Course Description
All business decision-making involves analysing situations containing varying degrees of risk. This programme uncovers the essential skills required to understand the processes of budgeting and cost control for better decision-making. From understanding the importance of a well defined budget process through to the importance of how costs behave so that realistic cost cutting and budgeting plans can be produced. In this programme you will learn how to:
- Identify the principal factors required to produce a successful business case
- Develop budgeting and financial skills required for better decision-making
- Identify sources of financial and business data to support the budgeting process
- Learn new techniques and methodologies to simulate typical business scenarios
What Do Participants Learn?
In addressing these issues, this training course is relevant to those professionals & analysts facing the difficult challenge of improving performance while reducing costs of those processes for which they are accountable. This training course provides participants with key cost awareness and budgetary skills, which are essential for managing and controlling resources in times of increasing global competition where the budgets are inextricably linked with both the achievement of strategic objectives as well as with evaluation of future plans and initiatives
Who Should Attend?
- The staff person who will be responsible for entering data into the budget system or training others how to enter information
- Those who want to gain control of the firm’s financial standing and obtain a firm grasp on the numbers side of their job
- Financial Professional, Professional R&D, Sales/Marketing Professional, General Accounting Professional, Business Unit Professional
- Anyone who wants to refine and advance their budgeting and costing knowledge
What Will the Learning Experience Include?
Phase: 1
Introduce
- Comprehensive pre-program activities include:
- Web-based information forms & surveys completed by attendee.
- Direct consultation with the attendee about the expectations.
- During the training, participants engage in data, activities, and conversations that lead to insight and knowledge.
- Participants learn from expert trainers who have both academic and business experiences.
- Highly applicable training content & instructive activities for adding depth to training topics.
- **A half-day site visit for integrating the experience & plan next steps. Opportunities to provide connections, ideas & support.
Phase: 2
Explore & Practice
Phase: 3
Apply
- Apply & sustain the learning experience by using this ongoing support:
- To ensure participant has new skills or behavior progress.
- Optional, fee-based mentoring & coaching with the trainer.
- Training materials & additional documents (e-books, pdf files, presentations and articles)
- Evaluate your training experience by giving us feedbacks and help us to reach our organizational goals.
- Participant's Evaluation
- Trainer's Evaluation
Phase: 4
EVALUATE
SECTION 1: Introduction: The Relevance of Budgeting and Cost Management Within Strategy Execution
- The link between strategy, planning, budgeting and cost management
- Why budgeting and costing are so important to manage your company
- Towards a cross-functional process-view of the organization
- Financial vs. Managerial accounting (where you get information for decision making)
- Understand your processes: integrating financial and non-financial aspects
- Identify and discuss the key issues in terms of budget/costing for your own organization
- Discussion
SECTION 2: The Budgeting Framework and its Role Within the Management Process
- The role of budgeting within management accounting
- The value of budgeting in your company
- Behavioral implications of budgeting
- Key concepts and terminology
- Advantages and disadvantages: critical issues to be discussed
- Overview of the financial statements – Balance sheet, Income statement and cash-flow
- Case discussion and examples
SECTION 3: Cost Management for Budgeting Purposes
- Cost concepts and terminology
- Different costs for different purposes
- Fixed vs. Variable costs: the Cost-Volume-Profit analysis model
- Contribution Margin analysis
- Manufacturing vs. non-manufacturing costs
- Period vs. Product costs: inventory evaluation and control
- Case study and discussions
SECTION 4: Case Study Day– Traditional vs. Advanced Techniques in Cost-control
- Under-costing and over-costing: the consequences for profitability
- How to refine a costing system?
- Indirect vs. Direct costs: Traditional Cost Allocations systems vs. Activity-based Costing
- Cost drivers: linking resources, activities and management
- Introducing Activity-Based Budgeting (ABB) and Management (ABM)
- Case Study analysis
- Examples and videos
SECTION 5: Broadening the Performance Measurement Systems
- Shortcomings of traditional approaches to budgeting and performance measurement
- Need for linking financial to operational issues
- Recent best practices: the Balanced Scorecard and Six-sigma
- Financial perspective, Customer perspective
- Internal Business Process perspective, Learning and growth perspective
- Developing and adapting the scorecard
- Video, Case study illustration and discussion