Advanced Strategies: Accounting, Financial Control and Appraisals

Learning Objectives

• Identify the best practices for the roles of CFO, controller, treasurer, and accountants in the content of, and relationships between, financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows).
• Discuss the use of financial statements to evaluate the financial / strategic performance of an organization.
• Understand best practices in discounted cash flow (DCF) techniques and their application to financial decision-making.
• Identify corporate performance management using key success factors, weak financial signals, and strong financial signals in various industry sectors.
• Define the value creation/destruction process in mergers and acquisitions from the market perspective and signals to management from the market.
• Clarify the roles of directors, auditors, and others in their respective roles in corporate governance.
• Identify the various sources of financial and business data that provide insights into business and financial strategies.
• Identify the details of financial control, risk management, and financial reporting from the perspectives of the internationally recognized professional associations such as IFAC, IASB, SEC, OECD, and others.

Objective

Participants attending the program will:

• Identify best practices for the roles of CFO, controller, treasurer, and accountants in the content of, and relationships between, financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows).
• Discuss the use of financial statements to evaluate the financial / strategic performance of an organization.
• Understand best practices in discounted cash flow (DCF) techniques and their application to financial decision-making.
• Identify corporate performance management using key success factors, weak financial signals, and strong financial signals in various industry sectors.
• Define the value creation/destruction process in mergers and acquisitions from the market perspective and signals to management from the market.
• Identify the various sources of financial and business data that provide insights into business and financial strategies.
• Identify the details of financial control, risk management, and financial reporting from the perspectives of the internationally recognized professional associations such as IFAC, IASB, SEC, OECD, and others.

• The role of functional management in respect to financial management.
• The basic financial statements and their articulation.
• Evaluating performance and why ROI is still a good place to start.
• Competitive perspectives related to financial statements.
• Best practices in preparing, presenting, and populating financial statements.
• Identifying key success factors in industry sectors.
• Short-term success evaluations process and measures.
• Weak signals for future strategic adjustments.
• Buy, sell, or hold investments.
• Best practices in financial review compared to targets and expectations.
• Financial performance measurement systems.
• Best practices in finding and using key accounting assumptions
• Compare business system to financial results.
• Benchmarking external reviews, industry reports, and analyst reports.
• Best practices in boards of directors and their move to financial literacy.
• Finding best practices in non-financial inputs to financial statements.
• Activity based costing, time-based costing, and competence based costing and financial analysis.
• Presenting and communicating to executive audiences the best practices in finance and accounting.
• Challenging the finance function to best practices.