Introduction

Effective planning and control entails developing skills that go far beyond mastery of any one discipline. To begin with, it requires the development of solid cost, duration, and resource estimates, which means that delegates need to learn the principles of effective estimation. In the scheduling arena, today’s practitioners need to go beyond PERT/CPM and should get up to speed on brand new scheduling techniques.

The approach will be practical as well as conceptual and will emphasize general principles. The intention will be that seminar participants can apply these general principles to analyze new issues as they arise. The seminar will incorporate various solved examples and case studies at appropriate intervals so that the delegates get an opportunity to implement theory into practice and also get a chance to discuss the various issues visited during the seminar.

Seminar Objectives

To have delegates develop a thorough grounding on concepts and techniques needed to deliver projects on time, within budget, and according to specifications.

Upon completion, the delegates should be able to:

• Need for risk assessment in estimating
• Estimation techniques: regression, Delphi , moving averages
• Pareto’s rule
• Data collection
• Financial concepts (e.g., capital budgeting, sunk costs)
• Analyzing cost data
• Benefit-cost analysis

Who Should Attend?

• Financial professionals, finance controllers treasurers and inventory professionals
• Senior professionals with a direct responsibility for financial management and control
• Accountants, planners, & cost professionals
• Any professional who has responsibility for any portion of the planning process
• Any professional, at a medium and senior level, who is a part of the financial decision making team
• New interns and trainees with finance related responsibilities

Organisational Impact

• The participants will become more aware of the importance of planning
• New skills of the relationship between planning & control will help to make more informed and hence better management decisions
• Exposure to different techniques will help the company to improve their planning
• Cost analysis will be fully explored
• The knowledge gained can be shared amongst other departments of the company

Personal Impact

• You will be able to further your professional skills
• You will be able to make more informed and hence better financial decisions
• You will keep up with your firm's growing need to balance planning & control
• You will be better placed to liaise effectively with other departments on planning & control matters

Competencies Emphasized

This programme aims to enable participants to develop the following competencies:

• Best practices in planning
• How to effectively calculate costs
• Controlling costs
• The relationship between planning & control

Training Methodology

The seminar will be conducted along workshop principles with formal lectures, case studies and interactive worked examples. Relevant case studies will be provided to illustrate the application of each tool in an operations environment. Each learning point will be re-enforced with practical exercises. Difficult mathematical concepts are minimized wherever possible and handled in a visual way that is easy to understand with examples demonstrated.

Seminar Outline

Day 1: Introduction – Finance versus Accounting

• Identify the major differences and similarities between financial and managerial accounting
• Understand the role of management accountants in an organization
• Understand the basic concepts underlying just-in-time (JIT), total quality management (TQM), process reengineering, and the theory of constraints (TOC)
• Discuss the impact of international competition on businesses and on managerial accounting
• Explain the importance of upholding ethical standards
• Case example

Day 2: Long-term planning

• What is a budget
• Budgeting basics
• Various types of budgets
• The budgeting process
• Budget preparation
• Identify the characteristics of well-designed management accounting and control systems (MACS)
• Describe total-life-cycle costing
• Understand target costing
• Understand Kaizen costing
• Case example

Day 3: Costing basics

• What is costing
• Defining costs
• Cost behaviour
• Breakeven models
• The Equation Method
• Target Net Profit Analysis
• Costing models
• Incorrect assumptions
• Activity Based Costing
• Case example

Day 4: Control for success – Performance measurement

• Strategic planning measures
• Accounting-based performance measures
• Company versus division performance
• Financial performance measures
• Problems with financial measures
• Value of financial performance measures
• Indicators for managers
• Balanced scorecard
• Not-for-profit organizations
• Case example

Day 5: Bringing it all together

• Discuss the design and use of responsibility centers in an organization
• Understand the issues and basic tools related to assessing the performance of a responsibility center
• Recognize common forms of responsibility centers
• Understand two commonly-used planning and control methods used to evaluate responsibility center performance
• Discuss transfer pricing alternatives in organizations
• Understand the use of return on investment and economic value added as financial control tools
• Identify the limitations of using financial controls