Finance for Technical Managers

University of Colorado Boulder via Coursera Specialization

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Provider

Coursera Specialization
Pricing

Paid Course
Languages

English
Certificate

Certificate Available
Effort

4 weeks, 10 hours a week
Sessions

Self-Paced
Level

Beginner

Found in

Overview

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In Finance for Technical Managers, you will explore the fundamental principles of financial management. Topics include understanding and interpreting a company’s financial statements, the time value of money and its role in evaluating the economic viability of different projects, and the annual capital budgeting process every company performs when selecting which projects to fund. In addition, you will cover some highly practical topics, such as how to determine product costs, establishing a department’s annual budget, and ways of forecasting future sales. As a side benefit, the quantitative skills you will learn for business are identical to the skills necessary to manage your own personal finances. Therefore, you will extend your analyses to cover investing of mutual funds composed of stocks and bonds, and you will explore the fascinating area of asset allocation. This specialization can be taken for academic credit as part of CU Boulder’s Master of Engineering in Engineering Management (ME-EM) degree offered on the Coursera platform. The ME-EM is designed to help engineers, scientists, and technical professionals move into leadership and management roles in the engineering and technical sectors. With performance-based admissions and no application process, the ME-EM is ideal for individuals with a broad range of undergraduate education and/or professional experience. Learn more about the ME-EM program at https://www.coursera.org/degrees/me-engineering-management-boulder.

Syllabus

Course 1: Product Cost and Investment Cash Flow Analysis
Course 2: Project Valuation and the Capital Budgeting Process
Course 3: Financial Forecasting and Reporting

Courses

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This first course in the finance specialization discusses costs and business practices to establish the cost of a product. Stocks and bonds are introduced to show how companies finance activities such as product development. The concept of time value of money (TVM) is developed to determine the present and future values of a series of cash flows. TVM principles are then applied to investment forecasting, showing how to estimate the future value of investments under several scenarios. This is a practical course that uses spreadsheets to prepare students in engineering and science for a career in industry. This course can be taken for academic credit as part of CU Boulder’s Master of Engineering in Engineering Management (ME-EM) degree offered on the Coursera platform. The ME-EM is designed to help engineers, scientists, and technical professionals move into leadership and management roles in the engineering and technical sectors. With performance-based admissions and no traditional application process, the ME-EM is ideal for individuals with a broad range of undergraduate education and/or professional experience. Learn more about the ME-EM program at https://www.coursera.org/degrees/me-engineering-management-boulder.
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This course discusses corporate financial statements such as the income statement, balance sheet and statement of cash flows. The course describes how to read and interpret them, using techniques such as ratio analysis to assess a company's financial health. It then shows the process of creating departmental budgets for engineering cost centers and pro forma statements for profit centers. As all future-looking financial estimates involve uncertainty, risk management measures such as scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis are developed to create best-case, most likely case, and worst case analyses. Finally, many businesses today are incorporating various aspects of sustainability into their operations. The course wraps-up with how these initiatives are communicated via annual sustainability reports, using frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) that ensure transparency and common metrics for investors. This course can be taken for academic credit as part of CU Boulder’s Master of Engineering in Engineering Management (ME-EM) degree offered on the Coursera platform. The ME-EM is designed to help engineers, scientists, and technical professionals move into leadership and management roles in the engineering and technical sectors. With performance-based admissions and no traditional application process, the ME-EM is ideal for individuals with a broad range of undergraduate education and/or professional experience. Learn more about the ME-EM program at https://www.coursera.org/degrees/me-engineering-management-boulder.
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This second course in the finance specialization describes the economic viability of an engineering project through application of net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), and payback period (PBP) analysis to a series of projected cash flows. The impacts of depreciation, taxes, inflation and foreign exchange are then addressed. The capital budgeting process is discussed, showing how companies make decisions to optimize their investment portfolio. This provides the foundation for creating the financial business case for a project by building sophisticated spreadsheets integrating all the concepts discussed so far: projected costs and revenues, cash flows, and resulting NPV, IRR and PBP values. The course provides learners with the practical tools to demonstrate the financial value of their engineering ideas to upper management. This course can be taken for academic credit as part of CU Boulder’s Master of Engineering in Engineering Management (ME-EM) degree offered on the Coursera platform. The ME-EM is designed to help engineers, scientists, and technical professionals move into leadership and management roles in the engineering and technical sectors. With performance-based admissions and no traditional application process, the ME-EM is ideal for individuals with a broad range of undergraduate education and/or professional experience. Learn more about the ME-EM program at https://www.coursera.org/degrees/me-engineering-management-boulder.