Our business acumen training courses are customized to your business. We're not a SIM or a game, we're your numbers, your strategy, and we impact your decisions. Next Level Business Our business acumen training courses are customized to your business. We're not a SIM or a game, we're your numbers, your strategy, and we impact your decisions. Related materials: Company Brochure Case Studies with Team Activities Test Your Business Acumen 300% ROI Case Study I'm interested in everything. Play Video Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tumblr Copy Link Link Copied Play Video Play Video 01:20 Bring Business Acumen Training to Your Company The train-the-trainer Building Business Acumen Essentials program provides three things: Scalability, Cost-effectiveness, and Modular learning. The course follows the content of our best-selling book, Seeing the Big Picture, which teaches you the 5 Business Drivers. Play Video Play Video 04:28 Who is Acumen Learning? Acumen Learning has taught business acumen training around the world for fifteen years, helping people understand their business, the impact of their roles, and change their careers for the better. Play Video Play Video 00:49 Building Business Acumen Essentials | A Train-the-Trainer Solution Our Building Business Acumen® Essentials course equips trainers with the skills to teach the big picture of business, how to align decisions to corporate strategy, and improve engagement among employees. Play Video Play Video 01:44 What Is Business Acumen? What is business acumen, and why is it important to your career? Play Video Play Video 02:49 Virtual Business Acumen Training Our customized Building Business Essentials® course will help any professional from any industry understand the big picture of their business, improve their track record of success, align decisions to corporate strategy, fix present problems and prevent new ones, break down communication barriers, take advantage of opportunities to grow, and much more. Play Video Play Video 01:06 Customized Business Acumen So you may be asking yourself — why is having a customized program around business acumen important as you bring it into your organization or your company? Well we would suggest if you're going through and learning how companies make money in theory, that's a lot different than understanding how your company makes money. It's a lot different than understanding your strategy around improving the money making process. It's also important to understand how you stack up against your competition – how you look in the industry. And so as we customize programs for organizations we get really clear on, not just how companies make money generically, but how your company makes money. What's your strategy going forward? What is your historical performance look like? How does that stack up to the competition? How do you compare to your overall industry? And most importantly, what can you do in your role to impact your company's results? And that can only happen if the conversation is really about your organization and how your company makes money. You might think of it as getting an MBA in your own company. #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #businessacumentraining #financialacumen #financialstrategy #MBA #customizedprogram #competition #results Play Video Play Video 01:00 Business Acumen Online A world-class business acumen course now available online. Play Video Play Video 01:48 Why Sales Professionals Need Business Acumen? Before we jump into the impact business acumen has on sales, let’s define it. Business acumen is the keenness and quickness in understanding and dealing with business risks or opportunities in a manner that is likely to result in a good outcome. Put another way, it’s your ability to optimize financial performance by understanding how all of the individual pieces within an organization work together. For sales teams, to achieve your goals it’s essential to realize that a company and partner’s success are connected. So to be the best partner, it’s essential to have a good understanding of not only your own company’s financial drivers but also have a complete understanding of your customers as well. You need to be able to see the opportunities not only from the perspective of your own company but also from the viewpoint of your customers. With this knowledge, you will be better equipped to develop ideas for your customers with a complete understanding of their struggles or pain points, making it more likely that your customer will agree to move forward with your proposal. During our Building Business Acumen for Sales course, we’ll help you to better understand the five business drivers, achieve alignment with key corporate stakeholders, understand how to present ideas to improve investment, and then how to package those ideas and projected financial outcomes into impactful business cases. By actively participating in this course, you’ll become more proficient in identifying, analyzing, creating, and presenting big growth opportunities to your customers. ✅ Learn more about what business acumen training can do for your sales team at https://www.acumenlearning.com/sales-training ✅ Get more information on Acumen Learning https://www.acumenlearning.com/ ✅ Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more business acumen tips and tricks #businessacumen #businessstrategy #salesstrategy #salestraining #learninganddevelopment #sales Play Video Play Video 01:44 Online Business Acumen Training Business acumen isn’t just about the financial make-up of companies, it’s about understanding the role you play in your business’s success. Where do you fit into your company’s money-making