With the adoption of a single set of global accounting standards on the horizon, we believe it is important for businesses to get up-to-speed on preparations for implementation of IFRS.  More than 100 countries now use IFRS, and the SEC is expected to discuss later this year whether U.S. publicly traded companies will need to start transitioning their financial reports from U.S. GAAP to IFRS over the next few years.  Even apart from that decision, it is likely that your company is already doing business with other companies or subsidiaries impacted by IFRS, so we believe awareness and knowledge of this timely subject is essential.

On November 4, I will be co-hosting the second webinar in a three-part series on getting ready for IFRS.  This segment of the series deals with "IFRS Consolidations and Financial Reporting."  My colleague, Ian Wright, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and I will be joined by Phillip Mugglestone, who serves as Director of Solution Marketing, EPM, at SAP.  SAP and Deloitte Consulting LLP are joining together to present these webinars to help you in your efforts to get updated on the regulatory environment, assess your readiness, discuss the potential impact of conversion on financial reporting, and learn from the experiences of other adopting organizations as they handled typical challenges faced in IFRS conversions.  We will also discuss the broad technology implications of implementing IFRS and Phillip will present some of the SAP-driven solutions that deal with those implications.

Specifically, our session will cover an overview of internal financial management areas impacted by IFRS, including financial performance management (e.g., financial metric based performance awards) and downstream reporting requirements in terms of planning, budgeting, and forecasting-as well as the need to align management reporting capabilities to the new IFRS requirements.  In addition, we will discuss transition considerations for converting to IFRS for internal reporting purposes, such as dual reporting and consolidation requirements.

So if you want to get on the leading edge of the move to IFRS, we hope you will join us.  We particularly recommend this session to companies either currently using SAP or considering technology changes that will enable efficient and controlled conversion to IFRS.

Deloitte means Deloitte & Touche LLP and Deloitte Consulting LLP, which are separate subsidiaries of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries.