Hands-on Workshop & Practical Seminar

Finance & Accounting for Managers and Professionals
Skills and Tools to Improve Your Planning, Budgeting & Control Decisions

This seminar provides you with the practical principles, tools and techniques of modern finance and accounting that are vital to the success of professionals and decision-makers, both in the public and private sectors, in large, medium and small organizations. You will invest ample time practicing on real-life problems. The focus is on analysis, interpretation, and use of financial information, to make informed and sound decisions, based on facts, in today's complex environment. You will specifically gain the practical knowledge and skills required to:

• Understand the vocabulary and principles of finance and accounting including key ratios for measuring productivity, stability, liquidity and profitability;
• Analyze, interpret and explain income statements and balance sheets, in plain language;
• Address your management concerns about risk in assessing proposals;
• Articulate your rationale for scarce-resource allocation, particularly when facing intense competition;
• Use more rigor to persuade your stakeholders to fund projects and operations;
• Improve your planning, budgeting, control and evaluation skills;
• Maximize effectiveness and efficiency by managing the performance drivers that count;
• Gain financial insights to resolve problems you face every day.

Both the organization and the participant will directly benefit from this hands-on workshop. The skills and tools learned can be applied by executives, managers and professionals at all levels, from day-to-day operations to the corporate level in governance, policy, strategy formulation, mergers & acquisitions, and project selection, management and impact evaluation. The aim is to make accessible to everyone the best practices and tools in planning, budgeting, resource allocation and operations control.

The organization sending a group of participants will therefore benefit significantly from a greater focus on bottom-line results. Within a reasonable period, the organization should:

• Improve the management of its assets using turnover ratios, among others;
• Enhance communication between operating managers, auditors and other experts in finance and accounting;
• Reduce the risk of financial disasters by adopting robust warning systems;
• Build a strong foundation for profit planning by applying break-even analysis widely;
• Increase the effectiveness of the decision-making process with a wider application of financial ratios;
• Adopt more rigor using financial leverage to assess return on investment (ROI);
• Value the payback period but place a greater emphasis on the internal rate of return;
• Optimize the balanced tradeoff between cash flow and trade discounts;
• Reduce working capital to provide more cash to the business;
• Increase ROI by reducing accounts receivable and inventory;
• Build safeguards to avoid shipping delays, which lengthen the cash conversion period and hurt cash flow.

The seminar participants will:

• Learn and apply up-to-date financial management tools and vocabulary;
• Develop analytical skills;
• Focus more on the bottom line;
• Participate more actively in meetings when financial matters are discussed;
• Drill down three levels to master the profit value chain from the gross margin, and operating profit (EBITDA) to the income after tax;
• Be able to explore more opportunities by applying predictive modeling to assess performance and craft turnaround strategies; and
• Be more accountable for getting the most out of the human resources and other assets entrusted to them.

An award-winning author on finance and a leading specialist on the Balanced Scorecard, Professor Bergeron has made an immensely valuable contribution to the advancement of management best practices, accountability and good governance. He was Director of Corporate Finance at Domtar, and led market analysis and capital project evaluation at Exxon's Imperial Oil. He also was a senior executive in several departments of the Federal Government prior to pursuing a distinguished career as a professor of management and associate dean at the University of Ottawa.

Prof. Bergeron has written extensively on performance evaluation, finance, planning, budgeting, and capital budgeting for professional journals including CA magazine, CMA Magazine, CGA Magazine, Banker and ICB Review, the Financial Post, and Optimum. He is the author of eight books including Finance for Non-Financial Managers; Survivor's Guide to Finance; Modern Management in Canada; Gestion dynamique: concepts, méthodes et applications; Planification, budgétisation et gestion par objectifs; and Capital Expenditure Planning for Growth and Profit. He is the recipient of the Walter J. MacDonald award for his series of articles on capital budgeting decisions, which appeared in the CA magazine. He has assisted Industry Canada in designing a Web-based program to help entrepreneurs raise risk funds from venture capital markets. He also participated in producing The ABCs of Financial Performance Measures and Benchmarks for Canada's Tourism Sector and Finding Funding for the Canadian Tourism Commission. He also collaborated in the production of a series of videos on finance. He created financial-planning framework to help managers gauge the impact of business strategies, plans and budgets on financial statements, and to make business decisions using cutting-edge yardsticks for time-value-of-money investment.

Professor Bergeron uses examples that are pertinent to participants from both small and large compagnies, government agencies and non-profit associations. Clients who sent participants to Professor Bergeron's seminars include Alberta Natural Gas, Alcan Building Products, Atomic Energy of Canada, Best Foods, Burroughs Welcome, Chevron, Dow Chemicals, Hawker Siddeley, H.J. Heinz, Helen Curtis, Herman Miller, Hiram Walker & Sons, Keg Restaurants, Kellogg, Kimberley Clark, Lever Bros., MacMillan Bloedel, Nestlé Rowntree, Petro-Canada, Robin Hood Multifoods, West Coast Drugs and a host of federal, state and provincial government agencies.

Mr. Bergeron is a graduate of the University of Ottawa and the University of Western Ontario.

1. Learning the Language and Concepts

• Time value of money
• Economic value added
• Sustainable growth rate, hurdle rate
• EBITDA, Deferred taxes, sunk costs
• Retained earnings, goodwill
• Practical exercises

2. How to Read Financial Statements

• Income statement, balance Sheet
• Statement of Cash Flow
• Statement of Retained Earnings
• Reading the auditors’ report
• Practical exercises; teamwork

3. Mastering the Difference between

• Market value and book value
• Financial needs and financing requirements
• Amortization, depreciation and capital cost allowance
• Profit and cash flow
• Gross margin and contribution margin
• Fixed costs and variable costs
• Break-even point and profit break-even
• Practical exercises; teamwork

4. How to Interpret Financial Statements

• Liquidity and profitability ratios
• Asset-management ratios
• Debt/coverage ratios
• Market value ratios
• Common-size statement analysis
• Horizontal analysis
• Financial benchmarks
• Sustainable growth rate
• Financial health score
• Practical exercises; teamwork

5. How to Use Financial Decision-Making Tools

• Economic Value Added (EVA)
• Break-even analysis in costing, pricing and investment decisions
• Pro-forma income and cash-flow statements
• How to compare cost of financing with ROA
• Practical exercises; teamwork

6. How to Evaluate Capital-Investment Decisions

• How to use capital budgeting tools
  • Net present value (NPV)
  • Internal rate of return (IRR)
  • Payback period
  • Sensitivity analysis
  • Risk analysis
  • The hurdle rate
• How to analyze investment opportunities and lease/buy options
• Valuing an on-going business
• Cash flow projections
• Evaluating capital financing options: internal versus external forms of financing; cost of capital vs. investments in capital assets; raising funds through internal and external sources
• Individual exercises; practical teamwork

7. The Balanced Scorecard: Connecting the Dots between Finance and Strategy

• What is the balanced scorecard?
• Investment, operating and financing decisions
• Managing growth and working capital
• Cash conversion efficiency ratio
• Formulating your organization’s financial strategies
• Linking decisions such as downsizing, product quality, and reengineering to financial measures
• Measuring operating and financial leverage
• Determining the most appropriate cost of capital
• Strategies for cutting operating costs and improving the bottom line
• Accelerating the cash conversion cycle
• Individual exercises; practical teamwork

8. Synthesis and Conclusion