Speakers

Liz Barclay - Small Business Commissioner

Liz Barclay is a small business and consumer affairs broadcaster, producer and writer. She started her career as an adviser and then CEO with Citizens Advice before moving into radio and TV production and presentation specialising in business and consumer affairs. She is Financial Inclusion Commissioner; Chair of the Fair by Design Campaign; a non-executive Director of 2 organisations and a member of the Standards Boards of The Equity Release Council.

Liz has worked with Boards and small businesses on improving governance, trust and culture, inclusion, and understanding customer behaviour. She coaches communication and presentation skills, chairs national and international conferences and has written several books on business.

Liz was appointed the role of Small Business Commissioner in July 2021 to spearhead the national effort to crackdown on poor payment practices which cause thousands of small businesses to close every year.

Savita Mace - Director, AstraZeneca

Savita is an authentic, experienced and well respected leader with over 20 years in Procurement, Finance Ops and Supply Chain Management. A champion of inclusion and diversity and lifelong learning. Savita has built high performing teams at blue chip companies over four sectors and her focus has been on capability uplift, performance and improvements in and across the value chain.

Savita enjoys a successful career and currently works as a Director at AstraZeneca, she is also the newly appointed U.K. representative for global CIPS Membership Committee and continues to deliver lectures and coach students at University of Sussex.

Robert Grimes is a Senior Director at SAP and has worked across the banking, corporate and B2B networks areas. Robert joined SAP 14 years ago and has become specialised in payments and financing services, with his current role as SAP Working Capital Management Centre of Excellence, Business Development for EMEA, in the SAP Corporate Finance group.

SAP’s payments & working capital management solutions provide payments and financing capabilities to the SAP community. These solutions, primarily through the acquisition of Taulia, offers end to end early payment processing as well as the capability to offer early payment discounts, supply chain financing or inventory financing.

Nick Swallow, Senior Finance, Systems & Projects Manager , apetito UK

Nick is technically focussed CIMA Accountant experienced in leading and setting up financial systems, Nick is involved with design and implementation of digital finance solutions to enable the business to operate more efficiently and effectively.
Nick works extensively with non-financial management stakeholders and collaborates with IT to deliver an suitable fit for purpose solution to meet the requirements.

David Moore, Saga

David Moore was one of the Finance Directors for the Saga plc Group of companies, which specialises in serving the needs of the over 50s in the UK, with businesses in multiple industries including insurance, financial services, travel, cruises and media. 18 years into his career at Saga, he headed up the Finance Shared Services department that serves the different business units with financial reporting, tax, finance systems, accounts payable and receivable.

David sponsored and led the implementation of Coupa at Saga, which went live in May 2020, and which has enabled significant process efficiencies to be delivered in the business’s payment processes and is part of the Group’s wider digital transformation strategy.

Anthony Tate, Director, Product Marketing, EMEA at Coupa

Anthony is passionate about tech, in particular the role of people, process and tech in organisational strategy and how to successfully drive digital transformation. He spends his time engaging with customers to understand their business challenges, provide strategic advice and demonstrate the value that Business Spend Management delivers.

As a marketer with more than 16 years of experience, he’s worked for Box, Symantec, BlackBerry, SDL International, Cartesis and Unisys and has held a variety of marketing positions from Communications to Field Marketing to Customer Marketing to Product Marketing.

Soraya Yasmin Ahmed , Managing Director, Trade & Working Capital EMEA Head at J.P. Morgan

Soraya Ahmed joined J.P. Morgan in March 2020 as Global Trade - EMEA Trade Head, based in London. In her role, Soraya and her team work very closely with Payments, Global Corporate, Investment & Commercial Banking and Credit to drive Trade Finance & Working Capital origination across all industry groups in Europe Middle East & Africa. Soraya is also a passionate advocate of our DE&I agenda representing Payments on the APP Steerco and Co-Sponsor with Alison Livesey of Payments’ Apprentice Programme.

Soraya joined JP Morgan from Citi, where she held various roles across Global Transaction Services since 2005. Prior to joining JPMorgan, she was the EMEA Trade Sales Acting Head for Trade Finance origination across the EMEA Region. Her team achieved significant Working Capital, Commodities and Trade Finance mandates for their clients across the region.  

 Prior to this, she led CEEMEA (Central & Eastern Europe Middle East and Africa) Trade Finance Origination and the buildout of Trade Finance Commodities business focusing on U.K. and Switzerland based Energy & Commodity trading clients.

Killian McCarthy, VP Sales Europe, SoftCo

Industry leader for over 15 years, working with Global Finance functions on P2P best practice, & AP Automation.
Significant experience with global clients on building out shared service finance departments specifically focussing on the Finance & P2P processes.