Commercial Awareness

In today's competitive environment people’s commercial ability has a real impact on the prosperity of the business. Understanding how a business functions and the 'commercial know-how' to influence its direction as well as delivering it’s full potential are key requirements for people in any business.

Within business people are naturally expected to make commercially sound decisions. However, unless employees understand how the business works, they are not likely to meet this expectation. Commercial awareness means the ability to make decisions based on an understanding of how the business works financially.

This programme will help people to feel more confident in their understanding of commercial matters as they relate to business issues in order to enhance profitability.

Objectives

• To familiarise participants with basic financial concepts, such as profit, return on assets, debt, equity and depreciation
• To enable participants to read and interpret financial documents, such as profit & loss statements, balance sheets and budgets
• To ensure consistent shared experience and language around commercial and financial matters
• To enable participants to analyse the commercial impact of their decision-making.
• Understanding of the key cost drivers of the business and how each person's action on these cost drivers affect the bottom line
• Ability to differentiate between operating budgets and full cost of services.  This assists with focusing on reducing overheads and operating costs
• Appreciation of revenue base: who are our customers and what is their contribution to our income and margins
• Appreciation of the need to make a return based on the capital employed
• Understanding of how cash flow and stock, creditors and debtors impact the business
• Development of common business language ultimately leading to a consolidated set of business definitions
• Increased understanding of value added thinking
• Greater awareness of the integration of different parts of the business and of competitive strategies

Target Audience

All employees who need to improve their financial and commercial acumen. The one day course does not assume any previous commercial management training or experience

Duration

• 1 - day

• 2 - day

The more intensive 2-day course is for people, probably first or mid-level managers, who need more in-depth knowledge of the balance sheet and the components of the P&L.