Finance for non-finance managers

The program is made to eliminate mysteries around finance. That includes not only the principles, the logic and details, but gives you an overview of how and why finance works.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

OVERVIEW

2×2 days on-site in Budapest

12-13 November 2024 and 10-11 December 2024

Price: EUR 2500

PROGRAM OBJECTIVE

In many senses and understanding, finance is a mystery where accountants and controllers operate within a black box, producing analytics, graphs, reports, plans, and many other things to ‘support’ your job.

But what does finance bring to business, and why do many say that finance is an essential part of business and business decisions?

Are you often faced with:

  • providing data for reports and analytics without understanding the reasons?
  • receiving targets and expectations that you consider either unclear or impossible to meet?
  • reviewing booklets of financial plans/reports that are said to be your bible for managing your business?
  • dealing with KPI sets that are considered your best measures of performance?

Meanwhile, you would like to focus on your job but must also meet all the above?

For whom: Mid to senior leaders who want to better understand finance, but not the scientific details, more the drivers that will support them to better collaborate with finance in the future.

INSTRUCTORS

Krisztina Horváth

Faculty

János Szabó

Faculty

 

MAIN TOPICS

We will delve into the functions and activities to provide you with a better understanding of what happens when you interact with finance. We will employ our well-known SEED practical, ‘DO-HOW focused’ approach for this.

Our objective is to improve awareness and understanding and provide you with better skills to manage your business in relation to finance.

We shall cover several topics during the program, from basics to details tailored to your specific needs, within the framework of the following major building blocks:

YOU and FINANCE

  • What are the drivers that you bring here?
  • What is your relationship with finance and what do you want to take away from here?
  • What are your specific personal needs to better understand finance?
  • What are your cases to discuss and explore?

WHERE FINANCE STARTS

  • Walk through of major building blocks of finance, such as the triangle of profit and loss / balance sheet / cash flow statements; the world of plans, forecasts, reports and other forms; the way how controllers control.
  • Insights of the details and relations of famous abbreviations, as OPEX, CAPEX, EBIT and EBITDA, etc.
  • In- and out: what is the importance of internal and external reports, how do we comply with the tax environment and other important finance relations.

CASH IS KING !/?

  • Cash is the one that you may understand. It is with you all the time, physically or virtually. But do you really understand the importance of cash?
  • If cash is so obvious measure and so important, why do we need more complex structures?
  • Through cash, you can gain a real understanding of how business and finance relate in many day-to-day decisions.

FINANCE IN DECISION MAKING

  • How can finance support you in day-to-day business?
  • Why do we form a business case for ‘almost’ every business matter? Are probability and expected value magic or typical business sense to support decisions?
  • Why do figures are adjusted for the future? Meaning and importance of NPV.
  • What is the relevance and importance of risk management?
  • How does an acquisition/merger/purchase of assets/company take place? What does finance do in such process?

FINANCE ROLE IN CONSTANT CHANGES, TRANSFORMATIONS

  • Today, every business is stretched by constant and often unforeseen changes.
  • How can finance support to improve reaction to the challenges?
  • Do we need to change structures to improve reaction time, or can we simply do it by process improvements?

By the end of the course you will be a better navigator of financial matters without having to become a finance expert!

 

PROGRAM STRUCTURE

The program is a combination of intensive team days (“Camps”) and options for individual discussions  with the Program Instructors. During the Camps, you will work in the combination of plenary sessions and small teams of maximum 6 participants, each small team supported by one of the Program Instructors.

The Camps will focus on the most important financial principles through simple explanations and handsome examples and exercises. You will be able to bring your  financial topics for discussion with the instructors or fellow colleagues.

The individual discussions will support you with your  personal needs, to better understand structures, cases in general related to finance activities.

CAMP 1

(Two days)

YOU and FINANCE (Part 1):

  • After the introduction, you will have the chance to discuss your specific reasons for attending the course and also your expectations.