strategy — and how can you take your career to a higher level by becoming a business leader? Hi, I’m Kevin Cope, and I’ve converted my New York Times bestselling book "Seeing the Big Picture" into an online course accessible to everyone. In this course, you’ll learn the fundamental drivers at the foundation of all companies, and gain skills and vocabulary to not just speak, but think like a CEO. We’ll take you through a two-part course that will first build your foundation with the 5 Business Drivers, and then teach you how to use financial statements so you can discover the trajectory of any company — and receive professional credits on completion. You’ll receive tools and resources you can continually use throughout your career, like the Executive Alignment tool, Quarterly Earnings Call workbook, Action Plan, and more. You’ll also get twelve lessons so you can take your team through a year’s worth of case study activities to expand their business acumen. And finally, you’ll have access to a catalog of earnings call labs where one of our senior financial consultants will teach you how to listen to earnings calls by breaking down Fortune 500 companies’ numbers. Business acumen training is for everyone. Whether you’re a job seeker, entrepreneur, professional, or looking for a customized version of the course for your team, it’s never a bad time to further your career. Today’s the day — get year-long access to SeeingTheBigPicture.com and take charge of your career. I’ll see you in the course. ✅ Visit https://www.seeingthebigpicture.com/ to get access to the online course! (Oh, and we offer discounts for military personnel + their family members, veterans, and students.) ✅ For a copy of "Seeing the Big Picture" visit https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Big-Picture-Business-Credibility/dp/1608322467 ✅ To learn more about us and our online training programs visit https://www.acumenlearning.com/ #businessacumen #businessstrategy #financialacumen #financialstrategy #learninganddevelopment #HR #leadershipdevelopment #training #onlinetraining Play Video Play Video 01:14 A Different Kind of Virtual Training We don’t want you to feel like checking your email is a better use of your time than participating in a poorly taught training. That’s why we’ve made a virtual class that’s as much a discussion for you and your peers as it is instruction for your career. Play Video Play Video 02:20 Business Acumen Training at Waste Connections Hear from Waste Connection's leadership on the impact of Acumen Learning's business acumen training. Play Video Play Video 01:06 What is the meaning of business acumen? We get asked a lot about how we define business acumen, so we're here to quickly answer that! Business acumen is a competency that a lot of companies measure their employees on. We would define it as really understanding the fundamental money-making process of your company, and then making sure that your priorities and strategies align with that money-making process. Regardless of the size of the company and the industry, the business acumen fundamentals are the same, and it's important that everyone within the organization understands those fundamentals. If you're a new employee, understanding what you do every day that fits into the bigger picture is really important and brings meaning to your role. Understanding the broader business realities of the organization, allows you to start to put into context what you do every day and the economic value and contribution you bring to the company. It starts to bring some meaning and context perspective to what you do every day in a way that allows you to get excited about what you do every day. ✅ Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more Business Acumen videos! ✅ For more on our business acumen training visit: https://www.acumenlearning.com/ #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #businessacumentraining #financialacumen #financialstrategy Play Video Play Video 01:39 Building Business Acumen for Sales Outperform everyone. You need your sales and marketing team to deliver profitable results. Yet most buyers are fed up, tired of reps who don't understand what's driving their business. Building Business Acumen training (BBA) helps sales and marketing teams understand how all the moving parts of a company work together to optimize profitable results for your company and customers. Your customized Building Business Acumen sales and marketing course will establish your team as essential partners to your customers. They'll learn what to listen for, which questions to ask, and how to decipher tricky financial information and ever-changing strategies to win business. Play Video Play Video 01:59 Getting Hired With Business Acumen If you're looking to get a job and to exude business acumen in your interview, you'll want to know how the company generates money. What products does it have? What customers does it sell to? Where does it operate? Is it growing or not? How profitable is the company? You'll want to know all those things before you go into the interview to then be able to connect the role that you're interviewing for and how that will ultimately contribute to the company's success in the future. They're not just hiring you just to do the job — although that's going to be important. They’re hiring you to link your job and contribute to the company's success moving forward. Being able to make that linkage point in the interviews on how this role fits to the fundamental direction of the company and its financial performance gives you a much higher likelihood to be hired. They don't just see you as a functional person who understand the functional