In today's competitive business world firms are under unprecedented pressure to deliver value to their shareholders and other key stakeholders. Senior executives are finding that they need some financial know-how to cope with the responsibility placed on them as decision-makers. Key financial skills are not as difficult to learn as many people believe and in the hands of an experienced senior executive can provide a formidable competitive advantage.

This one-day workshop is not intended to take you from a managerial position to that of a Chief Financial Officer. However, these topics will familiarise you with the most common terms and practices in terms of working with finance.

This course is suitable for managers and others in finance related roles:

with some or no financial knowledge
who need to understand the financial implications of every day decision making?
who need to increase profitability and performance of their business?

This one-day workshop will help you teach participants how to:

• Understand fundamental business finance concepts

• Understand the vital difference between profit and cash flow

• Evaluate pricing decisions

• Use powerful analytical tools to measure performance of their own company and competitors

• Understand the role of business finance in formulating and implementing competitive strategy

Course Overview

You will spend the first part of the day getting to know participants and discussing what will take place during the workshop. Students will also have an opportunity to identify their personal learning objectives.

Business and finance fundamentals

The objectives of the firm: delivering value to shareholders and key stakeholders, leading to a better understanding the drivers of shareholder return and who uses financial statements and why.

Basic principles

Understanding business funds flow, using the balance sheet the profit statement. This would help to recognise the vital difference between profit and cashflow and what financial statements can and cannot tell us.

Managing and improving Budgets and Forecasting

We will look at why you need to set budgets and what is known as ‘the bottom line’. We will also explore the purpose of forecasting over a period of monthly, quarterly and also annually.

Managing and improving profit

Understanding how profits generate cashflow. The fundamental nature of costs: fixed and variable business costs and realising gross margin and break-even

Managing business performance

We will explore the business planning cycle, by using budgets to support business strategy and monitoring and managing financial performance. We will look at a ‘Pyramid of Ratios’ to manage business performance that will help us understand and use key performance indicators

Measuring and managing business performance

We will understand Return on investment (ROI): the ultimate measure of business performance and how profit margin and net asset turnover drive return on net assets. We shall do a case study on why some companies are more profitable than others.

Workshop Wrap-Up

At the end of the course, students will have an opportunity to ask questions and fill out an action plan.

1 Day Finance for Non-Finance Managers - Manchester