It is believed that Indian economy is now poised for growth on a long term basis. To exploit fully the opportunities that will be coming up, leaders and managers in the corporate segment must understand business finance. Operating managers require a degree of financial competence, so that they are financially alert and understand the business implications of decisions taken by them and how this ultimately affects value of the organization. This understanding in turn will help them deliver better results in their respective functional areas.

Business Leaders and Operating Managers, from all functional backgrounds and professionals & business-persons, who have not had exposure to a full finance course before.

• Role of finance and that of financial management in business
• Basics of business finance, financial concepts, finance terminology
• Ability to analyse and interpret financial statements, viz., the Balance Sheet, Profit & Loss A/C and Cash Flow Statements
• Profit vs cash flow and the importance of cash flow in the business
• Measuring business performance using ROCE, Margin, Velocity and other ratios - for benchmarking and assessing financial health and operating efficiencies,
• Creating value for stakeholders using EVA model
• Concepts and principles of working capital management and its components - inventory, receivables, payables
• Different approaches to costing, fixed and variables, relevant costs etc
• Application of management accounting for decision making - make or buy, pricing, sales incentive planning etc
• Financial evaluation of capital projects using concepts of NPV, IRR
• Business planning, annual budgets, sensitivity of plans, and budget monitoring

1. Basics of business finance
   • The science and the art of finance
   • Video on business finance
   • Terminology, accounting concepts and limitations
2. Reading financial statements
   • Introduction to Balance Sheet, P&L and Cash flow
   • Profit vs Cash and the importance of cash flow
   • Operating cash flow and concept of free cash flow
3. Business Performance measurement
   • ROCE and other key ratios
   • Usage and limitation of ratios
   • Accounting profit vs Economic value added
   • Case study on inter-firm comparison
4. Working capital management
   • Principles, concepts and trade-offs
   • Inventory management techniques
   • Credit appraisal, operations and risk oversight
   • Case studies
   • Cash flow planning and management

5. Recap of day 1
6. Costing and management accounting
   • Video on costing methods
   • Absorption and marginal costing
   • Application in decision making
   • Relevant cost approach
   • Case study exercises
7. Business planning and budgeting
   • Long term planning, annual budget, cost budgeting
   • Real benefits of budgeting
8. Time value of money
   • Discounting future cash flows
   • Concepts of NPV and IRR
   • Capital project evaluation
   • Case study exercises
9. Finance Quiz
   • Recap through a quiz format
   • Summarise key learning and personal action plan

Ujjal Gupta is a Business & Executive Coach, and has over 35 years' experience in the corporate world in senior positions in financial and general management.

He began working with the Unilever group in India, where he spent the first 15 years of his career. Subsequently Ujjal worked for RPG Enterprises, WPP Group and IMSG India, respectively. In his role as the CFO/COO during the last 18 years of his employment in the corporate sector, he was responsible for developing, maintaining and upgrading financial management systems in these businesses.

As Executive Director and COO of Bates India P Ltd, now part of WPP group, Ujjal was a member of its Board of Directors from 1999 till 2007. He was responsible for its turnaround in profitability and implementing growth strategies both organic and through mergers & acquisitions.

A national rank-holder in the professional examination for chartered accountancy in India, Ujjal is at present a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. In addition to his coaching and consulting engagements, he is a visiting faculty member for finance-related programmes at executive training and development centres, and has also conducted in-house training workshops with various leading organisations, such as Hindalco, Philips India, Alstom T&D, Hindustan National Glass, ISB Hyderabad, etc.