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Become a Financial Analyst

A financial analyst evaluates current and historical economic and business data to identify trends that influence business decisions. Gain the skills that make a successful financial analyst, including understanding financial statements, working with economic data, and analytical analysis skills.

• Make business recommendations on investments.

• Read and interpret financial statements.

• Perform basic analysis of financial data.

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First Course : Strategic Planning Foundations

Course details

Join executive leadership consultant and coach Mike Figliuolo as he reveals how to implement a strategic planning process in your organization—a process that can be repeated yearly and ensures you get input from all relevant stakeholders. In this course, Mike shows you how to establish and articulate your organization's core competencies, vision, mission, and strategic filters. Using these criteria, he shows how to prioritize competing initiatives, how to allocate resources to best support those initiatives, and how all of these factors combine to create a compelling strategic plan.

Learning objectives

• Define the principles of strategic planning.

• Identify forces used to assess the market.

• Explain how to conduct a SWOT analysis.

• Articulate how to establish guiding principles and set goals.

• Explain what strategic filters are used for.

• Describe the steps of a strategic planning process.

Skills covered

• Strategic Planning

• Business Strategy

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Second Course : Financial Accounting Foundations

Course details

Businesses can’t operate unless they know if they’re in the red or black. Without an accurate financial picture, you can’t make purchasing, hiring, or any other important decisions. Financial accounting is the set of tools and techniques used to accurately gauge and report on the financial health of a company. In this course, finance professors Jim Stice and Earl Kay Stice teach you the basics. Get an overview of key financial statements, including the balance sheet and income statement, and the mechanics of accounting. Review some the current issues and emerging trends facing financial accountants, such as revenue recognition and tax deferral. Plus, learn how to read and analyze financial statements from publicly traded companies in order to ascertain company performance and value.

Learning objectives

• Describe line items that appear on financial statements.

• Differentiate between the three types of financial statements.

• Interpret current accounting issues and trends.

• Calculate the market capitalization of a company.

• Identify the most important expense for a retail company.

• Explain the use of common size financial statements.

Skills covered

• Financial Statements

• Financial Accounting

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Third Course : Financial Modeling Foundations

Course details

By distilling key information regarding cash flow levels and risks, financial modeling helps decision-makers make informed choices based on data analytics that move their firms forward. In this course, learn how to build financial models that can be used in corporate finance, investment banking, commercial banking, and portfolio management. Professor Michael McDonald covers financial statement models, investment banking models, M&A models, buyout models, and DCF models—all using Microsoft Excel. Throughout the course, Michael includes exercises—together with downloadable exercise files—that can provide you with a practical understanding of these key topics.

Learning objectives

• Describe financial modeling basics.

• Review the three financial statements used in financial modeling.

• Explain how to create corporate financing models.

• Explore the valuation process in financial models.

• Apply complex modeling features in Excel to a scenario.

• Identify the key components in a buyout model.

Skills covered

• Corporate Finance

• Microsoft Excel

• Financial Modeling

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Fourth Course : Excel: Analyzing and Visualizing Cash Flows

Course details

By learning how to evaluate and visualize cash flows for your business, you can make more informed decisions about prospects and projects. In this course, Curt Frye demonstrates effective ways of evaluating and visualizing cash flows using Microsoft Excel. He demonstrates how to calculate the effect of interest rates and inflation, calculate the present value of an investment, and determine how much interest you can save by paying extra principal each month. Plus, he explains how to calculate net present value and internal rate of return, and shows how to create a cash tracking worksheet, where you can keep a record of income, expenses, and your current cash balance.

Learning objectives

• Calculating the effect of interest rates and inflation

• Finding the arithmetic and geometric means of growth rates

• Calculating the future and present value of an investment

• Calculating loan payments for a fully amortized loan

• Calculating the effect of paying extra principal with each payment

• Finding the number of periods required to meet an investment goal

• Calculating net present value and internal rate of return

• Building a cash tracking worksheet

• Visualizing cash flows using a waterfall chart

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Skills covered

• Business Intelligence (BI)

• Corporate Finance

• Cash Flow Analysis

• Business Analytics

• Microsoft Excel

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Fifth Course : Excel: Tracking Data Easily and Efficientl

Course details

Learn how to build a super-charged Excel spreadsheet to help you and your team easily track any kind of data-sales transactions, inventory levels, project statuses, employee paid time off, student progress, household spending, and more. Follow along with Excel MVP Oz du Soleil as he shows how to create a basic spreadsheet and transform it into an effective tracking system for any kind of data that is regularly updated. Learn spreadsheet basics, as well as more advanced techniques such as writing formulas that check that information is complete, protecting and hiding sheets, and creating alerts for deadlines and bad data. Oz wraps up with a challenge that pulls together everything you've learned into a polished final project.

