MBA in Finance & Accounting

Introduction

The Finance and Accounting MBA is an intensive 10-day programme designed to sharpen your management skills and focus on current best practices in finance and accounting. Finance is a core process/function in a business that requires executive attention. Accounting is the language of business; understanding and applying this language to your business, in general, remains the single most valuable competence of management. Prepare yourself by enhancing your personal competence in identifying best practices in finance and accounting.

Course Objectives of MBA in Finance & Accounting

• Manage and motivate people more effectively
• Understand and effectively utilize strategic planning techniques
• Use the Baldrige performance criteria as a standard of excellence and benchmark for your organisation
• Focus on real companies and their finance function and accounting processes to show participants which elements have achieved best practices status
• Remove much of the mystique associated with the management of finance and accounting
• Focus on challenging yourself to become the strategic financial leader of the organisation
• Prepare yourself for future responsibilities by examining best practices in these important functions/processes

MBA in Finance & Accounting Course Outlines

Day 1

Getting started with best practices in finance and accounting

• The role of financial management – CFO, Treasurer, and Controller
• The role of functional management with respect to financial management
• The basic financial statements and their articulation
• Evaluating performance and why ROI/ROCE is still a good place to start
• Competitive perspectives related to financial statements
• Best practices in preparing, presenting, and populating financial statements
• Identifying key success factors in industry sectors
• Deriving lessons learned

Day 2

Best practices in early review and projections of strategy via financial statements

• Short-term success evaluations process and measures
• Weak signals for future strategic adjustments
• Buy, sell, or hold investments
• Best practices in financial review compared to targets and expectations
• Financial performance measurement systems
• Best practices in finding and using key accounting assumptions
• Compare business system to financial results
• Deriving lessons learned

Day 3

Best practices in annual reports, footnotes, and corporate governance

• Best practices in annual reports using IFRS, or other standards
• Role of exchange commissions and social policy
• Best practices in reconciling accounting standards and reporting
• Best practices in examining corporate governance and shareholder value as well as stakeholder value
• Benchmarking external reviews, industry reports, and analyst reports
• Best practices in boards of directors and their move to financial literacy
• Benchmarking shareholder value measures
• Deriving lessons learned

Day 4

Best practices in industry / financial analysis and balancing the scorecard

• Best practices in asking financial managers to guide the understanding of a sector with ratios and other financial statements
• Benchmarking treasury management – cash, FOREX, working capital, and CAPEX
• Best practices in controllership – planning, control, costing, and profitability
• Benchmarking value creation from the controllership function
• Finding best practices in non-financial inputs to financial statements
• Activity-based costing, time-based costing, and competence-based costing and financial analysis
• Where financial management fits into the balanced scorecard
• Deriving lessons learned

Day 5

Best practices in net present value thinking and next-generation financial modeling

• Best practices in NPV as the ultimate decision criterion
• Benchmarking the use of real options as a next-generation best practice
• Presenting and communicating to executive audiences the best practices in finance and accounting
• Demonstrating next-generation model building
• Challenging the finance function with regards to best practices
• What applications of lessons learned in Mastering Finance and Accounting are applicable to your company and in your markets
• What personal learning plans have been made to enable you to continue mastering Finance and Accounting

Day 6

People management

• The importance of sociotechnical management
• Techniques for effective communication
• Motivating for results
• Enhancing your coaching skills
• Empowering employees for improved performance
• Characteristics of a successful manager

Day 7

Leading Teams

• Obtaining the benefits of teamwork
• Characteristics of ineffective teams
• Characteristics of effective teams
• Managing conflict in a productive manner
• Understanding team member styles
• Creating a virtual team

Day 8

Strategic Planning

• Analyzing the strategic planning process
• Achieving competitive advantage
• Utilizing dynamic swot analysis
• Focusing on vision and mission
• The importance of contingency planning
• Examples of strategic success and failure

Day 9

Negotiating for results

• Gaining insight into the negotiating process
• Characteristics of an effective negotiator
• Developing negotiating strategies
• Employing persuasive negotiation techniques
• Achieving the benefits of effective negotiating
• Negotiation exercises

Day 10

Operational Excellence

• The Malcolm Baldrige quality award-standard of excellence
• Lessons from the best-performing companies
• Benchmarking your operation against the best
• Creating employee commitment
• Managing continuous improvement
• Creating the high-performance organization
• Certificate Ceremony