| Learning objectives |
- Demonstrate an understanding of the changing capability
requirements faced by CFOs and finance and accounting employees in
order to become strategic business partners to executive management
and the line of business.
- Demonstrate an ability to apply the tools and techniques for
measuring and managing profitability and corporate value creation
across customers, products, channels, markets etc. to facilitate
strategy development in firms.
- Be able to critically discuss the underlying assumptions of
strategic cost management techniques and customer oriented
strategy.
|
| Course prerequisites |
The course is targeted at second year master
students (at CBS) who are familiar with
Activity-Based costing models and discounted cash flow (DCF)
valuation techniques. Students who have little or no knowledge of
these models will have a VERY hard time keeping up in this course
and are generally not recommended to apply for it.
Moreover, active student participation is expected during classes.
This is NOT a lecture-based class. This is a case-based class where
the learning takes place through interactive case solving during
classes. |
| Examination |
|
Strategic Cost
Management and Corporate Value Creation:
|
| Exam
ECTS |
7,5 |
| Examination form |
Oral exam |
| Individual or group exam |
Individual exam |
| Duration |
20 min. per student, including examiners'
discussion of grade, and informing plus explaining the
grade |
| Preparation time |
With the listed preparation time: 20
Minutes |
| Grading scale |
7-point grading scale |
| Examiner(s) |
Internal examiner and second internal
examiner |
| Exam period |
Winter |
| Aids |
Open book: all written and electronic aids
The student is
allowed to bring to the preparation room: Simple writing and
drawing utensils, laptop/tablet as a reference book (NB: there are
no electric outlets available), any calculator, books including
translation dictionaries, compendiums, notes. PLEASE NOTE: Students
are not allowed to communicate with others during the preparation
time. |
| Make-up exam/re-exam |
Same examination form as the ordinary exam
|
Description of the exam
procedure
BEFORE the exam date:
- Exam topics/questions are released and uploaded on CANVAS
EXAM date:
- Students will draw a random exam topic/question
- Students will get 20 minutes of preparation to prepare for
their meeting with the examiners
- After the preparation time is over students will enter the
exam room and discuss their topic with the examiners.
- Students are expected to lead the discussion but questions
from the examiners are to be expected
- After the exam is over the student will leave the exam room
and the examiners will discuss the grade in private
- When the examiners are done the student will be recalled to the
exam room where she will receive her grade incl. some brief
feedback on her performance
AFTER the exam:
- Students will be able to see their grade in the system after both
examiners have registered the grades
|
|
| Course content, structure and pedagogical
approach |
|
Accounting and finance people are increasingly expected to act
as strategic business partners who take an active part in
strategy development alongside the line of business. Consequently,
the required capabilities of the CFO and the finance and accounting
staff are expanding beyond the traditional domains of bookkeeping
and cost controlling towards more predictive analysis of the
business and financial as well as non-financial drivers of
shareholder value. A comprehensive understanding of the firm’s
business environment, particularly customer relationships and the
methods to evaluate the financial value creation potential of
different customers/segments, is therefore warranted.
During this course students get to work with cost, profit and
value creation tools and techniques which can help provide a
fact-based financial foundation for strategic decision making. The
pivotal element throughout the course is to establish transparency
on the financial impact of the firm’s strategic options in terms of
current and future profitability. This is achieved through
quantitative analyses of costs, profitability and value creation
potential across the firm’s activities and business environment.
The firm’s strategic options can hereby be linked to
corporate value and the amount of value created to shareholders – a
key objective in many commercial enterprises and therefore a key
area of interest to many boards of directors.
The course is structured in two main building blocks and the key
themes are as follows:
Strategic Cost Management
- Strategy, market orientation and customer centricity
- Strategic costing techniques and cost driver analysis
- Strategic profitability management
Corporate value creation
- Valuation of strategic options
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and strategic priorities
- CLV, strategy and firm value creation
The frameworks, tools and techniques presented and discussed in
this course are relevant both to students who envision a career in
finance & accounting departments and to students with an
ambition of pursuing a career in management consulting or other
strategic or financial advisory positions.
|
|
| Description of the teaching methods |
| The course is conducted in 3-hour lecture form,
albeit with extensive use of cases. Cases are carefully selected to
provide students the opportunity to actively work with
“number-crunching” for costing, profitability and valuation
analyses. Hence, during case discussions there will be an emphasis
on understanding how the quantitative elements in terms of
revenues, costs and financial value creation potential contribute
to inform strategic decisions. The lectures are mainly conducted by
academic staff. However, a number of external guest speakers from
management consulting and finance/accounting departments have been
invited to provide a practice-oriented perspective on the issues
discussed in class. |
| Feedback during the teaching period |
In in-class case discussions, which take up the
bulk of the course, feedback is provided continuously during the
case analyses, partly by the instructor and partly by peers with
the instructor facilitating peer-to-peer discussion.
The course also includes a panel debate where students are to
debate a topic from the curriculum and give mutual
feedback. |
| Student workload |
| Classes |
33 hours |
| Preparation |
140 hours |
| Exam |
30 hours |
|
| Expected literature |
|
The course literature consists of academic articles and cases.
The complete list of articles will be available in due time before
the course starts. In addition to the academic articles a case pack
with the case studies that will be covered in the course will be
announced prior to course start as well.
|
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