Helping you enhance your financial skills to drive effective business decision making

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Registration will be at 07:30 on the first day. The course will commence at 08:00 every day and finish at 14:30.There will be breaks for refreshments at approximately 10:30 and 12:30 and lunch will be served at the end of each day’s session.

Uncertainties in the global economy are making revenue maintenance increasingly difficult. In a competitive market with virtually no price advantage, the only way to succeed and survive is by managing your costs. However cost management brings with it a trap wherein the finance and business managers fail to identify the costs that can be controlled without harming the bottom line.

This course will take you through a journey of developing an in-depth understanding of the components and behaviour of cost leading to introduction of contemporary tools of deciding on achievable cost reduction targets.

Day One - Genesis Of Cost

• Cost management and strategic decisions
• Components of cost
  - Material
  - Labour
  - Overhead
• Behaviour of cost
  - Fixed cost
  - Variable cost
  - Semi variable cost
  - Breakeven analysis
• Relevance of cost
  - Relevant cost
  - Sunk cost
  - Opportunity cost

Day Two - Cost Accumulation And Reporting

• Cost accumulation methods
  - Full costing
  - Marginal costing
  - Activity Based Costing (ABC)
• Cost reports and decision making
  - Impact on financial statements
  - Cost management using profit and loss accounts
  - Cost management using balance sheets
• Where to control costs

Day Three - Control And Management

• Managing cost of capital
  - Long term capital
  - Working capital
• Budgets and standards
  - Setting up a standard
  - Rolling forecasts
  - Designing budgets using standards
  - KPI budgeting
  - Standard for actuals
  - Variance identification
• "Beyond Budgeting" – tools and techniques
• Balanced Scorecard
  - Cost management using Balanced Scorecard
  - Cost perspectives

Day Four - Identifying Cost Reduction Targets

• Decision tree
  - Identification of alternatives
  - Measuring impacts
• Critical path method
  - Measurement of costs of alternatives
  - Identification of least cost alternative
  - Activity duration and cost trade-off\
• Designing a decision dashboard
  - Identification of key performance indicators
  - Automated decision system
  - Linking with existing financial reporting systems