Financial Acumen: Roadmap to Business Success

As a professional, you are constantly faced with decisions that require professional judgment. By definition, acumen is "the ability to make good judgments and make quick decisions". Backing-up your experience with strong financial acumen would provide quantitative support for your options, add credibility to your decisions and raise the likelihood of winning strategic bets.

In this training course, we will combine the strategic and commercial aspects of the business with the financial one. You will understand how day-to-day operating decisions in procurement, production, and sales, as well as on how and where to compete, will impact your company’s profitability and financial situation.

You are responsible for your business, and your decisions can make or break it. In this course we will equip you with the financial acumen to evaluate your past decisions and apply the best judgment in the future.

The course uses a mix of interactive techniques, such as brief presentations by the consultant, case studies, hands-on applications of analysis using Excel and group exercises to apply knowledge acquired throughout the course.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Define where and how their company competes and identify which competitive advantages generate shareholder value
• Interpret how macroeconomic conditions and industry specific situations can impact their company’s profitability and performance
• List the components of the basic financial statements
• Analyze the ability of the company to survive over the short run and long run, and exercise commercial decisions that can improve their company’s performance
• Apply cost concepts to make informed decisions that are strategically and financially fit for the company

Managers, supervisors and staff from any function including finance who need to improve their understanding and usage of financial information.

• Strategy identification
• Economic analysis
• Industry analysis
• Understanding financial statements
• Financial analysis
• Working capital management
• Financial decision making
• Managerial decision making

This is a hands-on training course using laptops which will be made available by Arab for the duration of the training. For courses outside Dubai delegates must bring along their own laptop with a fully functional version of Excel 2010/2013.