Business acumen for commercial business

Business acumen is a key management skill that enables managers to improve profitability and increase market share. On completion of this workshop you'll be able to make better business decisions based on sound business analysis and management skills. You'll gain tools to think outside the square and create new opportunities that fit your company's strengths and align with company values and branding. This workshop uses real life examples as a means of enabling you to apply business acumen principles to your business.

Objectives:

After completing this workshop you will be able to:

Pinpoint big picture issues: understand company issues and context; industry competitiveness and maturity; SWOT; PESTLE; identify key opportunities
Think commercially; establish your point of difference, segment markets, differentiate products; identify business and financial drivers; diversification vs focus on core business
Establish customer wants and needs: Analysing current and potential customers; identifying customer trends; what value adding services will the customer be willing to pay for?
Identify what you would do differently if this was your business
Create operational efficiency: Continuous improvements to internal operational activities; working smarter with suppliers; getting the best from your people; maximising your company's core competencies
Improve financial effectiveness: Managing fixed and variable costs, sunk costs and committed costs; identifying the full cost of a decision
Manage risk: Balance risk vs return; identify business risk vs financial risk; manage product life cycles; customer concentration; market concentration; product concentration; seasonal factors; gearing and debt servicing
Evaluate options: Understanding the strategic value add; quantifying financial value add, NPV, IRR, Payback; sensitivity analysis and risk mitigation
Make sound decisions: Ensuring alignment with company mission, vision, values, culture and strengthening your reputation/ brand
Establish performance measures to drive improved business performance

Our training programmes:

Introduce practical tools and techniques to improve organisational performance
Build business acumen and commercial orientation competencies
Develop critical thinking and evaluation skills
Cater for all learning styles and use accelerated learning techniques
Engage participants in business cases and examples

Participant feedback from 'Business skills and business improvement programmes'