Steering the activity of an SME or a business unit
Context and rationale
Every business aims for performance. To achieve it, you must define your business strategy and objectives, but also measure the costs and results. This is what business steering is about. How do you steer a company's performance? What indicators should you base your decisions on?
Knowing your company's exact situation at any given moment is the basis of steering. Its past is also very important. Factual, it serves as experience and makes it possible to measure progress, successes and limits, variances and the return on investment of actions already launched.
This course will enable you to use management control tools suited to SMEs and business units and to build the main steering and management indicators.
Training objectives
- Using management control tools suited to SMEs and business units.
- Building the main steering and management indicators of a business unit.
- Formalising the decision-making process.
- Identifying the levers for increasing your company's profitability.
- Calculating a cost price, a break-even point and a margin of safety.
- Building budget objectives and breaking them down into operational budgets.
- Analysing budget variances and designing corrective actions.
Training content
Fundamentals of accounting steering tools
- The usefulness of cost accounting for calculating cost prices.
- The different methods of calculating cost prices: full cost, partial cost, ABC method...
- Distinguishing direct and indirect expenses.
- Allocating indirect expenses: work units, overhead rates, cost drivers...
- The logic of internal transfer prices.
- Calculating margins and the break-even point.
- Deciding whether to keep a product or activity.
- Assessing the forecast profitability of an investment.
Diagnosing the profitability of your company or business unit
- Analysing your company's current profitability, by product line or activity, using diagnostic tools.
- Identifying your main sources of income and opportunities for gain.
Developing the profitability of your activity
- Defining the objectives and action plans of your strategic plan.
- Simulating future profitability.
Steering your activity by setting up dashboards
- Identifying the action variables and the performance and steering indicators of management tools.
- Steering economic and financial performance.
- Steering by margins (intermediate management balances).
- Steering by indicators of economic and financial profitability; steering by cash.
- Steering sales performance.
- Steering the performance of information systems.
Building and defending your budget
- The operational breakdown of budget objectives. The budget process in the company.
- Taking into account the priorities and constraints set. Analysing past performance.
- Setting clear, ambitious and realistic objectives. Building action plans in line with the objectives.
- The tasks that contribute to the objectives. Allocating the resources and means to be deployed.
- Costing the operational budget. Classifying budget items.
- Operating and investment costs.
- Budget presentation and negotiation. Arguing to overcome objections and convince.
- Analysing variances and corrective actions.
The investment decision
- The key principles of investment.
- The criteria for choosing an investment.
- Return on investment.
Building a performance plan
- Summary case study: starting from a deteriorated financial situation, identifying and activating performance levers to generate profit.
Let's discuss your training needs
Free, no-obligation offer. An adviser will call you back within 48 hours.