domain well, but as a part of the bigger picture of the organization’s success. Go to their investor relations website and get a feel for what are the latest messages, latest trends, strategies, and what the company is communicating broadly. You'll also want to understand what its top financial metrics are that they look at to measure success. You'll want to be able to understand not only where the company is now in its performance, but where it's trying to go. As you understand more on where the company is going, you can better position your role and your skills — and then better contribute to the future trends of the company. #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #HR #HRleadership #financialstrategy #financialacumen #hired #lookingforwork #interview Play Video Play Video 03:15 Why Business Acumen is Essential for Healthcare Business acumen and healthcare aren’t something that we necessarily think about in the same sentence…but they SHOULD be. Acumen Learning’s President, Ben Cook has worked with different facets of the healthcare industry for years, and in this video, he highlights why it’s important that your team has great business acumen. The world of healthcare is complex. And each part of the industry has a different set of priorities they need to focus on in order to succeed. The pharmaceutical and medical device portions of the industry focus on getting innovations to market to drive patient outcomes. Providers focus on operational efficiencies while driving patient impact. The insurance portion of the industry focuses on member advocacy, operational efficiency, and risk management. Regardless of where you are at in the healthcare industry, there is a deep need for better business acumen. Understanding how your organization makes money, how that money is used to further your mission and success, and what each person can do to further impact your organization and your customers is progressively getting more vital given the interdependency of the industry’s constituent parts, the complexity of the regulatory environment, and the global nature of competition and patients’ needs. Competency is now more vital than ever to your success as a leader and as an organization. Play Video Play Video 01:13 Why Business Acumen Should Matter to Everyone So, why does business acumen matter to an organization? Well, I’d suggest that companies don’t improve performance simply because the CEO says that it should. It happens because individuals throughout the organization make really good business decisions. And that only happens when individuals throughout the organization understand how the company makes money. And in their role, they make the right kind of decisions. Decisions that are not only good for them and their department, but also good for the company. Individuals want to know how they matter, how they make a difference, and how they fit in with their organization. In other words, they want that line of sight between their role and the decisions they make, and how it impacts an organization's results. So, people they want to matter, they want to fit in, and I’ve often thought this quote is really relevant around this idea: people work hard for a paycheck, harder for a person, and hardest for a purpose. So, if you really want people’s hearts and minds, their innovation, their mindshare, then help them understand their role in the organization improving company results. It really gives them a sense of how they fit in, and how they matter to the organization. #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #HR #HRleadership #financialstrategy #financialacumen Play Video Play Video 01:20 We Have an Impact Hear from participants of our course on how business acumen training helped them to see the bigger picture of their company. Play Video Play Video 01:44 Why Business Acumen is Essential for IT Teams I’m sure your CIOs and IT leaders are some of the best when it comes to technical know-how but that’s no longer enough if you want to optimize your team in creating growth. Now is the time to optimize IT operational efficiency to drive business value and strategic agility. Hi, I’m Jeff Cope, a Senior Financial Consultant at Acumen Learning, and I’ve had the opportunity to train some of the top technology companies business acumen. When you think IT, you think optimization and performance, but there’s a missed opportunity if companies don’t leverage the talent of their employees in improving the vision, strategy, and action of IT in business outcomes. Imagine what you could accomplish if your teams understood how they fit into the overall strategy of your business. Your IT teams aren’t just support. They’re a critical component — and really backbone — of your company’s success. Why shouldn’t they also be intimately familiar with its big picture? And leveraged in shifting your company towards its goals? With business acumen, your team will better understand how to speak the language of business, allowing them to see how their decisions and ideas will impact the entire company. Not only will this training impact their decision making ability, but it will also allow them to be more effective at presenting meaningful ideas and opportunities at the leadership level. And who doesn’t need more of that in their company?

Read this free business acumen case study. How did assets change the game of space travel? What does your CEO want you to know about assets? You and your team will learn: How SpaceX's reusable assets shoots them ahead of competition Why executives find asset utilization so important How your team can impact the company How to build business acumen GET YOUR FREE CASE STUDY and bonus team activity!

