SYLLABUS

Diploma in
Strategic Finance and
Business Analytics

Become a Finance Business Partner

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 INTRODUCTION

Background Target
As part of its mandate to provide opportunities for The course is primarily – but not exclusively - aimed
continuing education and development to its at accountant and other financial professionals
members, Chartered Accountants Ireland wishes to working in management in industry, business and
offer a Diploma in Strategic Finance & Analytics financial services.
(DSFA).
Structure
Senior financial professionals working in The format of the course will be six 10 hour teaching
management were in the past caricatured as little modules to take place Friday afternoon/Saturday.
more than bothersome referees who would Evaluation
sporadically appear to present results or to admonish
people for breaches of procedures. Whatever about There will be a two-stage evaluation of candidates
the truth of this caricature, financial managers today for the DSF qualification:
must act as coaches who understand what is
happening in the business and who continually 1. Two assignments:
explain to colleagues in other functions how their a. An analytical assignment (after Module 3)
actions impact on the attainment of overall requiring candidates to conduct the
corporate goals. examination of a strategic aspect of their own
business e.g. a review of the strategic value of
The most successful businesses are powered by their firm’s various activities.
individuals who are contributing fully, able to make a b. A personal skills-based assignment (after
difference, and committed to their company’s Module 6) requiring candidates to use all the
success. They must challenge and drive better skills taught on the course e.g. a live/recorded,
business decisions, supported by accurate and timely case-based project making use of presentation,
information. Data is not enough; the finance partner communication, persuasion and negotiation
must show the insight from that data and skills
communicate it in a relevant and credible way.

Aim
The DSF aims to help participants fulfil their role as
coaches by addressing two key needs:

1. Analytical – the need to accurately diagnose the

firm’s strategic position and to recommend
appropriate responses using business strategy
analysis, value chain analysis etc.
2. Commercial skills – the ability to influence and win
over management colleagues and other staff by
using presentation, communication, persuasion
and negotiation skills in an ethical way.

The course will aim to offer candidates a tool-kit of

techniques which address both needs so that each
participant become a more valued asset to the
businesses and has a seat at the table when
decisions are being made. The course will also
address current topics such as Big Data and the
evolving role of the finance manager.

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MODULE 1 MODULE 1
DAY 1 - STRATEGIC CORPORATE DAY 2 - STRATEGY ANALYSIS
FINANCE

Strategic Corporate Finance Strategy Analysis

Topics Topics
• Enterprise value and its significant in corporate • Introduction: the financial manager as referee v.
finance the financial manager as coach looking forward
• Business risk, financial risk and the cost of capital instead of back…
• Cost of capital, return on capital employed and • Managing ambiguity and change;
shareholder value added • Is the finance function driving growth or driving
• The impact of business strategy on shareholder down cost?
value added • Corporate finance basics – adding value versus
• The application of business strategy and ABC subtracting value
analysis in business restructuring • Business strategy analysis
• The impact of the business cycle and the asset • Knowing your industry; what is your business
price cycle on asset returns trying to achieve?
• Value chain analysis
Course Materials • Determining corporate strategy
• Course notes • Useful sources of information on the internet
• Case studies
Course Materials
• Course notes
• Case studies

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 MODULE 2 MODULE 2
DAY 1 - STRATEGIC COSTING DAY 2 - COMMUNICATING WITH
DIFFERENT PERSONALITY TYPES

Strategic Costing Communicating With Different Personality

Topics Types
• Activity based costing Topics
• Enterprise resource planning • Understanding different personality types
• Life-cycle costing • Individual personality assessment
• Target costing • Impact of your work style
• Enterprise resource planning • Communicating effectively with different types of
• Value chain analysis people
• Pricing for advantage • Adapting your approach in order to get results
• Asserting yourself without upsetting others
Course Materials
• Course notes Course materials
• Case studies • Completion of MBTI questionnaire
• Guest speaker- Using Enterprise Resource • Exercise - Communicating as a finance business
Planning systems. partner with key stakeholders/audiences

Strategic Cost Accounting

Topics
• Strategic cost accounting
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) and the
Balanced Scorecard
• Strategic benchmarking – measuring the
performance of other companies
• Enterprise resource planning and Activity-Based-
Costing (ABC) analysis
• The implications of ABC analysis for business
strategy
• Analysis as a tool to solve problems/make better
decisions
• What do the numbers tell you
• Financial planning, modelling, forecasting and
variance analysis
• Analysis of costs, margins, product mix, etc.

