Introduction

This seminar provides the skills to build world-class standards into your planning, budgeting, performance measurement and reporting system. This seminar will discuss new techniques, explain how they complement the traditional financial planning tools, and introduce new concepts for measuring and reporting performance and shareholder wealth creation. You will explore the issues relating to capital budgeting. Budgeting manufacturing as well as other expenses, identifying profit objectives, budgeting cash requirements and forecasting are all covered in this seminar.

By combining techniques analysis, problems and examples with a real case study the course provides delegates with key cost awareness and budgetary skills, which is essential in managing and controlling processes/projects in times of increasing global competition where the budgets are inextricably linked with both strategy formulation and cost analysis.

Objective

• Successfully build integrated planning, budgeting and reporting process

• Understand costs behavior more accurately

• Deliver more timely and useful information to decision-makers

• Improve the budgeting/financial skills required for better decision-making, whether for your continuing business or project or a new business venture. Explain typical costing and budgeting terminology used in business

Target Audience

• Finance professionals, controllers, and budgeting managers responsible for planning, forecasting, and performance reporting
• Financial analysts and management accountants involved in cost analysis and decision support
• Senior managers and department heads responsible for strategic planning and resource allocation
• Project managers and project controllers involved in budgeting, capital planning, and cost control
• Business planners and corporate strategy professionals focused on value creation and performance improvement
• Professionals working in finance transformation, reporting, and management information systems
• Junior finance staff and graduates seeking to build strong foundations in budgeting and capital budgeting techniques
• Anyone involved in financial planning, budgeting, and performance measurement within organizations

Outlines

Day 1

Budgets and Strategy in Today’s International Environment

• Organizational planning framework

• The product / information / decision support cycle

• Strategic, tactical, and operational forecasts

• The strategic approach to business planning

• Various strategic and tactical approaches to business planning

• The international business environment

Day 2

The Business Plan and Budget Development

• Developing the business plan

• Identification of key value drivers

• Achieving objectives

• Zero base budgeting

• Activity-based budgeting

• Rolling budgets

• Developing the Cash Budget

Day 3

Analyzing the Applicability of Historical Data Using Excel®

• Problems of forecasting

• Using historical data to help predict the future

• Forecasting

• Sales volume

• Development of Time Series Models using histograms, moving averages, exponential smoothing, and regression analysis

• Using Regression Analysis as a predictor and estimator

• Mastering the use of Exponential Smoothing as a Data Analysis tool

Day 4

Using Activity-Based Budgeting and Cost Analysis Techniques

• Cost behavior and breakeven analysis

• Activity-based costing

• Budgeting for Processes rather than Departments

• Defining Key Cost Drivers

• Defining Key Activities

• Developing the Activity-Based Budget

Day 5

Capital Budgeting and Project Appraisal

• Identify the various types of capital projects

• Discuss the capital project evaluation process

• The impact time has on the value of money

• Using WACC and ROIC as benchmarks

• Determining the initial and subsequent capital project cash flows

• Development of the "Hurdle Rate" for capital projects

• Evaluate capital projects by applying NPV, IRR, ARR Payback models