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CEOs need people to understand their business. Business acumen training can get them there. Why Business Acumen? Business Acumen Training Which are you most interested in? Message Submit Why business acumen? While most people understand their job, study after study demonstrates that the majority of employees don’t understand the business of their business. And CEOs desperately need them to. Business acumen is the key to any successful learning and development initiative– without it, individuals will struggle to make a meaningful impact on business results. VIRTUAL BUSINESS ACUMEN TRAINING Continuing the strategic, finance, and business acumen training of your employees is essential, especially now that COVID-19 has reached pandemic levels. Corporations need employees who aren't confused about the strategy of its leaders, but have the tools to remain aligned, engaged, and productive. Virtual business acumen can bridge the gap. Business Acumen Training To teach the skills, knowledge and abilities needed to execute your strategy, we can't just pull a solution off the shelf (nobody can). To be effective and generate a return, business acumen training has to be about your business specifically. And, of course, your business isn't the same today as it was yesterday– that's why you need an agile training partner who will prepare your employees to stay ahead of the rapidly changing environment your company operates in. A generic 101 course, or an outdates solution can't do that. But we can. Unfortunately, the development of business and financial acumen has been overrun by professors and internal finance teams who have complicated the subject and by vendors who think the subject needs to be dumbed down in order for it to be understood. We were born to give companies a better alternative. Customized To really see a return on your investment, business acumen training has to be customized to the strategy and metrics that are important to your CEO and to a participant’s specific role and responsibilities. Interactive Our blended approach of Socratic discussion, intuitive models, gamification, teach-backs, and hands-on activities make business and finance training interesting, relevant, immediately actionable, and fun. Actionable Our courses give your employees solutions and insights into the work they do every single day. The tools, follow-up materials and check-ins we offer extend the learning well beyond the classroom and ensure learning retention. A Global Partner for Global Success An investment in custom business acumen training will yield huge dividends on an individual and organizational level. That's why hundreds of companies in 35 different countries (including 22 of the Fortune 50) with renowned learning and development programs have turned to Acumen Learning's deeply experienced team to develop employees who see the big picture and make smarter, faster, and better business decisions. No Games, No SIMs, No Lectures Instead of dumbing down your business and spending valuable time teaching people how to play a board game or run a computer simulation, we teach your employees substantive skills- we teach them to have a deeper understanding of how their company makes money and the skills needed to play a more meaningful role in that money-making process. You'll find our competitors emphasizing their vehicle (a game, a simulation, a gimmick) over you desired destination (measurable success). An off-the-shelf solution simply won't produce a measurable behavioral impact. And if you do decide to expand the budget to develop a proprietary business simulation, remember that with every innovation or strategic change your company makes, your expensive simulation becomes more and more irrelevant and out-of-date. A boring lecture that goes over your employees' heads won't cut it either. What does work is our blended approach that makes business and finance interesting, relevant, immediately actionable, and dare we say, fun. Participant Feedback There are a lot of people who would rather have a root canal than a course on financial statements. Yet most of our clients have reported that we are one of their top-rated offerings– if not their very top. Don’t be surprised if you get the same results. I attended the class with the hopes of learning about our business generically. What I received is how our products, culture, communication, and business impacts our strategy on a micro and macro level. I endorse the class so much that I think it should be mandatory for all associates. Anthem - Course Participant I came into the course skeptical but “required” to attend. Finance is not something I really enjoy or feel competent about. However, this was the best and most relevant training I have received in a decade. We covered a lot of ground and I have a lot more to learn, but this course created a desire to learn more about our business and how I can better contribute to our success. Sodexo - Course Participant We wrote the book on business acumen training. There's only one #1 Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestseller dedicated to the subject of business acumen – we wrote it. Called an MBA in under 180 pages, Seeing the Big Picture captures the basic principles of our customized business acumen training. We know your industry - We promise Acumen Learning has emerged as the most complete business and financial acumen solution, capable of teaching any professional from any industry about the business of their business. And we do it in a way that is both clear enough to reach the individual contributor and sophisticated enough to challenge the experienced executive. For every new partnership, we not only research and study our new client’s business – we conduct an industry study which includes financial fact-finding on at least three of their top competitors and research into their customers and partners. We bring this deep industry expertise to deliver impactful solutions that help participants gain financial literacy and understand the competitive moves, consumer shifts, and industry pressures that guide their corporate strategy. © Acumen Learning | All Right Reserved

