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Jacqui
Whitaker
CFO, UK & Ireland
Schneider Electric
Jacqui Whitaker is CFO UK & Ireland at Schneider Electric, a role she has held since April 2025. She joined Schneider Electric in 2017 and has spent almost 9 years there, most recently as Vice President Business Finance, International Operations, where she led the Business Finance function, FP&A and business partnering, across more than 100 countries spanning India, Middle East Africa, Pacific, and South America. Earlier at Schneider Electric, Jacqui was Head of FP&A for the Pacific zone, later taking on a dual role leading Finance Transformation across the zone from 2021. Prior to Schneider Electric, she spent over six years at Eurostar, including as Head of Assurance, where she led revenue reporting and planning, implemented IFRS15, and delivered revenue assurance savings of more than £5 million per year through fraud prevention and detection. Jacqui began her career in finance and risk roles at Flight Centre, Dexion, and Austdac.
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04 November 2026 16:15 - 16:45
Fireside Chat: The board wants answers faster: Can your finance function keep up?
The pace of business has accelerated dramatically, yet many finance organizations remain constrained by manual processes, siloed data, and reporting cycles measured in weeks. Boards and executive teams now expect real-time insights and rapid decision support - a fundamental shift that exposes critical gaps in speed, integration, and analytics capability. This session explores how to build a finance function equipped for the modern era. Learn how to identify and eliminate bottlenecks that slow financial reporting and analysis, from legacy systems and disparate data sources to outdated workflows and skill gaps. Discover how leading organizations are adopting cloud-based platforms, automating routine tasks, and embedding analytics into decision-making processes - enabling faster, more informed strategic choices. Explore the organizational and cultural shifts required to move from reactive reporting to proactive business partnering. Key Takeaways - Diagnose Your Speed Gaps: Identify root causes of slow financial reporting—from data fragmentation and manual processes to outdated systems and capability constraints. - Modernize for Agility: Strategies for streamlining workflows, automating routine tasks, consolidating data sources, and building self-service analytics that accelerate decision-making. - Build a Faster Finance Culture: Organizational changes needed to shift finance from compliance-focused reporting to proactive business partnering and real-time decision support.