Strategic Financial Management

Author: David Allen

Can you contribute to the making and monitoring of strategic decisions?

Can you augment the traditional accounting model so as to provide information relevant to an increasingly dynamic world? In Strategic Financial Management David Allen argues that, if accountants concentrate on looking backwards, they will find it difficult to play their rightful part at the strategic level of management.

Less functional approaches to management have had a big impact on control systems and have left the traditional accounting model looking inappropriate and even misleading.

Strategic Financial Management brings together financial management and strategic management and provides the financial criterion for all management decision making - maximising the net present value of projected cash flows - focusing in particular on the two key ingredients: cash flow and net present value.

Always provocative and stimulating, David Allen will challenge your assumptions and encourage you to think again about the role of accountancy in a new dynamic world.

Strategic Financial Management enables learners to:

• Understand the limitations of traditional accounting models in an increasingly dynamic and fast changing world
• Contribute more effectively to corporate strategy by taking a more proactive and forward looking approach
• React to conditions of rapid change through enhanced awareness, anticipation and adaptation
• Understand and use alternative expressions of profit that start with a recognition of the impact on cash flow of the various stakeholders in a company
• Understand the different relationships between profits, expansion and cash flow model in the traditional accounting and financial management models

Target audience

• Accounting and finance professionals in practice and in industry
• Corporate planners, strategists and senior managers

Learning outcomes

Strategic management

• What is causing the increased rate of change in the business environment?
• How is the philosophy of management responding to these pressures?
• What effect is this having on control systems?

Financial management

• What is financial management?
• How is financial management controlled?
• What are the objectives?

Cash flow

• What are the cash flow basics?
• What are the different points of view?
• How is the flow of funds managed?

Net present value

• How do we arrive at NPVs?
• What is the arithmetic of discounting?
• What is the purpose of budgetary control?
• How does this all fit together?

About the author

David Allen is a past president of CIMA and a past chairman of the Management Accounting Committee of the International Federation of Accountants. He was associated for many years with Cadbury Schweppes group holding directorships with various subsidiary companies, most notably Cadbury Ltd.

During his time at Cadbury Schweppes, David Allen coined the phrase "Strategic Financial Management" to describe an approach that enabled the finance function to play a proactive role in the formulation and monitoring of strategies, and offered an antidote to short-termism.

Flexible learning

Learners take their own route through the topics covered in the course. They will learn at their own pace through a variety of activities designed to accommodate a range of learning styles.

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