Learn more about our business acumen training material. COURSE OUTLINE Online < back PART ONE: THE 5 BUSINESS DRIVERS® 1. INTRODUCTION Welcome Why You Need Business Acumen & Course Overview Introduce the 5 Business Drivers model, consisting of Cash, Profit, Assets, Growth & People Sections 2 – 6 highlight each of the 5 Business Drivers through a 5-lesson format: The Big Picture Think Like a CEO Make a Difference Acumen in Action Complete This Lesson 2. CASH Topics covered in this section include: The Importance of Cash How Companies Get & Use Cash, Retention Activity Deciding How & When You Use Cash, Retention Activity Measuring a Company’s Cash & Liquidity, Retention Activity How Much Cash is Enough? & Retention Activity Cash Levers You Control, CEO Insights, Identify your Impact Acumen in Action Workbook and Big Picture Quick Quiz on Cash 3. PROFIT Topics covered in this section include: Profit & Cash Flow are Different, Retention Activity The Bottom Line & Other Measures of Profit, Retention Activity Increase Profit by Growing Sales Revenue, Retention Activity Increase Profit by Reducing Costs, Retention Activity Profit Levers You Control, CEO Insights, Identify your Impact Acumen in Action Workbook and Big Picture Quick Quiz on Profit 4. ASSETS Topics covered in this section include: What Are Assets & How Do We Use Them? & Retention Activity Asset Strength: Liquidity, Retention Activity Asset Utilization: Productivity, Retention Activity Asset Strength vs Asset Utilization, Retention Activity Asset Levers You Control, CEO Insights, Identify your Impact Acumen in Action Workbook and Big Picture Quick Quiz on Assets 5. GROWTH Topics covered in this section include: Why Focus on Growth? & Retention Activity Growth in the Top Line & Bottom Line, Retention Activity Organic & Inorganic Growth, Retention Activity Growth & The Business Life Cycle, Retention Activity Growth Levers You Control, CEO Insights, Identify your Impact Acumen in Action: Workbook and Big Picture Quick Quiz on Growth 6. PEOPLE Topics covered in this section include: Employees: The Foundation of Success, Retention Activity Employees: Foundation Starts with Culture, Retention Activity Customers: Beyond Satisfaction, Retention Activity People Levers You Control, CEO Insights, Identify your Impact Acumen in Action Workbook and Big Picture Quick Quiz on People 7. LINKING THE 5 BUSINESS DRIVERS The Big Picture Division of Labor, Unity of Purpose & Job-Aid Shifting Focus: The CEO Urgency Continuum Shifting with the Company & Job-Aid Think Like a CEO Going Public: A CEO’s Unique Pressures External Influencers: Financial Markets External Influencers: The Stock Market External Acumen & Job-Aid Make a Difference CEO Insights into The Big Picture What’s Your Impact? Acumen in Action Austin’s Cycle Shop Case Study Facilitator Q&A Complete This Lesson Acumen in Action Workbook Big Picture Quick Quiz on the 5 Business Drivers 8. FINISH THE COURSE Move to Action Final Assignment: Alignment and Action Plan Part One completion and free resources PART TWO: THE FINANCIALS 1. SIMPLIFYING FINANCIAL REPORTS The Big Picture The 3 Most Important Statements and the 5 Business Drivers The Basics of Financial Statements Key Items in a Form 10-K Reading an Annual Report Acumen in Action Navigating the Financials Job-Aid CEO Insights into Financial Statements Complete This Lesson Acumen in Action Workbook Big Picture Quick Quiz on The Financials Sections 2 – 4 highlight each of the 3 financial statements through a 3-lesson format: Tracking Profit, Assets, Cash Acumen in Action Complete This Lesson 2. THE INCOME STATEMENT Topics covered in this section include: Statement’s Purpose & Equation Statement Breakdown in a Matter of Minutes In-Depth Walkthrough of the Statement CEO Insights into The Income Statement Acumen in Action Workbook and Big Picture Quick Quiz on The Income Statement 3. THE BALANCE SHEET Topics covered in this section include: Statement’s Purpose & Equation Statement Breakdown in a Matter of Minutes In-Depth Walkthrough of the Statement CEO Insights into The Balance Sheet Acumen in Action Workbook and Big Picture Quick Quiz on The Balance Sheet 4. THE STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS Topics covered in this section include: Statement’s Purpose & Equation Statement Breakdown in a Matter of Minutes In-Depth Walkthrough of the Statement CEO Insights into The Statement of Cash Flows Acumen in Action Workbook and Big Picture Quick Quiz on The Statement of Cash Flows 5. FINISH THE COURSE Move to Action Company Analysis Worksheet Securing Your Seat at the Table: Tips for Applying your Business Acumen Course Evaluation Course Completion and Certification

