Course Description
Having greater commercial awareness, or in other words, an understanding of your business and the industry it’s in is a fundamental training requirement for business analysts.
This course will provide you with a deeper understanding of your organization and the sector it sits in. Mixing wider discussions with group and individual exercises, you’ll explore topics such as financial reporting, budgeting, costing and pricing, organizational behavior, and culture, and much, much more. You’ll then test your learning by answering a set of questions for each section, which will also prepare you for the BCS Commercial Awareness examination.
Presented to you by one of our expert training consultants, each member of our commercial awareness training team brings their professional knowledge and collective experience of business analysis within the organizational and commercial context to the program.
Pre-requisites
Business analysts, project leaders, and business change managers need a greater understanding of the business organization and financial reporting – particularly how it interfaces with business analysis. Commercial Awareness is also a Specialist Foundation module on the BCS (ISEB) International Diploma in Business Analysis.
Performance-Based Objectives
Delegates will learn how to:
- understand three techniques used to evaluate a financial case.
- understand costing and pricing.
- understand cash flow forecasting and budgeting.
- describe the contents of financial accounting documents.
- interpret financial accounts.
- explain specified business performance ratios.
- define the elements and usage of Porter's Five Forces Framework and Value Chain.
- define the elements and usage of the Boston Consulting Group's matrix.
- define the performance measures and usage of the Balanced Business Scorecard.
- define the elements of specified cultural analysis approaches.
- explain the different management structures and their characteristics.
- define the different architectures that may be adopted by organisations.
Course Content
Financial reporting
- The balance sheet
- The income and expenditure statement (profit and loss account)
- The cash flow statement
- Financial ratio analysis
Budgeting, costing and pricing
- Budgets and departmental businesses
- Cash flow and cash management
- Costing and pricing
Evaluating a financial case
- The purpose of building a financial case
- Techniques for evaluating a financial case:
- Payback / breakeven
- Discounted cash flow / net present value (DCF/NPV)
- Internal rate of return (IRR)
Market analysis and competitive advantage
- Analysing the business domain
- Analysing the product / service portfolio
- Delivering business value
Organisational behaviour and culture
- What is organisational behaviour?
- Organisational effectiveness and the balanced business scorecard
- Understanding and analysing culture
Working in groups
- Groups and group dynamics
- Formal and informal groups
- Organisational structure
- Organisation structuring
- Types of jobs
- Line, staff and functional responsibilities
- Formalisation of rules and procedures
- Centralisation and decentralisation
Operating models
- Organisation structures and their characteristics
- Organisational boundaries
