business foresight and acumen
business acumen?
4. Growth: Do your employees know how and why you're growing?
5. Customers: They need a simple reason to buy from you? Do you know it?
After knowing why business acumen is needed it is now to know where it is essential.
Business acumen is greatly needed in matters of Finance. Financial management is much more than an accounting functions, it is a critical link to every business area within an organisation. Every employee is a decision maker. But most employees -- even many with senior management responsibilities -- are unaware of the financial implications of the choices they make. Financial awareness, never mind acumen, is surprisingly low in even the most sophisticated organizations.
Business acumen of a manager lies in
· Overviewing of Financial Management - the cash cycle;
· Understanding P&L and Balance Sheets;
· Managing Cash Flow, Working Capital and Assets;
· Measuring Business Performance - Ratio Analysis; and
· Understanding Profitability and Costs.
· Understanding the Role of Strategic Management.
The Financial Acumen helps to
 Rapidly improve cash flow by hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars
 Ensure widespread ownership of business objectives, eliminating the entitlement mentality
 Identify the most critical financial and operational results
 Provide basic knowledge of the organization's business and finances
 Deepen employees' understanding of how their jobs link to overall business objectives and how they can help to achieve them
Business acumen is greatly needed in Strategy. Today's business environment has created a climate of change in most organisations. Downsizing, process improvement, improved customer focus and reengineering are refinement efforts that have emerged from this climate of organisational change. But these efforts can only work if managers learn how to lead the change process.
While discussing the business acumen it is very important to know The Key learning objectives:
· Evaluate how businesses must change to sustain competitive advantage.
· Promote organisational excellence through customer satisfaction, process improvement, employee commitment, and strategic leadership.
· Build, manage and support teams to drive improvement efforts.
· Develop and sustain an organisational architecture to support systematic improvement.
· Identify roadblocks and pitfalls in the change effort and develop strategies to overcome them.
Business acumen is more vitally needed in Marketing.A businessman or a manager should have the acumen to :
· Show how a properly aligned corporate strategy creates value
· Identify and implement a competitive strategy
· Understand how each decision and policy of a company has multiple impacts, which affects the company's ability to fulfill its strategy
· Manage the often conflicting needs between customers and shareholders
· Adjust tactical implementation in response to competitors' actions
· Understand how tactical decisions and policies impact a company's profitability
· Witness how functional decisions influence financial statements
· Realize the trade-offs of short-term reactionary spending vs. long-term investment
· Identify competitors' strategies via [next page]