Speakers

Julio Melara, President & co-owner, the Baton Rouge Business Report

Julio Melara is an entrepreneur, publisher, author and one of America’s top speakers. He is president and co-owner of the Baton Rouge Business Report, a bi-weekly business newspaper, and publisher of 225 Magazine, a consumer lifestyle publication. He also owns Time For Action, a skills building training firm. He is the author of five books, Do You Have The Time For Success?, It Only Takes Everything You've Got!, Keys To Performance, 15 Power Points To Ignite Your Success! and Mental Snacks.

He was the first recipient of the University of New Orleans’ Early Achievement Award for Distinguished Professional and Civic Accomplishments. He was recently appointed one of the commissioners of the Louisiana Superdome Commission, is a member of The National Speakers Association, former President of the National Alliance of Area Business Publications and serves on various executive boards including: OMNI Bank, Baton Rouge Area Chamber, Community Fund for the Arts, InRoads-Louisiana, Yes I Can Ministries and Career Compass of Louisiana.

Tom Bohn, CEO, International Accounts Payable Professionals (IAPP)

Tom Bohn currently serves as the CEO of the International Accounts Payable Professionals (IAPP), a not-for profit professional association located in Orlando, Fla. The IAPP has over 5,000 member organizations, 70 chapters, and is recognized as the world’s leading AP authority.

Tom is an accomplished association professional with over 16 years of local, national and international association experience. Prior to the IAPP, Tom worked at The Institute of Internal Auditors (The IIA) where he served as the Vice President of Relationship Management and later as the Vice President of Educational Programs. During his time at The IIA, Tom, a Certified Association Executive (CAE), oversaw a staff of 28 professionals, a $17 million budget, several conferences, and over 26 seminar sites. Bohn holds an MBA from the University of Central Florida and previously served as the Vice President of Marketing and Membership for the Central Florida YMCA, a 150,000 member health and wellness organization.

Larry Wilson, Senior Manager - AP Special Projects, Shared Services AP

Larry acts as the liaison to the Technology Services Group (informally known as IT). He also manages the imaging department for the payable process.  He was instrumental in bringing the concept of adding intelligent scanning to the existing payables process. His major focus is to implement technological solutions to reduce processing time and transaction costs. Larry has been with Time Warner for five years and has seen Accounts Payable go from back-end image archiving to front-end ICR value-added processing.

His prior experience with both Fortune 100 Companies and technology consulting firms has given him the ability to recognize cost-savings opportunities and institute best-practice processing. Larry has an MBA in Finance from Wilkes University with an undergraduate in Accounting.

Cathy Domin, Senior Project Manager/Information Systems, Rich Products Corporation

Cathy has been working in the area of Information Technology for more than 20 years and is well respected for her leadership in delivering technology-related business solutions. She joined Rich Products in 2005 and most recently led several key components of a Procure to Pay transformation initiative which included the successful implementation of the ReadSoft product suite for Accounts Payable. She will be sharing that implementation journey in one of the breakout sessions during the conference.

Cathy’s prior experience in the manufacturing, distribution and supply chain industries includes her position as a Solution Architect at Ingram Micro, Inc – the world’s largest technology distributor and a leading technology sales, marketing and logistics company and her consultant work for Moog, Inc. – a global designer, manufacturer, and integrator of precision control components and systems.

She holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Management Information Systems from Canisius College and an M.B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is Green Belt trained in Six Sigma and an active member of the Project Management Institute through which she was certified as a PMP (Project Management Professional) in 2003.
 

Matt Edie, Accounts Payable Manager, Rich Products Corporation

Matt is the Accounts Payable Manager for Rich Products Corp. Matt brought thirteen years of experience with him to Rich Products where he performed such duties as cost accountant, staff accountant, financial analyst & manager of financial reporting. For the last seven years he has been with Rich’s and has been in his current role as Accounts Payable Manager for the last eight months. He came in on the ground floor of the ReadSoft implementation as he started the week that ReadSoft was here to start training on the INVOICES and INVOICE COCKPIT modules.

Matt has helped shape the AP department during the centralization of the Accounts Payable function to the World Headquarters location from the eighteen domestic locations during this transformation into using the ReadSoft software. Matt’s previous six years of experience at Rich’s includes being a financial analyst – which included preparations of financial statements such as the consolidated P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statements. Matt was also a systems analyst involved from a financial perspective with the SAP system that Rich Products uses. His experience with SAP as well as other computer systems ranging from general usage & overall GL maintenance to system implementations and upgrades and the resulting training involved has helped Matt immensely during this implementation of the ReadSoft software.

Matt is a graduate of Canisius College of Buffalo, NY where he earned his BS in Accounting.

Mark Franz, Accounts Payable Manager, Energizer Battery

Mark Franz is the Manager of Accounts Payable for Energizer Battery, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. The St. Louis Accounts Payable department is responsible for processing invoices for all of Energizer’s U.S. Household Products & Personal Care Divisions. Energizer’s Manufacturing & Research facilities that make up this divisional mix include Energizer Battery, Schick-Wilkinson Sword and Playtex products.

He served as the Project Manager for the recent ReadSoft OCR & Automated Workflow implementation and has worked over the years on streamlining the Procure to Pay Process by implementing best practice methods resulting in processing efficiency gains and cost-savings for the company.

Prior to his position at Energizer he worked for Federal-Mogul Corporation, a leading Manufacturer of OEM & Aftermarket Automotive Parts and Products, as their Disbursement Operations Manager.

Mark is a graduate of the University of Missouri – St. Louis with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration (Finance).

Anne Oglesby, Accounting Supervisor – AP, AR and Special Projects, Sheridan Production Co LLC

Anne currently supervises the Accounts Payable and Receivable team and the scanning process at Sheridan Production Co. Anne is the Project lead on the implementation of OCR and INVOICEIT.

Sheridan opened its doors for business in late 2007 and within a year it was almost a $2 billion company. Processing of invoices was done manually. Sheridan’s goal was to minimize Management’s time in the review and approval of invoices. Along with speeding up the payment process and allow real time view of invoice status across all offices locations; with a high level of accuracy and tracking of invoices at all points in the process. Sheridan turned to Anne to expedite automation of Accounts Payable, which she did within a 3 month period.

Anne’s prior experience within the Oil and gas industry and Staffing Services has been a focus on effective time management of accounting and sales staff across the nation and implementation of automation processes resulting in substantial cost savings and training large group of employees to use metrics and measures for efficiency.

Anne has a degree in Finance from University of Houston and spent the last 16 years working on streamlining processes and implementing or upgrading financial packages within Oracle and SAP.