THE Certified Public Accountants (CPA) Fiji congress begins today in Nadi with the theme Putting Strategy into Action.
Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama will open the two-day event, which is expected to attract at least 500 participants.
"The theme for this year's congress is putting strategy into action," CPA Fiji president, Pradeep Lal said.
"It is no secret that the successful companies are good at strategising. However, strategies alone do not deliver the results. Good strategies must be backed with even better executable plans to achieve the desired objectives.
"A learned and distinguished panel of resource persons have been assembled to cover a broad spectrum of strategy sessions. We are hopeful that the delegates will find these sessions value adding rewarding."
CPA Fiji is the sister branch of CPA Australia, which is one of the world's largest accounting bodies with about 135,000 finance, accounting and business professionals around the globe. CPA Fiji branch has about 350 members and is mainly involved in professional development of its members. From time to time CPA Fiji branch organises and facilitates business forums to discuss and represent views, concerns and contributes to government, regulators, academia and general public.
"Today's business environment presents challenges driven largely by technological advances. The most important change technology has brought is to replace the "doing."
"That's where the CPA profession needs to excel in confronting the technological challenges of the 21st Century. This is where strategic thinking comes in," Mr Lal said.
The conference will cover a wide range of very topical issues on strategy implementation. One of the sessions will cover the "critical role finance can play with the commercial teams".
"As an example, not all innovations pay-off. Some are loss leaders but business imperatives for the future. It is topics such as these that are expected to attract considerable interest of the participants," Mr Lal said.