Speaker:  David Smith, Consultant

David Smith is an independent lecturer and business consultant of many years standing.  His specialist subjects cover finance, corporate investment theory & practice, banking, strategy and mergers & acquisitions.  He works with many clients ranged over a number of different business sectors.  In addition, he runs regular seminars and speaking events with the ACCA.  He also lectures at leading business schools, covering both MBA electives and senior executive development programmes.

David is an associate of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre in London and jointly delivers their Strategic Finance and Making Successful Acquisitions courses. The Centre is affiliated to the Ashridge Business School and is renowned for its research and leading edge thinking on corporate strategy and corporate organisational structure.

David has an ability to communicate difficult subject matter to non-specialist audiences with ease and effectiveness.  His courses score consistently well with participants on both content and delivery.

KEY TOPICS:

• Who is the business case for?
• What are the essential components of a business case?
• What are the criteria we should use in reaching a decision?
• How do we ensure the success of our business decisions?
• How do we deal with uncertainties?
• How do we deal with intangible or difficult-to-measure benefits?
• When do we need a business case?

Investment is the lifeblood of any business and is essential to achieving growth.  However, many investments are poorly conceived and fail to deliver on their expectations.  An investment decision should be based on a systematic evaluation of the business opportunity and should demonstrate clear value accretion.  Any recommendation or proposal should be presented to the board or decision-taker as a business case in a clear and unambiguous manner while addressing the relevant factors which led to the decision.  This one-day course will take you through all the steps of building a compelling business case and will provide you with the tools and frameworks to help you achieve it.  You will learn how you should deal with the main problem of uncertainty about the future and with other risks inherent in any project.  The course will also focus on investment evaluation and you will learn how to deal with different valuation approaches.