Kerem Cezzar is a Finance Executive with multi-functional experience in Business Development, Digital Transformation, Procurement, Compliance and Auditing. He is a certified Kanban Management Professional, a certified Professional Agile Leader, Scrum Master and Product Owner.

He is currently the CFO of Opet Fuchs, a leading lubricant manufacturer and part of Koç Group, the biggest conglomerate in Turkey. Opet Fuchs is a JV of Opet, the leading fuel oil distribution brand in Turkey and Fuchs, the largest independent manufacturer of lubricants in the world. He started his career in Koç Holding and later worked in Aygaz, another Koç Group company and the LPG market leader in Turkey.

Evolutionary Change to an Agile Mindset in Finance

"Agility" is an aspirational word, high on the agenda of today’s corporate world. Companies that want to navigate the complexities and ambiguousness of the post-pandemic business world are adopting, or at least trying to implement some form of Agile business practices, whether it is in the form of project management or a complete transformation of their businesses.

Still, employees are overwhelmed by the work being pushed by Top Management’s exceeding expectations, the expected level of increased strategic alignment is not there and support functions such as Finance, where business as usual consist most of the work feel excluded and overburdened. In this talk, we will explore ways what CFOs can do to take control of their work, catalyze and be at the forefront of their companies’ lean and agile transformation efforts and face many challenges on the way to creating service oriented teams that pursue evolutionary change. We will talk about the Kanban implementation of the Accounting Team, as well as the experiences, learnings, successes and shortcomings of different teams reporting to the CFO in Opet Fuchs, a leading lubricant manufacturer in Turkey, throughout their Lean/Agile initiative amidst the Agile Transformation journey of the company as a whole.