BCS Certificate in Commercial Awareness (inc exam)

About this course

The era of autonomous organisations holding a monopoly position with their product or service is fading and increasingly organisations find themselves in ever more competitive environments where the key to success is not only through internal efficiency, but also by judicious collaboration with suppliers, outsourcing partners and competitors. In order that businesses can operate successfully in the current environment they are being forced to find new approaches to operating through restructuring, changing their organisational behaviour, modifying their internal and external boundaries, and establishing additional techniques for measuring performance.

For today’s business analyst to make a valuable contribution they need an awareness of all influences that affect an organisation. This course gives an understanding of those financial and management accounting techniques that are crucial to an organisation both from a legal and administrative perspective. It also explores the social science aspects that are often hidden or not given sufficient priority that will ultimately govern the flexibility and adaptability of an organisation, which determine its ability to survive in today’s competitive markets.

At the end of the course delegates may sit an examination to attain the BCS certificate in Commercial Awareness. The cost of the examination is included in the course fee. This course may be taken as part of the QA programme leading to the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis.

Audience profile

• Those wishing to acquire a basic level of understanding about business finance and behavioural influences
• Those wishing to attain the BCS Certificate in the Commercial Awareness

At course completion

At the end of this course you will be able to:

• understand three techniques used to evaluate a financial case
• understand costing and pricing
• understand cash flow forecasting and budgeting
• describe the contents of financial accounting documents
• interpret financial accounts
• explain specified business performance ratios
• define the elements and usage of Porter’s Five Forces Framework and Value Chain
• define the elements and usage of the Boston Consulting Group’s matrix
• define the performance measures and usage of the Balanced Business Scorecard
• define the elements of specified cultural analysis approaches
• explain the different management structures and their characteristics
• define the different architectures that may be adopted by organisations