Course Description

 

This seminar is aimed to provide an understanding of the fundamentals of business decision-making. Many practical examples are worked through during the seminar. The approach of blending theoretical principles with practical applications is chosen in order to make the theory come to life with contemporary examples. The main objective of this seminar is to help develop the decision-making skills of the participants.

Course Objective

At the end of the seminar participants will able to outline the decision-making process and apply a range of decision-making techniques that may be used to add value to the organisation

Who Should attend?

This seminar is for non-financial managers at every level, who have a reasonable level of numeracy and some accounting knowledge. It is presented with real life examples and in terms that make the topics easy to understand. 

Course Outline

 

Cost management

·         Cost/volume/profit (CVP) relationships and break-even analysis

·         CVP sensitivity analysis

·         Limitations of CVP analysis

·         Case study

·          Activity based costing (ABC) versus traditional costing systems

·         Life cycle costing

·         Target costing

·         Benchmarking

·         Kaizen

·         Cost of quality (COQ)

·         Case study

Decision-making

·         The scope of decision-making

·         The decision-making process

·         Relevant costs

·         Marginal costing and shutdown or continuation decisions

·         Case study

·         Make versus buy decisions

·         Product mix decisions and limiting factors

·         Case study

·         Sales pricing

·         Decision trees

·         Case studies

Planning and budgeting

·         Budgeting, planning and control

·         Forecasting and planning

·         The budget process

·         Performance evaluation and control

·         Responsibility centres

·         Motivation and the behavioural aspects of budgeting

·         Problems in budgeting

·         Case study

Capital investment decisions

What is an investment?

Principles underlying investment selection criteria:

·         cash flow and the time value of money

Investment appraisal criteria:

·         accounting rate of return (ARR)

·         payback

·         net present value (NPV)

·         internal rate of return (IRR)

·         discounted payback

The use of NPV versus IRR

·         Advantages and disadvantages of the five investment appraisal criteria

·         Other factors affecting investment decisions

·         Risk and uncertainty and decision-making – sensitivity analysis

·         Control of capital investment projects

·         Case study

Management of working capital

·         Working capital and working capital requirement

·         Working capital policy

·         Stocks management

·         Just in time (JIT), and materials requirement planning (MRP)

·         Case study

·         Debtors and credit management

·         Creditors management

·         Operating cycle performance

·         Cash improvement techniques

·         Short-term cash flow improvement

·         Long-term cash flow improvement

·         Cash management

·         Case studies