Learning objectives

• Planning your data tracker

• Adding calculations and graphics

• Protecting cells and sheets

• Hiding sheets

• Setting up alerts with conditional formatting

• Merging data

• Categorizing data

• Formatting your tracker

• Putting it all together

Skills covered

• Data Analysis

• Business Analytics

• Microsoft Excel

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Sixth Course : Financial Modeling and Forecasting Financial Statements

Course details

Financial reports are not just summaries of the past—they also include predictions for the future. In fact, most financial institutions are more interested in future performance than historical trends. Banks want to know your future cash flow; investors want to know future profits. In this course, Jim and Kay Stice explains how to create forecasted financial statements for your company. Learn how to use past data such as cost of goods sold, depreciation expenses, and levels of inventory, and understand what caused those numbers to fluctuate over time. Then you can learn how to use the information as the basis for forecasting, applying a simple but powerful equation: assets = liability + equity. You get hands-on practice building three different documents: a forecasted income statement, a forecasted balance sheet, and a forecasted statement of cash flow. Throughout the course, Jim and Kay use famous business cases—like Home Depot’s 1985 cash-flow crisis—to illustrate the importance of accurate financial forecasts and their impact on business decisions.

Learning objectives

Explain the importance of financial statements Interpret the factors of a sales forecast Determine the types of impacts that cause financial statement numbers to change Differentiate the elements of a forecasted income statement Apply the accounting equation to reconciling a balance sheet Explain what is needed to deduce cash flow

Skills covered

• Financial Statement Analysis

• Financial Modeling

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Seventh Course : Running a Profitable Business: Understanding Financial Ratios

Course details

Financial ratios—such as ROI (return on investment) or ROA (return on assets)— are a valuable tool for measuring a company's progress against a financial goal, a certain competitor, or the overall industry. In this course, professors Jim and Kay Stice explain the financial ratios found on balance sheets, income statements, and cash-flow statements and provide examples from real-world companies such as Walmart, Nordstrom, and McDonald's. They help you understand how to use financial ratios to analyze or benchmark your company against other companies.

Learning objectives

• Identify the financial statement where you can find the source of financing for a company to buy assets.

• Name the category that liabilities must be paid from.

• Explain what you want to see when you look at a company’s operating income percentage.

• List the steps to calculate accounts receivable turnover.

• Identify the two components to use when calculating current ratio.

• Recall the pitfall you need to avoid when performing financial ratio analysis.

Skills covered

• Financial Statement Analysis

• Financial Reporting

• Ratio Analysis

• Profitability Analysis

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Eighth Course : Corporate Financial Statement Analysis

Course details

Financial reports contain a trove of information about your company's past, present, and future. With the basic tenants of financial analysis in your tool kit, you can use these reports to gain valuable insights into your organization's strengths and shortcomings. In this course, Jim and Kay Stice dive into the subject of financial statements, explaining how to work with and analyze them. They start off with some general knowledge about the structure and layout of a financial statement, and then go deeper by looking at the various ratios most commonly found in these statements. Plus, they detail the various limitations of financial statement analysis. By the end of this course, you'll be able to analyze financial statements to spot concerning trends and make smarter calls going forward.

Learning objectives

• Describe the processes by which business activities become entries on an income statement.

• Differentiate the components of the DuPont framework.

• Explain how common size financial statements are used in corporate financial statement analysis.

• Recall the method for calculating accounts receivable turnover.

• Explore the use of ratios in corporate financial statement analysis.

• Identify appropriate factors when performing corporate financial statement analysis.

Skills covered

• Financial Statement Analysis

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Ninth Course : Managerial Economics

Course details

Managers can use economics to strategize and solve a variety of business problems, from the mundane to the mission critical. In this course, IMD Professor of Strategic Marketing Stefan Michel explains how to use economic theory to answer strategic questions such as…

• What are customers buying? (demand theory)
• What should we produce? (production theory)
• Which costs do I need to worry about now? (cost theory)
• What market am I in? (competition theory)
• What should we charge for it? (pricing theory)

To understand what managerial economics looks like in practice, Stefan explains how Google's auction-based advertising system employs the principles of game theory and how understanding this can help decision makers to outmaneuver their competitors.

Learning objectives

• Using economics to solve business problems

• Understanding price elasticity

• Demand curve shifts

• Economics of scale vs. scope

• Break-even and what-if analysis

• Profit maximization

• Economics in action

Skills covered

• Accounting

• Managerial Economics

• Entrepreneurship

• Enterprise Marketing

• Business Strategy

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Tenth Course : Excel: Economic Analysis and Data Analytics

Course details

Big data is transforming the world of business. Yet many people don't understand what big data and business intelligence are, or how to apply the techniques to their day-to-day jobs. This course addresses that knowledge gap by showing how to use large volumes of economic data to gain key business insights and analyze market conditions.

Professor Michael McDonald demonstrates how to harness the wealth of information available on the Internet to forecast statistics such as industry growth, GDP, and unemployment rates, as well as factors that directly affect your business, like property prices and future interest rate hikes. All you need is Microsoft Excel. Michael uses the built-in formulas, functions, and calculations to perform regression analysis, calculate confidence intervals, and stress test your results. He also covers time series exponential smoothing, fixed effects regression, and difference estimators. You'll walk away from the course able to immediately begin creating forecasts for your own business needs.

Learning objectives

• Identify a good source of free data.

• Name the term for the estimate of the impact of an X variable on a Y variable.

• Tell which statistic offers a bounds on the estimate of the impact of an X variable on a Y variable.

• Assess the type of variable that can be used to capture fixed effects.

• Cite the method by which a forecast can be done with a regression.

Skills covered

• Business Intelligence (BI)

• Corporate Finance

• Big Data

• Data Analysis

• Economic Analysis

• Microsoft Excel

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