Financial Analysis of Scenarios and Decisions

Overview

This course focuses on adopting and implementing a financially analytic mindset when engaged in organizational decision-making and scenario analysis. The course begins with an overview of the "internal" perspective of the organization, in which you will learn fundamental concepts, including the importance of how cost information is organized for different decision scenarios. You will then learn about scenario analysis, including cost-volume-profit analysis and other fundamental concepts that help facilitate financial organizational decision-making. Next, you will learn about planning and budgeting, a key function that allows organizations to identify and allocate resources necessary to achieve organizational goals. You will then learn how to assess actual performance against these budgets using variance analysis. Finally, you will learn about the organization’s performance measurement, evaluation, and compensation system. Specifically, you will learn about the advantages and disadvantages of common financial performance measures and understand how an organization uses non-financial performance measures within its strategic performance measurement system to complement the financial perspective.