Taking this course will provide an end to end view of the corporate planning and budgeting process - from the strategic plan to the operating budget. Special consideration is given to key elements of successful strategic plans, flexible budgeting, identification of investment opportunities, budgeting best practices, and techniques to improve the quality of forecasts.
Topics include:
- Strategic Planning
- Strategic Planning Tools and Techniques
- Budgeting Concepts
- Correlation and Regression
- The Learning Curve
- Budget Methodologies
- The Operating Budget
- Capital Expenditure and Cash Budgets
- Top Level Planning and Analysis
The content covered in this course provides a pathway to developing your analytical and critical-thinking skills and closing skills gaps in a variety of relevant topics.
Learning Objectives
- Explore how strategic planning determines the path an organization chooses for its long-term goals.
- Identify the appropriate time frame and the characteristics of successful strategic plans.
- Explore Michael Porter’s 5 forces model.
- Explore Michael Porter’s generic strategies of cost leadership, differentiation and focus.
- Identify the internal and external factors that should be analyzed during a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, and discover how the analysis leads to recognition of organizational opportunities, limitations, and threats.
- Explore and recognize how to use the following tools: Situational analysis, competitive analysis, PEST (political, economic, social, and technological) analysis, scenario planning, contingency planning, and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Growth-Share matrix
- Identify the role of executive management in the budget process.
- Identify who should participate in the budget process.
- Explore and recognize how management uses budgets to motivate, control, communicate, and influence.
- Identify best practices in the budget process.
- Explore an overview of business forecasting and statistical forecasting.
- Explore learning curve analysis.
- Identify the purpose, time frame, appropriate use, benefits and limitations for: Annual profit plan/master budgets, project budgets, activity-based budgets, zero-based budgets, continuous budgets, static and flexible budgets.
- Identify and recognize how to develop the components of the annual profit plan’s operating budget: Sales forecast and sales budget, ending inventory levels and production budget, manufacturing budgets (direct materials, direct labor, and overhead), cost of goods sold budget, and expense budgets.
- Explore a capital expenditure budget and a cash expenditure budget.
- Explore the use of standards in budgeting.
- Identify the steps that are taken in developing direct material and direct labor standards.
- Explore the accumulation and flow of costs in raw materials, work in process and finished goods.
- Identify cost of goods manufactured and cost of goods sold.
- Identify prime and conversion costs.
- Identify the purpose of and recognize how to prepare the following pro forma financial statements: Income statement, statement pf change in stockholder equity, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows.
155 Reviews (831 ratings)
Prerequisites
No advanced preparation or prerequisites are required for this course. However, it is recommended to take the other courses in the series prior to completing this one.