Summary
Your company’s ability to plan, achieve, and adapt to disruptions and market changes is essential to long-term business success. Developing accurate financial models using spreadsheets can help you to support your planning, budgeting, and forecasting activities.
This course provides you with a comprehensive guide to developing spreadsheet models to create forecasts which can then be used to generate business plans and operating budgets. You will learn to apply advanced spreadsheet features to build realistic forecasts to improve your planning efficiency and control. In addition to reviewing the fundamentals of strategic planning, forecasting, and budgeting, you will acquire hand-on skills in building a variety of practical financial models.
- Explore features and functions of Excel®.
- Review the principles of strategic planning and budgeting.
- Develop advanced spreadsheet skills to apply to business planning, forecasting, and budgeting.
- Build a variety of effective financial planning models to support decision-making.
- Formulate forecasting models that integrate what-if analysis.
- Use tools to implement cost analysis forecasting techniques.
- Integrate risk management into planning and forecasting.
- Finance, Budget, and Commercial Managers
- Financial accounting, Capital Investment, and Cost Accounting team members
- Project Managers
This course uses a variety of adult learning styles to aid full understanding and comprehension.
Participants will review case studies to highlight key areas of importance and possible areas for faults.
They will be supplied with the best tools required to carry out learning exercises to improve their skills. Participants will analyse the examples to gain a thorough understanding of how these skills, techniques and methods apply in the workplace.
Course Content & Outline
- Identify the objectives of strategic planning.
- Describe a framework for effective strategic executions.
- Review ROI, ROA, and ROE.
- Outline the structure of a financial statement.
- Discuss the methods used to measure financial performance.
- Examine the principles of financial modelling.
- Explore the role of Excel® in building financial models.
- Examine the Excel® interface.
- Describe the importance of formulae and functions.
- Discuss how to present data to non-financial managers.
- Review the established strategic planning models.
- Describe the role of budgeting in planning cycles.
- Discuss approaches to cost analysis.
- Identify the limitations of prevailing budgeting methods.
- Use the solver tool as an optimization technique.
- Use regression and correlation to forecast costs.
- Build a rolling forecast model.
- Build an appraisal model for capital investment.
- Review the development of forecasting strategies.
- Describe qualitative forecasting models.
- Define quantitative forecasting models with a focus on time series and regression approaches.
- Calculate how to forecast growth rates.
- Apply and manage forecast assumptions.
- Identify why using a range of forecasting methods is necessary.
- Identify common forecasting problems.
- Use statistical analysis tools in Excel®.
- Analyse time series data with moving averages.
- Examine sales trends using linear regression techniques.
- Minimise forecasting errors with the solver tool.
- Apply exponential smooth to forecasts.
- Describe the drivers of business cash flow.
- Understand timing and cycles in the budget process.
- Review budgeting principles and techniques.
- Distinguish between operating and capital budgets.
- Identify how to set budgeting objectives and tolerance levels.
- Outline monthly reporting procedures and actions.
- Evaluate the most common capital investment appraisal tools.
- Describe discounted cash flow analysis.
- Build a forecast model for cash flow.
- Build an integrated planning, forecasting, and budgeting model.
- Identify and examine business risks.
- Describe probability-based approaches to decision-making.
- Investigate how to use scenarios in what-if analyses to test sensitivity.
- Build a decision tree.
- Build a what-if forecast to analyse sensitivity.
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