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It's Important!
The February 2007 Harvard Business Review contains an article entitled, "How managers' everyday decisions create - or destroy - your company's strategy".
This thought is at the heart of the
Our focus is on "hard skills". These are the skills associated with managing the business as opposed to managing people - though we recognise that the two are inextricably intertwined - in fact, the need to take an holistic perspective is one of the recurring themes of our courses.
HappyAtom works with organisations in a number of ways. Our Services page provides more detail. Briefly, we provide training - development of materials, train-the-trainer, delivery - and consulting services.
finance for non finance managers
Follow this link for a an example of a typical finance for non finance managers course that we run. Or for a more general overview of the training that we provide, go to our main finance page. First, however, we would like to highlight some aspects of our courses:
- value management - the traditional financial statements and ratios were fine during the "industrial age"; nowadays they can give a very misleading picture. For instance, on average, 75% of the value of a company does not appear on the balance sheet. The real value in a company lies not in its balance sheet assets but in the skills of its people, its accumulated R&D knowledge, relationships, brand, systems. Managers must fully understand the concept of "value" if they are to make sense of "finance".
- performance drivers - many finance for non-finance manager courses focus on ratio analysis, showing managers the importance of gearing and such like. These ratios do have a place, but manager need in a much broader framework. Financial ratios are based on historical data and are therefore a crude indicator of future performance. In addition, they track "symptoms" not "causes". To illustrate: a reduction in profit margin tells you that you are making less on each sale but it does not tell you why. However, analysing "performance drivers" - for example, how many visits made by a salesman - will point towards "causes". This is the approach of the "Balanced Scorecard" and this "balanced" perspective is a recurring theme of our programmes. We demonstrate the links financial performance and the non-financial drivers of performance.
- a sophisticated enterprise model - a central component of our finance for non-finance manager programmes is a spreadsheet showing how the various elements that drive financial performance fit together and affect each other. The impact of real world inputs, such as an increase in the average time it takes for customers to pay or reducing the number of sales people, can be seen throughout the financial statements - the impact on cashflow, the balance sheet, ratios and so on. As we progress through the programme, each new aspect is considered in the context of the model, thus helping delegates to "fit the pieces together".
- more than numbers - we emphasise that the "numbers" are only representations of a much more complex reality. As an example, a revenue forecast should not be simply last year plus 10%, it should be constructed from a deeper analysis of the factors that influence customer buying behaviour.
- practical tools - the primary objective of our courses is not to teach finance; it is to give managers a balanced financial perspective and a set of practical tools that they can use to generate sustainable competitive advantage.
- marketing expertise - so many finance for non finance managers courses focus on "costs". We balance the picture and because of our marketing expertise (click here for more information about marketing training and services), we can ensure that managers have a realistic view of revenue inputs - market segments, product lifecycles, promotion campaign response rates, impact of brand recognition .....
