Introduction To Strategic Financial Management

Course objectives:
-Be more confident in your decision making and dealing with accountants and other specialists
-Assess the strategic financial performance of your company and compare it with that of competitors
-Understand the significance of cash flow and working capital management
-Understand the concepts of strategic price setting
-Evaluate the financial performance of corporate projects and make decisions about allocating scarce resources
-Run a financial control system and use it to drive company performance improvement
Course content:
Accounts
-Why are accounts needed?
-Key conventions and rules
-Financial accounts
-Management accounts
-Analysing key financial statements
Strategic analysis of financial performance
-Ratio analysis
-The "Weinstock" performance ratios
-Competitor analysis
-Benchmarking
Analysing the cost structure
-Different types of cost - fixed, variable
-Marginal costing
-Full costing
-Cost drivers and activity based costing
-Breakeven and contribution analysis
-Margin analysis
Cash flow and working capital control
-The cash flow cycle
-Measures of solvency
-Capital investment budgeting
Financial control of the business
-The whole company budget process
-Integrating forecasting planning and budgeting
-Driving performance improvement through the budget
-Setting appropriate KPI's
-Performance review process
-Multi year budgeting
Pricing issues
-Price differentiation
-The supply and demand relationship
-The significance of volume and the experience curve
-Continuous improvement
-Dealing with competition
Investment appraisal
-Cash versus profit measures
-Forms of appraisal - payback, DCF, IRR
-Allocating scarce funds
Funding growth
-Sources of additional funds
-The significance of gearing
Financial risk assessment and management
Review of Programme
Other Recommended Programmes
-Risk Management
-Strategic Thinking and Business Planning