We have business acumen training experience with all levels and functions within aerospace and defense. Business Acumen for Aerospace & Defense Large Defense | Commercial Aerospace | Subcontractors The business of aerospace and defense Fly higher with business acumen training for the aerospace & defense industry. We understand your company’s positioning within monopsonies, the competitive nature of your business, whether it be getting talent or working to stand out among your competition, and the global supply chain limitations your industry faces. It’s essential that you understand how your company makes money, how that money is used to drive the company forward, and what everyone within the company can do to impact the organization. By understanding these vital components, and learning how to speak the language of business, you’ll be more successful in driving business for your company. Get the overview "Very helpful to understand basic financials, the perspective of executive leadership and their priorities and how to impact those areas in my day-to-day work." Sustainment Engineering Manager Lockheed Martin Start a Conversation Experience Our Aerospace & Defense experience includes work with… 5 of the 10 biggest aerospace companies The third largest defense contractor in the world 60 of the top defense contractors Two of the largest weapons manufacturers and military technology providers Outcomes Aerospace & Defense leaders engage us to improve... Executive Alignment Know the strategic direction of your organization in order to align your priorities accordingly to enable optimal impact. Leadership Understand and effectively communicate where your organization is going and how it is doing to connect your employees’ roles to your organization’s success. Analytical Skills Increase your fluency of the metrics most vital to measure organizational and financial success and the key levers to pull to move the needle. Decision Making Make better, smarter, faster decisions that will drive impact and organizational success since every organization needs more employees at all levels to think like business people. Communication Drive better alignment and clarity of direction with the decisions you make with the organizations you lead or support. Do this by speaking the language of business and finance. Start a Conversation Explore more… Earnings Call Lab Join one of our free monthly labs and learn how to listen to earnings calls by breaking down Fortune 500 companies like Raytheon and Boeing. View Webinar Schedule Aerospace & Defense Their analysis demonstrated that business acumen training more than paid for itself with a 300%+ ROI. Read Case Study Articles What's the difference between cash and cash flow? What financial questions do you need to know for an interview? Get answers for this and more in our articles. Read Articles "Great course! Very good at explaining how everything works together for all levels. Very interactive and engaging." General Dynamics

Our customized business acumen training helps participants to understand the specific needs of their company and how they impact the money-making process. WHY DON'T WE TEACH A GENERIC COURSE? FAQs WHY CHOOSE US CLIENTS STORIES FAQs ARTICLES OUR TEAM WHY WE WOULDN'T DARE TEACH A GENERIC COURSE? You don’t need a generic business 101 course – most of your employees already took that class in college. And yet, that's typically what you'll get from an outside business acumen training provider. We're far from typical. We've been best described as a management consulting company, but our end product isn't operational recommendations – it's a customized business acumen training course. In other words, we're not telling your people what to do, we're teaching them how to make a difference. And study after study suggests that employees who understand how their company makes money and who know how they personally contribute to that money-making process are more engaged, more efficient, and more effective. And that's what developing good business acumen is all about. To pull this off, and to really see a return on your investment, business acumen training has to be customized to the strategy and metrics that are important to your CEO and to a participant’s specific role and responsibilities. And, it should come as no surprise, what’s important to your CEO today may not be as important to her tomorrow. So teaching yesterday’s high-priced simulation or using a stagnant board game isn’t a long-term solution. Neither is a boring lecture from some professor or a lengthy presentation from your finance team. What does work is our blended approach of Socratic discussion, intuitive models, and hands-on activities that make business and finance training interesting, relevant, immediately actionable, and dare we say, fun. Start a Conversation

Anthem selected Acumen Learning to customize a business acumen course with a focus on helping Anthem's leaders connect business imperatives throughout the organization to support a new executive strategy resulting from a merger. < back

