Introduction:

In today's world, there is more importance given to financial planning and analysis. Professionals are expected by top management to provide proper information and analysis for decision making and to be equipped with the proper tools to do so. Management needs to have confidence in what the financial professionals are presenting in the company’s budgets and forecasts. Now, you have the chance to enhance your credentials and expertise in the field of budgeting, forecasting, financial planning and analysis. This course provides an overview of the main concepts so you can pass the exam and stand out from the rest of the crowd.

Course Objectives:

By the end of this course, delegates will be able to:

·      Identify proper sources for gathering information about the company and its industry and apply the basic concepts of macroeconomics and strategic planning

·      Define main financial and micro economic concepts and identify types of budgets

·      Perform financial analysis and variance analysis and draw conclusions

·      Build financial projections, evaluate capital expenditures and investments and create what-if analysis

·      Utilize advanced spreadsheet functions, e.g. value lookup, pivot tables, macros, etc.

Who Should Attend?

Finance Professionals, Finance Managers, Senior Accountants, Accounting & Budgeting Personnel, Corporate Controllers, Financial Controllers, Treasury Professionals, Chief Accountants, Accounting Managers, Accounting Professionals, Financial Executives, Auditors, Financial Analysts, Bankers, Investment Bankers, Senior Accountants, Banking Professionals, Corporate Business Professionals, all accounting and finance professionals who are currently working, or seeking to work, in the financial planning, analysis, budgeting and forecasting domain within their organizations.

Course Outline:

Gathering and Interpreting Information

·       Sources of historical information and historical financial data and corporate structure and functions

·       Sources of information about a company’s business environment

·       Reading and interpreting corporate annual reports

·       Determining peer groups and competitors

·       Basic macro-economic concepts used in financial planning

·       Implications of tax policies on projections

·       Risk factors and risk management concepts

·       Financial and non-financial key performance indicators

·       Strategic planning concepts and frameworks

·       SWOT analysis

·       Porter’s five forces model

·       Growth share matrix

·       Determining information needs of and gather information from internal/external stakeholders and business partners

·       Tools for information gathering

Understanding Financial Concepts and Communicating Work with Other Professionals

·       Finance principles and processes

·       General financial concepts and common financial formulas

·       Financial accounting concepts, principles, and practices

·       Interactions/interrelationships of common financial statements

·       Basic micro-economics

·       Managerial accounting/reporting and cost accounting concepts

·       Types of budgets/forecasts and their applications

·       Financial close process, including the resulting financial reporting activities, and the role of the FP&A function in the close/reporting process

·       General business terminology, practices, and processes

·       Defining, coordinating, and communicating project/work flow elements

·       Effective communication and presentation techniques

Analysing Information

·       Determining the applicability/acceptability of tools, processes, models, etc.

·       Testing and validating a model

·       Identifying outliers in data and determining the causes

·       Developing assumptions, drawing conclusions, assessing the reasonableness of assumptions/conclusions, and testing conclusions against various scenarios

·       Financial ratio analysis variance analysis and reporting

·       Competitive analysis

·       Determining and assessing the seasonality of an industry or business

·       Common statistical concepts

·       Building financial projections

·       Financial statement projections capital expenditure/investment analysis

·       Sales volume/revenue projections

·       Expense and head count (staffing) projections

·       Specific customer/deal/product projections

·       “What-if” scenarios, sensitivity analysis and risk analysis

Using Technology/Software

·       Basic and advanced spreadsheet functions

·       Common statistical calculations using a spreadsheet

·       Documenting and maintaining models

·       Common database structures, common database functions, and structure/ functions of common financial software/systems

COURSE LOCATIONS