WHERE FINANCE STARTS:

  • Understanding the reasons for double-entry bookkeeping.
  • Details and relationships among the famous trio of the profit and loss statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow report.
  • Are accountants the magicians of figures or are they simply factories producing sheets?
  • What is the controller’s real job?
  • Your first-tier relation to finance: translate business into numbers and vica-versa.
  • Monitoring your business through planning, reporting and various other forms.
  • What is OPEX, CAPEX, EBIT, EBITDA, and other mysterious expressions, and how are they related? What is their link to profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow?

CASH IS KING !/?:

  • Nothing else matters but CASH! Is this right or wrong?
  • What are the most relevant insights and specific focuses from finance to managing your business?
  • A special case to examine the relationships and impacts of different financial aspects of a business.

CAMP 2

(Two days) 

FINANCE IN DECISION MAKING:

  • Reports, planning and forecasting activities, business cases. How these support us in making the best decisions? Do we need all of them?
  • Do you really need to understand major financial principles to manage your day-to-day business and make informed decisions?
  • What is the real role of finance in decision-making?
  • How to deal with capital expenditures/investments (CAPEX), business valuations and company values?
  • How can number crunching support you? What are those valuation methods, like NPV, IRR, expected value, that are needed to decide?
  • Is risk assessment a glimpse into the crystal ball or an integral part of business assessments?

FINANCE’S ROLE IN CONSTANT CHANGES, TRANSFORMATION:

  • Undoubted that we live a world of constant rapid changes and challenges, many of them are unpredictable. Every business strives to find the best fit for these challenges and identify the right forms to use for the purpose. How can finance help you? What about finance and agility?
  • How can finance improve the reaction time of businesses? How can it create an environment where the right decisions are made and they are made on time?
  • How can finance help you deciding between process changes and structural reforms?

YOU and FINANCE (Part 2):

  • What are your challenges? How do the discussed aspects support that? What is missing?
  • What are your key take aways?

IN BETWEEN AND IN THE CAMPS

Individual discussions with the Program Instructors can be asked to discuss your topics in relation to finance activities and structures in general.

ABOUT THE FACULTY

Krisztina Horváth

Faculty

Krisztina is currently the CFO of RTL Hungary, and has 30+ years of diverse leadership experience across multiple sectors ranging from finance to the ICT, media and energy sectors.

Over her 25 years at Raiffeisen Bank she served in several executive positions as CRO, CFO and member of the BoD. Later she led Cisco Systems Hungary as General Manager, and acted as CFO and member of BoD at ELMŰ-ÉMÁSZ Group.       

János Szabó

Faculty

János has 25+ years experience in senior management and finance leadership. He acted as the CFO of Delco Remy and Hitachi, later worked as the CFO of Magyar Telekom Group between 2013-2020.

He was also chairman of the BoD of Crnagorski Telekom and member of the BoD at Makedonski Telekom for several years.

 

MORE THAN 1000 EXECUTIVES HAVE TAKEN PART IN THE JOURNEY!
LEARN FROM THEM!

Bálint
Hoffer

Vice President, GL Accounting, International Reporting & Intercompany

ViacomCBS

Karol
Jakubek

Managing Director

ROSSMANN Czech Republic

Martina
Martinić

Project Center Director at Rijeka Refinery Upgrade Project

INA Grupa

Gábor
Heiszmann

CIO

UNIQA Biztosító

Predrag
Vasic

Member of the Executive Board

OTP Srbija

András
Becsei

Deputy CEO, Retail Division

OTP Bank

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Great venue with a comprehensive leadership principles overview, focusing strongly on a practical side of leadership. I really enjoyed the teamwork during the training and I can strongly recommend the program to those, who would like to move their leadership skills to upper level.

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You start from aspiration and values, continue with building the story around people and, at the end, you tackle with your final goal – how to drive the business. Mentoring and coaching techniques during the program are refreshing and using these techniques after the program suit you with the most useful tool – how to learn continuously and efficiently.

One thing I loved about this course that we were able to meet people – both presenters and participants – who has a waste experience in their industries. I can mention the President of Vodafone, the CEO and founder of WizzAir. Furthermore, I was in the same working group with the Senior Vice President of MOL from whom I could learn a lot. I would recommend this course to any executive leader who is humble enough to open up and has the willingness to look inside and understand what his weaknesses and areas of development are.

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