Mastering Strategic Planning & Forecasting using Spreadsheets
Course Info
Day 5 of each course is reserved for a Q&A session, which may occur off-site. For 10-day courses, this also applies to day 10
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Course Summary
Your company’s ability to plan, achieve, and adapt to disruptions and market changes is essential to long-term business success. Developing accurate financial models using spreadsheets can help you to support your planning, budgeting, and forecasting activities.
This course provides a comprehensive guide to developing spreadsheet models to create forecasts, which can then be used to generate business plans and operating budgets. You will learn to apply advanced spreadsheet features to build realistic forecasts and improve planning efficiency and control. In addition to reviewing the fundamentals of strategic planning, forecasting, and budgeting, you will acquire hands-on skills in building various practical financial models.
Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:
- Explore features and functions of Excel®.
- Review the principles of strategic planning and budgeting.
- Develop advanced spreadsheet skills for business planning, forecasting, and budgeting.
- Build a variety of effective financial planning models to support decision-making.
- Formulate forecasting models that integrate what-if analysis.
- Use tools to implement cost analysis forecasting techniques.
- Integrate risk management into planning and forecasting.
This course is intended for
- Finance, Budget, and Commercial Managers
- Financial accounting, Capital Investment, and Cost Accounting team members
- Project Managers
This course uses a variety of adult learning styles to aid full understanding and comprehension. Participants will review case studies to highlight key areas of importance and possible areas for faults. They will be supplied with the best tools required for learning exercises to improve their skills. Participants will analyse the examples to thoroughly understand how these skills, techniques and methods apply in the workplace.
Course Content & Outline
Section 1: Business Planning Fundamentals
- Identify the objectives of strategic planning.
- Describe a framework for effective strategic executions.
- Review ROI, ROA, and ROE.
- Outline the structure of a financial statement.
- Discuss the methods used to measure financial performance.
- Examine the principles of financial modelling.
Section 2: Using spreadsheets to communicate financial data
- Explore the role of Excel® in building financial models.
- Examine the Excel® interface.
- Describe the importance of formulae and functions.
- Discuss how to present data to non-financial managers.
Section 3: Planning and Budgeting
- Review the established strategic planning models.
- Describe the role of budgeting in planning cycles.
- Discuss approaches to cost analysis.
- Identify the limitations of prevailing budgeting methods.
Spreadsheet Skills:
- Use the solver tool as an optimisation technique.
- Use regression and correlation to forecast costs.
- Build a rolling forecast model.
- Build an appraisal model for capital investment.
Section 4: Business Forecasting
- Review the development of forecasting strategies.
- Describe qualitative forecasting models.
- Define quantitative forecasting models with a focus on time series and regression approaches.
- Calculate how to forecast growth rates.
- Apply and manage forecast assumptions.
- Identify why using a range of forecasting methods is necessary.
- Identify common forecasting problems.
Spreadsheet skills:
- Use statistical analysis tools in Excel®.
- Analyse time series data with moving averages.
- Examine sales trends using linear regression techniques.
- Minimise forecasting errors with the solver tool.
- Apply exponential smooth to forecasts.
Section 5: Forecasting and Budgeting
- Describe the drivers of business cash flow.
- Understand timing and cycles in the budget process.
- Review budgeting principles and techniques.
- Distinguish between operating and capital budgets.
- Identify how to set budgeting objectives and tolerance levels.
- Outline monthly reporting procedures and actions.
- Evaluate the most common capital investment appraisal tools.
- Describe discounted cash flow analysis.
Spreadsheet skills:
- Build a forecast model for cash flow.
- Build an integrated planning, forecasting, and budgeting model.
Section 6: Integrating risk management into planning and forecasting
- Identify and examine business risks.
- Describe probability-based approaches to decision-making.
- Investigate how to use scenarios in what-if analyses to test sensitivity.
Spreadsheet skills:
- Build a decision tree.
- Build a what-if forecast to analyse sensitivity.
Certificate Description
Upon successful completion of this training course, delegates will be awarded a Holistique Training Certificate of Completion. For those who attend and complete the online training course, a Holistique Training e-Certificate will be provided.
Holistique Training Certificates are accredited by the British Assessment Council (BAC) and The CPD Certification Service (CPD), and are certified under ISO 9001, ISO 21001, and ISO 29993 standards.
CPD credits for this course are granted by our Certificates and will be reflected on the Holistique Training Certificate of Completion. In accordance with the standards of The CPD Certification Service, one CPD credit is awarded per hour of course attendance. A maximum of 50 CPD credits can be claimed for any single course we currently offer.
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