Introducing the Lumine Group Finance Summit

In May 2019, Lumine Group held its first ever Finance Summit. For three days, finance leaders from across the Group gathered in Toronto to share insights and best practices and discuss how the Portfolio will scale for growth.

We spoke with Lumine Group’s Director of Finance, Helle Winding-Lauritzen, about the launch of the event and how she envisions it developing.

Q: Helle, congratulations on a successful summit! Could you briefly describe what the Lumine Group Finance Summit is all about?

A: The Summit brings together finance leads across our portfolio for an opportunity to share knowledge and best practices in-person. Beyond sharing best practices, finance leads have the opportunity to connect into the strong network they have within the Portfolio.

Q: What motivated the creation of the Summit?

A: Many of the businesses we acquire have small finance teams. Pre-acquisition, they may have felt they were responsible for figuring out solutions to issues all on their own.

At Lumine, you’re not alone. By joining the C&M Portfolio, you gain access to a group of people who can relate to the challenges of the role. Our network of Comms & Media leaders help each other solve problems from technical, system-based issues to thinking about how to approach strategy.

There’s a community behind you at Lumine and when everyone is in one room, you are really able to experience this sense of community. Collaboration can happen online at any time, but with businesses operating in six countries and across six time zones, the opportunity to collaborate in-person is rare. Having a face-to-face event like the Finance Summit helps people organically develop meaningful relationships.

Q: What did the programming of the event look like?

A: This year’s programming fell into two categories.

The first category included big picture ideas and concepts focused on scaling for growth. We’re growing quickly and we want to ensure that everyone is up to date on the latest tools and processes. We covered many topics, including:

• How to improve your month-end process
• How to structure your work more efficiently
• How to get started on tackling different process improvements

Second, we offered technical workshops led by our M&A Analysts and members of the corporate Lumine Finance team. We spent time discussing, Excel optimization, intercompany transactions and taxation, accounting, modeling, and program efficiencies.

The purpose of these workshops was to help our finance leaders more confidently and efficiently use these tools and methodologies. We wanted it to be a forum of knowledge sharing where our team could take away learnings to apply to their day-to-day.

Q: What were some of your goals for the conference?

A: We wanted to build a sense of community among the Finance leader in our Portfolio. And we’re already seeing a difference as a result. New collaboration platforms are being utilized – just today, I was included in a collaboration session with team members from different portfolio companies working through an issue together in real time.

Q: What does the future of the Lumine Group Finance Summit look like?

A: This year, the programming was driven by our Portfolio team. In the future, we would like to include speakers from different business units showcasing their specific learnings.

As the event continues to grow, we envision different tracks developing. We might include programming focused on acquisition growth vs. organic growth and general day-to-day operations. We might also focus on different roles and responsibilities within seniority levels. It’s important that this event continues to evolve as a knowledge sharing opportunity on all levels. There are special benefits that result from in-person events like these. As our portfolio grows, the key is to make sure that everyone is introduced to their network and continues to feel well-supported.