Participants are required to bring along their calculator and laptop for hands-on exercises.

Programme Objective
The role of accounting & finance is fast expanding into one of business partnership with other departments in an organisation. This workshop provides both insight into the business planning process (which is necessary for effective financial planning and budgeting) and key pointers in the budgeting process itself. By the end of this workshop, you will:

• Understand how longer-term business planning is done
• Be equipped with a practical framework to structure a Business Plan that is easy to read and understand, be it a business-development or process improvement plan
• Know the key points and pitfalls to watch for when assessing or approving Business Plans
• Know how to quantify the payoffs and funding needs
• Know how to incorporate risks into the plans
• Know how to do budgeting effectively

Programme Outline

PART I: Business Planning

• Business Planning framework   
• In context of Strategic Planning 
• Relationship between  Business Plans, Financial Plans & Budgets 
• Strategic Planning process  
• Analysis of external & internal environment
• Choosing strategies – Relevance of Business Plans 
• Implementation – Relevance of Budgets
• Structuring an effective Business Plan  
• Why Business Plans fail to get attention 
• Key components of a Business Plan  
• Use of the Executive Summary
• Identifying key action strategy  
• Key pointers in Marketing Plan, Operations Plan, Management Plan, Financial Plan       
• Inter-dependency of various plans  
• Financial Plan: The payoff  
• Payback period  
• Net Present Value  
• Internal Rate of Return  
• Financial Plan: Funding requirements 
• Identifying amount of funds needed
• Deciding on level of buffer cash reserve
• Identifying & quantifying risks     
• Identifying risks
• Building risks into business plan
• Use of Breakeven and Sensitivity Analysis
• Mapping out implementation of Business Plan
• Setting milestones
• Importance of change management

PART II: Budgeting

• Budgeting at corporate level 
• Quantifying corporate objective 
• Use of budgets      
• Inter-dependency of budgets    
• Roles of finance & non-finance managers in budgeting 
• Differing budgeting methods and their pros & cons    
• Selecting suitable methods for different types of budgets 
• Budgeting at department or team level  
• Identifying & quantifying costs  
• Identifying & quantifying revenue 
• Checklist for budget preparation        
• Pre-requisites for effective budgeting    
• Impact on cash flow management 
• Relevance of cash flow forecast
• Impact of budgets on cash flow management

Training Methodology

• Lectures

• Exercises

• Case studies

• Sharing of real experiences

Closing Date for Registration
1 week before programme or until full enrolment

Intended For

Financial Controllers, Finance Managers and Accountants who review business plans &/or budgets •Business Managers who develop business plans &/or providing inputs into budgets •Entrepreneurs who need to know how to do business planning and financial planning •Financiers who need to assess the feasibility of business plans furnished by client

Programme Facilitator(s)