Financial Management for Product Managers - 2 days

Financial Management for Product Managers



Product managers are often limited in their influence and achievements by their lack of fundamental business, numerical and financial skills. This 2-day Professionals workshop focuses on some of the most important skills required for commercial product management – financial management, forecasting and building business cases. The course de-mystifies the financial jargon used in these areas and provides a practical approach for developing commercial strategies for products and compelling cases for adopting them.





Workshop Objectives


You will learn how to:

Assess product performance using financial and market data
Specify and use product management dashboards
Analyse profit and loss (P&L) data to determine appropriate improvement strategies
Forecast revenues and costs using a range of techniques
Write robust business cases including qualitative and quantitative assessments of benefits, costs and risks
Assess return on product investments using a range of financial techniques
Develop strategies for gaining support from business case stakeholders
Assess your own competencies and how to develop them


Who should attend?


This workshop is for anyone working in product management who has responsibility for the finance success of new or existing products. It is ideal for those who have practised as product managers for some time but find commercial management challenging and wish to develop their skills further or for those who have recently acquired financial responsibility for their products.





Workshop Duration


2 days




Workshop Content



Key skills for entrepreneurial product management

Defining entrepreneurial product management
Using numerical data to assess risk, shape strategies and make decisions

Assessing the performance of products

Choosing performance indicators
Using product dashboards
Interpreting data and deciding on a course of action


Understanding & using P&L data in product management

Common challenges in P&L management for goods and services products
The construction of a typical P&L account for a product
Decision making using P&L data


Forecasting techniques for product management

Choosing the right forecasting technique to match your situation
The principles of quantitative and qualitative forecasting
- Building your base case

- Using qualitative techniques

- Applying basic statistical forecasting tools in Excel

- Presenting your data




Building persuasive business cases

· Typical components of a business case

· A business case checklists

· Evaluating business cases

· Understanding how to assess return on investment

- What is ROI and how can we measure it?

- The time value of money – using discounted cash flow related techniques

- Using ROI measures in product decision making

· Stakeholder management

- Identifying stakeholders and their impact

- Strategies for gaining support and building coalitions





Methodology



Workshop will consist of a mixture of individual exercises, small group work, class discussions and plenary presentations delivered by the training consultant. Wherever possible delegates will work with their own products and portfolios to enable them to use the workshop as an opportunity to review how they manage their current products and consider what actions to take whilst participating in the workshop itself. It will also allow delegates to begin practicing application of the tools and techniques they have learned.