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We've developed a purposeful and efficient approach to customizing business and finance courses – measured in weeks not months. WHAT IS THE CUSTOMIZATION PROCESS? FAQs WHY CHOOSE US CLIENTS STORIES FAQs ARTICLES OUR TEAM BUSINESS ACUMEN TRAINING CUSTOMIZATION — MEASURED IN WEEKS NOT MONTHS We've developed a purposeful and efficient approach to customizing business and finance courses – measured in weeks not months. We take our existing award winning teaching methodologies and proprietary models and tools and combine them with what we already know about your industry and what we learn about your organization through our customization process. This modular approach allows you to pick and choose different areas of focus. During your customization process we'll jointly decide which activities and tools will help participants best meet your learning requirements. For example, a two-day business acumen training course for senior financial analysts might include an in-depth discussion on weighted average cost of capital, whereas a course designed for front-line leaders might stay centered on basic principles like cost management. And even if your course ends up mirroring one of our outlines at a high level, in its details your course will be unique to your business and tailored to meet your specific objectives. Task 1: Uncovering Your Business Strategy Every client partnership begins with identifying the core business challenge or opportunity we’ve been hired to address. For this task, we interview leaders from across your organization, we listen to earnings calls, scour articles, dig into the numbers, and look for the telltale signs of what’s driving innovation and competitive advantage in your industry. We then turn our research into a meaningful path forward to ensure we absolutely nail your learning and development objectives. Task 2: Designing Your Business Acumen Training Building on the insights gained during the previous task, we synthesize our research into a well-defined, differentiating, and actionable course based on our 5 Business Drivers® model and learning tools. We also develop participant-centric learning experiences tailored to the types of business problems they are called upon to solve, so each participant can effectively demonstrate the skills and abilities that will prepare them to become a stronger business leader. So whether you have salespeople struggling to close more profitable deals or a group of HIPO leaders who need to stretch their financial acumen, your program will be customized to your audience’s specific needs. Task 3: Delivering Your Business Acumen Course The same consultant team that has come to know the ins-and-outs of your organization will facilitate your business acumen training . This ensures that your learning experience combines a fresh outsider's perspective with an insider's understanding of your business. And to get the most out of future deliveries we continue to review your earnings and follow your industry so that what’s being learned is red-hot relevant. In other words, once we have a partnership – we never stop customizing. Start a Conversation COMMON RFP INITIATIVES FOR BUSINESS ACUMEN TRAINING Finance: Increase our financial and analytical skills, to drive bottom-line results Finance for non-financial managers How we make money Strategy: Effectively communicate strategy, direction, and performance to leaders, peers, and teams Make better, smarter, faster business decisions Alignment: Know the financial measures most important to our executive team Improve performance, productivity, and engagement Leadership: Women in leadership Business acumen for sales HIPO and corporate universities CPE credits for CPAs SHRM and HRCI recertification Course Content Business Acumen Intro Financial Knowledge Assessment Cultural Importance Executive Alignment Street Vendor SIM Cash Business Driver Cash & Equivalents Cash Flow from Operations Working Capital Receivables Payables Inventory Cash Conversion Cycle Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) Free Cash Flow Profit Business Driver Sales/Revenues/Top Line Cost of Goods Sold Gross Profit & Margin SG&A Net Profit/Bottom Line Operating Profit & Margin EBIT vs. EBITDA vs. PBT Earnings Per Share (EPS) Variance Analysis Grow Sales/Reduce Costs Assets Business Driver Return on Assets Return on Equity Return on Investment Strength vs Utilization Hurdle Rate Internal Rate of Return Weighted Average Cost of Capital Growth Business Driver Top-Line Growth Time Value of Money Operating Income Growth Product Life Cycle Operating Leverage Organic vs Inorganic Growth Merger & Acquisition Growth Trade-offs Total Shareholder Return Return on Invested Capital People Business Driver Internal Customers External Customers Anticipating Customer Expectations Shareholders Executive Alignment Linking the Five Drivers Letter to Shareholders Alignment Strategies Executive Communication “Think Like Owners” CEO Urgency Continuum Margin & Mission Navigating Financials Financials 101 Form 10-K key items Reading Annual Reports Trends & Ratios Competitor/Customer/Supplier Analysis P&L Variance Analysis P&L Analytics OpEx v Non-OpEx Earnings Per Share Executive Decisions & Interpretations Fixed vs Variable Expenses Operating Leverage Balance Sheet Current Ratio Debt to Equity Ratio Liquidity Report Analytics Assets & Liabilities Efficiency Analysis Cash Flow Statement Cash from Operating Activities Analysis Non-Cash Adjustments Cash Flow from Operations Free Cash Flow Capital Allocation Strategy External Acumen Recognize Market Opportunities Risk Mitigation Functional Awareness Corporate Culture Networking Strategy Competitor Analysis Review & Report Stock Price Analysis Price-Earnings Ratio Buy-Back Strategy 7 Benefits of a Higher Stock Price Downloud Course Outline

