Mastering Spreadsheet Skills for Planning, Forecasting and Budgeting

Introduction

The corporate history of the 21st century is notable for the failure of a significant proportion of previously successful enterprises that were unable to adapt to disruptive business model innovation and market changes. In many cases failure can be attributed to the organisation’s inability to plan, execute and adapt successful competitive strategies. Planning, budgeting and forecasting skills are the essential foundation of this critical business process and spreadsheet skills facilitate the rapid development of financial models in vital applications to support these activities. This hands-on asting and Budgeting training course will focus on practical spreadsheet skills directly relevant to understand and make a practical contribution to the planning, budgeting and forecasting processes.

This Mastering Spreadsheet Skills for Planning, Forecasting and Budgeting training course will feature:

• A comprehensive guide to the business planning and budgeting process
• Practical expert tuition in the development of spreadsheet skills
• Detailed explanation of effective business forecasting techniques
• Explanation of modern business performance management methods
• Development of practical skills for capital investment evaluation
• Leading edge techniques for risk analysis and management

Objectives

By the end of this training course delegates will be able to:

• Participate effectively in planning, budgeting and forecasting process
• Apply advanced Excel spreadsheet skills in business forecasting
• Employ leading edge tools for cost analysis and forecasting
• Develop financial models to assist in capital investment decisions
• Make spreadsheet models for cash flow forecasting
• Build powerful “what if” spreadsheet models for risk sensitivity analysis

Training Methodology

This Mastering Spreadsheet Skills for Planning, Forecasting and Budgeting training course will use a variety of proven adult learning techniques to ensure maximum understanding, comprehension and retention of the information presented. The training course will follow a participative workshop format and will be focused on developing practical skills that delegates can apply in real life business situations on return to their own organisation. Each module includes a thorough review of the relevant theory before focusing on life-like business case studies to which delegates can apply the theory and practical spreadsheet skills using powerful Excel functions and statistical tools.

Who Should Attend?

This Mastering Spreadsheet Skills for Planning, Forecasting and Budgeting training course will not only be of benefit to planning team members, but it will also provide a useful insights and tools for other professionals in related fields, in particular the course will greatly benefit:

• Financial accounting team members
• Cost and management accounting staff
• Finance managers
• Budget managers
• Commercial managers
• Capital investment and project team members

Course Outline

Day 1: Fundamentals of Business Planning

• The aims and principles of strategic planning

• A framework for effective strategic execution

• The structure and format of financial statements

• Measuring and managing financial performance

• Principles of financial modelling

• Spreadsheet skills: Excel best practice and modelling tips

Day 2: Principles and Techniques of Business Forecasting

• Spreadsheet skills: using Excel’s statistical analysis tools

• Using moving averages to analyse time series data

• Using linear regression for sales trend analysis

• Applying exponential smoothing to forecasting

• Spreadsheet skills: using Excel Solver to minimise forecasting error

• Avoiding common forecasting problems

• Data visualisation – presenting data to non-financial managers

Day 3: Budgeting for Revenue and Operating Costs

• The role of budgeting in the planning cycle

• Traditional and advanced approaches to cost analysis

• Spreadsheet skills: using regression and correlation for cost forecasts

• Criticisms and limitations of conventional budgeting methods

• Beyond Budgeting

• Spreadsheet skills: building rolling forecast models

Day 4: Cash Flow Forecasting and Cash Budgeting

• Understanding the drivers of business cash flow

• Spreadsheet skills: building a cash flow forecast model

• Principles of capital budgeting

• Capital investment appraisal tools

• Understanding discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis

• Spreadsheet skills: building a capital investment appraisal model

Day 5: Incorporating Risk Management in to Planning and Forecasting

• Identifying and analysing business risk

• Probability based approach to decision-making

• Spreadsheet skills: building decision trees in Excel

• Sensitivity analysis and “What-If” forecasting

• Identifying the key drivers of financial performance

• Spreadsheet skills: building a “What-If” forecast for sensitivity analysis