Thinking Like a CFO: Preparing and Presenting a Business Case

Overview/Description
Applying CFO thinking in your business decisions and departmental activities helps you align them to your organization's goals. It also helps you get senior management's support and approval when you present your budget, marketing plan, and proposals requiring purchases and funds. As a functional manager and departmental leader, you often need to make a business case for your requests for more resources and funds to the senior management. As several departments often compete for the same resources and budget allocations, your ability to prepare a strong business case and present it effectively becomes critical to your success. This course teaches you how to apply a CFO perspective in preparing and presenting a business case. You are walked through the typical steps for developing and presenting a business case. A key step is to analyze alternative solutions to the issue you’ve identified, and this course shows you how to use various financial metrics – payback period, net present value, and risk analysis – to decide between alternative possibilities. Next, you're introduced to a template for structuring your business case for best effect. Finally, the course demonstrates how to strengthen your case by anticipating the kinds of questions that management is likely to ask.

Target Audience
Functional managers, professionals, departmental leaders, and all individuals in key roles who want to align their financial planning and management activities with CFO thinking

Expected Duration (hours)
1.0

Lesson Objectives

Thinking Like a CFO: Preparing and Presenting a Business Case

identify the types of activities that are involved in defining the business issue and identifying alternatives

decide between investment options based on payback period technique

decide between investment options based on the NPV method

decide between alternative proposals based on risk analysis

match types of statements to where they belong in a business case

anticipate questions a CFO might ask in response to a business case presentation