Effective Budgeting & Operational Cost Control  

Dates 19 - 23 November
Location Dubai
Fees US$ 2,750

Introduction

The effective management of budgeting and cost control is crucial for project/process-based organisations. Nowadays, if contemporary organisations want to stay competitive, they are urged to think in terms of process-value added to customers/shareholders. Budgeting, as well as tracking, controlling & reducing cost represent essential activities to be performed and monitored by organisations as they implement their key processes, activities and operations. In this seminar participants will learn how to:
- Understand the cost structure of their company;
- Move towards activity-based costing;
- Exploit the advantages of proper budgeting and variance analysis
- Link costing and budgeting with advanced performance management

Who Should Attend?

The seminar is designed for financial planning and control Staff involved in the performance of a business unit, division or an organisation as whole; for professionals with direct or indirect financial responsibilities, for supervisors from every business discipline and department who have to run departments and budgetary plans, and who are responsible for cost and strategic analysis, for middle to senior managers from all sectors of industry, irrespective of functional responsibilities, but particularly those involved in manufacturing, production, engineering or sales; for first appointment managers on fast-track development programs; but also for professionals working in a project management environment and for quality specialists. The first two days are designed to build-up a common background in terms of financials.

Objectives and Outcomes

  • Think in terms of terms of process-value added to customers/shareholders.
  • Integrate the organisation's strategic planning with budgets and processes of cost control
  • Understand the importance of project management, appraisal, planning
  • Explore traditional versus innovative budgetary techniques
  • Get to know activity-based budgeting (and costing)
  • Explore capital budgeting techniques & cash flows
  • Identify key financial indicators for the business, and how and when to monitor them
  • Discuss the problems and limitations of budgetary control and look for alternative tools
  • Understand the importance of balancing financial and non-financial measure in managing projects
  • Interpret budgets and performance measurement as communication tools
  • Think proactively beyond budgeting
  • Link budgetary processes with quality issues and business process improvement.


    Training Methodology

    We combine theory and practice. Therefore, besides in-class lectures, discussions and exercises, we use company examples to illustrate how the techniques presented have been applied in real case studies.

    Organisational Impact

  • Facilitate the elimination of non-value activities and the reduction of costs within key projects
  • Contribute to the achievement of breakthrough improvements in competitiveness.
  • Successfully build an integrated planning, budgeting and reporting process
  • Understand projects’ costs behavior and patterns
  • Deliver more timely and useful information to decision makers for projects’ management
  • Ensure that processes of business planning, budgeting, and management reporting are robust in themselves and suitable for your organization
  • Link these processes together in your organization
  • Identify & manage key financial indicators for the business
  • Describe specific cost analysis and performance measurement techniques
  • Explore Balanced Scorecards and six-sigma
  • Facilitate the continuous and radical redesign of business processes
  • Support a process-centred organisational culture that focuses on customer value

    Personal Impact

  • Gain project management abilities
  • Integrating planning, budgeting and cost control by relying on a financial-based language
  • Managing different types of cost and their relevance to decision making
  • Understand the problems of overheads and how Activity Based Analysis may aid decision-making and pricing strategies
  • Select the performance measurement system that works
  • From cost to strategy to performance measurement
  • Looking beyond budgeting: balanced scorecard and six-sigma
  • Contribute to implement change in the organisation.

    Competencies Emphasized

  • Master techniques for costing & budgetary analysis
  • Be able to identify the right processes to redesign in terms of added-value
  • Confidently contribute to business process improvement
  • Permits testing of financial impact of strategic direction


    Seminar Outline

    Day 1 – Introduction: Building a Common Financial Language

  • The key role of budgeting and cost control in contemporary organisations
  • The 21st century business imperative: delivering value added (but to whom?)
  • Towards a cross-functional process-view of the organisation
  • Understand you processes: integrating financial and non-financial aspects
  • Identify the key processes/projects for your own organisation
  • Processes/projects’ estimating, budgeting & cost control
  • Examples & Discussion

    Day 2 – Techniques of Cost Control
  • Cost concepts and terminology - Different costs for different purposes
  • Fixed Vs Variable costs: the Cost-Volume-Profit analysis model
  • Period Vs. Product costs: inventory evaluation and control
  • The concept of contribution margin
  • Direct vs Indirect costs: cost allocation
  • Activity-based costing, budgeting and management
  • Problems, Cases and Exercises

    DAY 3 – Develop flexible budgets & perform variance analysis
  • Define the master budget and explain its major benefits to an organisation
  • Describe the difference between a static budget and a flexible budget
  • Compute flexible-budget variances and sales-volume variances (level 1 variances).
  • Compute the price and efficiency variances for direct-cost categories (level 2 variances).
  • Explain why standard costs are often used in variance analysis.
  • Integrate continuous improvement into variance analysis.
  • Problems and Exercises


    Day 4 – Project Management: Costing, Monitoring & Reports

  • Project Management Overview
  • Understanding the Project Manager's Role
  • Towards Project Budgeting and Cost Control
  • Developing a resource plan and estimating costs
  • Tracking Project Activities
  • Project Reporting and Management
  • Implementing Change Management

    Day 5 – Beyond the Budgets: Integrating Financial And Non-Financial Performance Measurement

  • What is the scope of budgeting? How far should it extend beyond cost budgeting?
  • Should we budget for customer satisfaction and staff skills?
  • The budgets and performance measurement as tools for communications
  • Beyond budgeting: integrating financial and non-financial issues
  • Introducing Balanced Scorecard
  • Introducing Six-sigma
  • Case, problems and examples

     

     

     


    Oxford Management Centre
    John Eccles House
    Robert Robinson Ave
    Oxford Science Park
    Oxford
    OX4 4GP
    United Kingdom

    Tel: +44 1865 338088

    Fax: +44 1865 338100

    email info@oxford-management.com

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