

Process Automation concerns analysis, design, development, commissioning and services of large and complex  information and control systems for metallurgical, food-processing industry and telecommunications mainly for level 2 - systems for processing and evaluating data from the lowest levels working with mathematical models and influencing the production process. In the same time it saves all data necessary for supplying quality according to ISO 9001:2001 and more. Further it is projection, delivery, programming, commissioning of logical automats (PLC - SIMATIC, SIMADYN, PROBAS, GE-FANUC), visualization (WinCC, InTouch), control and optimization of technological processes including communication with higher control systems.

Business Intelligence

Deliveries content is analysis, design, development, implementation and support of large database applications, data-warehouse and manager information systems (MIS) using modern databases and OLAP technologies form ORACLE company - mainly for field of healthcare, public administration, industry and utilities. Company invested in development of its own technological products that allows carrying out projects very fast. The result is successful realization of several significant projects.  

Enterprise Application Integration

Since 2003 PIKE ELECTRONIC is part of TIBCO Alliance partner in the field of enterprise application integration. The Company has 25 TIBCO educated and certified Consultants with deep knowledge of TIBCO BusinessWorks, TIBCO Business Event, TIBCO Rendezvous, TIBCO Designer, TIBCO iProcess, TIBCO Hawk, SOAP, EMS, BPM. PIKE's consultants work for customers as developers, architects, administrators and operation maintenance.

Products:

MakeDoc, original automatic generation of documentation developed by PIKE ELECTRONIC company for TIBCO software Inc. integration software. This tool allows  generating documentation from TIBCO BusinessWorks and TIBCO BusinessEvents. MakeDoc brings significant advantages such as time saving in every project step which leads to money saving, higher code quality, consistent and always accurate documentation.

 HMI, system upgrade for industrial and process automation designed for controlling systems of rolling mills, metallurgical and other technological operations.

PIKE ELECTRONIC has head-quarter in Prague, Czech Republic and other branches in Czech Republic - Brno, Bystřice pod Hostýnem, Hradec Králové, Karlovy Vary, Olomouc, Ostrava, Plzeň, Varnsdorf. In abroad it is USA - Atlanta, California and Ireland - Dublin.

You can find more information on www.pikeelectronic.com.

Press contact:

Rostislav Hlosta, Sales and Marketing Director, e-mail : rhlosta at-sign pikeelectronic.com

PIKE ELECTRONIC,Jurečkova 20, 702 00 Moravská Ostrava, Czech Republic,

Office phone: +420 596 278 822, Office fax: 420 271 000 799

PIKE ELECTRONIC, spol. s r.o., Jeseniova 52/1196, 130 00 Prague, Czech Republic

Office phone: +420 271 000 700, Office fax: +420 271 000 799