Course Materials
• Case studies
• Ryanair case study and strategic analysis: An
analysis on the competitiveness and low-cost
strategy of Europe's leading low-cost carrier
Ryanair

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MODULE 3 MODULE 3
DAY 1 - BUDGETING & STRATEGIC DAY 2 - INFLUENCING KEY PEOPLE
PLANNING

Budgeting & Strategic Planning Influencing Key People

Be clear on your business case and confident in it. Topics
Topics • Building your influencing tool-kit - getting buy in
• Financial planning • 4 step influencing model
• Analysis of order backlog, book to bill ratio etc. • The psychology of persuasion
• Forecasting • Influencing practice & feedback
• Budgeting & phasing of budgets • Influencing upwards
• Capital expenditure • Personal influence & impact
• Reporting • Using social & emotional intelligence to get
• Balanced scorecard & KPIs results
• Benchmarking
Course materials
Course Materials • Exercise - Influencing key stakeholders/audiences
• Course notes as a finance business partner
• Case studies • Completion of Emotional Intelligence assessment

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 MODULE 4 MODULE 4
DAY 1 - STRUCTURE, STRATEGY & DAY 2 - PRESENTING PERSUASIVELY
ORGANISATION

Structure, Strategy & Organisation Presenting Persuasively

Topics Topics
• Structure & strategy • Building credibility as a business leader
• Capacity planning - management of staff • Presenting financials in a meaningful way
numbers based on above, including getting right • Delivery that connects, engages & gets results
balance between own staff and contractors • Selling yourself & your message
• Design effective partner strategy balancing sales • Presentation practice & feedback
imperatives with financial constraints
• Incentives - designing remuneration systems to Course materials
accord with strategic objectives • Exercise - analysing your audience
• Business restructuring • Finance business partner presentation with
• Financial restructuring feedback

Course Materials
• Course notes
• Case studies

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MODULE 5
OUR LIVES THROUGH DATA: USING ANALYTICAL TOOLS TO ANALYSE BIG DATA
DAY 1 - THE ANNALYTICAL TOOLBOX

The Analytical Toolbox Black Box Methods

Topics • Neural networks
• Support vector machines
Introduction to Analytics • Using neural networks on loan data
• What is Data Analytics?
• Business case for analytics Text Analysis
• Types of analytics – predictive, descriptive • Categorisation
• Concept extraction
Introductory Case Study – Data Science and the • Twitter text application
Titanic
Data Visualisation
Working with Data • Types of visualisation
• Types of data – nominal, ordinal, categorical, • Choosing the right visualisation method
numerical
• Types of data sources Summary
• Data preparation and data cleaning • When to use different analytical methods
• Other tools which may be useful
Basic Data Exploration
• Investigating a new data set
• Get summary information
• Ranges and deviations
• Using R and R-Studio

Regression
• Basic Linear Regression
• Application of regression model
• Analysing performance of model
• More complex regression types

Classification
• Decision trees
• Application of decision tree – Loan Applications
• Decision rules
• Comparison of trees and rules for application
• Bayes Theorem
• Bayesian classifiers
• Application - fraud transaction analysis

Association
• Types of association
• Association rules
• Using Support and Lift
• Application – Market Basket Analysis

Cluster Analysis
• Looking for sets of similar items
• K Nearest neighbours method
• Other cluster methods
• Applications in the accounting domain

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 MODULE 5
OUR LIVES THROUGH DATA: USING ANALYTICAL TOOLS TO ANALYSE BIG DATA
DAY 2 - BUILDING AN ANALYTICAL CAPABILITY

Building an Analytical Capability

The Data Analytics Pipeline

• Extract, transform and Load
• Data cleaning
• Feature extraction
• Online Analytical Processing
• Tools and techniques
• Case study

The Big Data Revolution

• Sources of data
• Dealing with Unstructured data
• Hadoop and other big data tools
• Big data and the Cloud
Case Study – Netflix

Competing on Analytics
• Using analytics to gain competitive advantage
• The key attributes of analytical companies
• Using analytics on internal processes – Financial,
Manufacturing and HR
• Applying analytics on external processes –
Customer, Supply chain
• Case Study

Building an Analytical Capability

• A maturity model for analytical capability
• Managing analytical people
• An architecture for business intelligence
• Future of analytical competition
• Case Study

Conclusions
• Key Action Points to Take from the Course
• Further directions
• Checklist
• Reading List

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MODULE 6
CURRENT TOPICS

Current Topics

Topics
• Introduction to corporate risk management.
• Yield management
• Supply chain analysis, outsourcing and the
make/buy decision.
• Joint ventures and strategic partnerships
• Acquisition and divestiture decisions

Course Materials
• Course notes
• Guest on Transforming the Finance function.

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