Applied Organizational Finance

University of Cambridge via edX Professional Certificate

Overview

This program provides the essential financial acumen that all professionals need to succeed in their careers. It explains the key relationships between operations, finance, and the related income, capital and information flows.

It includes the foundational concepts of finance and financial reporting, and the essential information that finance colleagues require in order to keep our organization’s money flowing in the right directions.

Modeling essentials. This program uses Excel to illustrate essential financial modelling principles, but they apply generally, whatever platform you or your colleagues are using. Key principles we cover include identifying and stating purposes, zoning workbooks into appropriate modules, workflow, visualization and commentary. By the end of this program you will also appreciate the important differences between navigation, selection and editing, and their application.

Quantitative understanding. The essential quantitative skills you need, and that we cover on this program, are:

Setting up, solving and rearranging simple financial equations,
Compound interest and growth, and
De-compounding.

This program will not – nor is it designed to – turn you into a financial specialist. However, it will provide you with the understanding and skills you will need to in order to collaborate successfully and enjoyably with your specialist financial colleagues and advisors.

Syllabus

Courses under this program:
Course 1: Foundations of Finance

This course provides a rigorous, but straightforward, introduction to the key concepts of financial understanding. Using real-world case studies and practitioner interviews, as well as timely knowledge checks, you will integrate your new knowledge and problem solving skills with practical application.

No prior knowledge is required or assumed.

Course 2: Finance for Non-finance Professionals

This course covers the essential skills that non-finance professionals need in finance and accounting, expenditure proposals, reporting against budgets, Excel modeling and quantitative skills.

Courses

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5 weeks, 3-5 hours a week, 3-5 hours a week
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This course provides a rigorous, but straightforward, introduction to the key concepts of financial understanding. Using real-world case studies and practitioner interviews, as well as timely knowledge checks, you will integrate your new knowledge and problem solving skills with practical application.

No prior knowledge is required or assumed, and the course will be particularly beneficial if:
- you engage with/need to engage with financial specialists, and want to collaborate more effectively;
- you are self-employed or are considering self-employment;
- you are considering a career or secondment in finance; you are interested in corporate finance, financial management, or business finance;
- you are simply interested in the subject and wish to know more
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5 weeks, 3-5 hours a week, 3-5 hours a week
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Finance and accounting.

This module covers the essential financial acumen and accounting fundamentals that non-finance professionals need to understand, apply and discuss with their specialist and non-specialist colleagues alike.

Budgets and proposals.

This module looks at how to work with budgets and other financial proposals, and how to get your budgets and capital investment proposals considered and approved.

Reporting against budgets.

In this module we will explore how to report against an approved budget or other forecast. The core responsibilities of budget owners-holders and how to carry them out will be covered.

Modeling essentials.

This module uses Excel to illustrate essential financial modelling principles, but they apply generally, whatever modelling platform you or your colleagues are using.

Key modelling principles we cover include identifying and stating purposes, zoning workbooks into appropriate modules, workflow, visualization and commentary. You will also appreciate the important differences between navigation, selection and editing.

Quantitative skills.

The essential quantitative skills you need, and that we cover on this module are: Setting up, solving and rearranging financial equations; Compound interest and growth; and De-compounding. You will also understand the most common types of financial errors we’ll cover, and how to detect and correct them.