Developing Commercial And Financial Skills For Strategic Business Decisions

The role of line executives evolves in to taking more and more managerial responsibilities requiring them to have a keen sense of commercial and financial dimensions of the decisions they take. In addition to meeting targets and delivering on KRAs, they are also expected to contribute in providing strategic inputs to the management from their field of responsibility. This requires line executive and managers to develop financial and commercial acumen to add value to their role and the organisation. Developing such acumen, in turn, requires good understanding of economics of any business model including risks, cost structure, key value drivers and controls. It also requires understanding business relationships from commercial point-of-view including dynamics of relative bargaining power, negotiation skills based on assessment of degrees of freedom available with the counter-parties, and tools and techniques to analyse business decisions.

The programme has been designed to develop commercial acumen and financial skills of mid-level line managersexecutives who may or may not be a part of the finance function of their organisation. At the end of the programme, the participants should be able to - Understand economics of and risks associated with any business from its financial statements Evaluate business performance using accounting numbers Understand the elements of a business model and its key value drivers Identify control elements and design a control system given a business objective Assess bargaining power in negotiations and develop negotiation skills Assess investment decisions and associated risks Value a businessfirm.

The primary pedagogical tool shall be case studies, though other tools like lecture, discussion, and presentations shall also be used.