If you understand the big picture of your business, you can make an impact to the bottom-line and your career. Get our monthly team activities. SUBSCRIBE TO TIPS FOR WORK > TIPS FOR WORK Get your monthly training Called an MBA in 180 pages, Seeing the Big Picture is the basis for Acumen Learning's customized business acumen training courses. At Acumen Learning, our purpose is to teach employees how to make faster and better business decisions – we teach them how their company makes money, how their decisions impact the bottom line, and why their role matters. We specialize in customized business and financial acumen courses that are relevant, interactive, and actionable. Transform your workforce to be business leaders. Whether you're looking for greater alignment, engagement, or productivity, business acumen training can bridge the gap. Empower your employees with the training they need to understand your company's strategy and financial metrics regardless of industry. Understand your company's strategy Learn financial metrics important to your CEO Know why your role matters to the business Go to AcumenLearning.com © Acumen Learning | All Right Reserved

You need your sales and marketing team to deliver profitable results. Yet most buyers are fed up, tired of reps who don't understand what's driving their business. Building Business Acumen training (BBA) helps sales and marketing teams understand how all the moving parts of a company work together to optimize profitable results for your company and customers.  Building Business Acumen for Sales ® Related materials: Company Brochure Case Studies with Team Activities Test Your Business Acumen 300% ROI Case Study I'm interested in everything. Building Business Acumen training (BBA) helps sales and marketing teams understand how all the moving parts of a company work together to optimize profitable results for your company and customers. Play Video Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tumblr Copy Link Link Copied Play Video Play Video 01:20 Bring Business Acumen Training to Your Company The train-the-trainer Building Business Acumen Essentials program provides three things: Scalability, Cost-effectiveness, and Modular learning. The course follows the content of our best-selling book, Seeing the Big Picture, which teaches you the 5 Business Drivers. Play Video Play Video 04:28 Who is Acumen Learning? Acumen Learning has taught business acumen training around the world for fifteen years, helping people understand their business, the impact of their roles, and change their careers for the better. Play Video Play Video 00:49 Building Business Acumen Essentials | A Train-the-Trainer Solution Our Building Business Acumen® Essentials course equips trainers with the skills to teach the big picture of business, how to align decisions to corporate strategy, and improve engagement among employees. Play Video Play Video 01:44 What Is Business Acumen? What is business acumen, and why is it important to your career? Play Video Play Video 02:49 Virtual Business Acumen Training Our customized Building Business Essentials® course will help any professional from any industry understand the big picture of their business, improve their track record of success, align decisions to corporate strategy, fix present problems and prevent new ones, break down communication barriers, take advantage of opportunities to grow, and much more. Play Video Play Video 01:06 Customized Business Acumen So you may be asking yourself — why is having a customized program around business acumen important as you bring it into your organization or your company? Well we would suggest if you're going through and learning how companies make money in theory, that's a lot different than understanding how your company makes money. It's a lot different than understanding your strategy around improving the money making process. It's also important to understand how you stack up against your competition – how you look in the industry. And so as we customize programs for organizations we get really clear on, not just how companies make money generically, but how your company makes money. What's your strategy going forward? What is your historical performance look like? How does that stack up to the competition? How do you compare to your overall industry? And most importantly, what can you do in your role to impact your company's results? And that can only happen if the conversation is really about your organization and how your company makes money. You might think of it as getting an MBA in your own company. #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #businessacumentraining #financialacumen #financialstrategy #MBA #customizedprogram #competition #results Play Video Play Video 01:00 Business Acumen Online A world-class business acumen course now available online. Play Video Play Video 01:48 Why Sales Professionals Need Business Acumen? Before we jump into the impact business acumen has on sales, let’s define it. Business acumen is the keenness and quickness in understanding and dealing with business risks or opportunities in a manner that is likely to result in a good outcome. Put another way, it’s your ability to optimize financial performance by understanding how all of the individual pieces within an organization work together. For sales teams, to achieve your goals it’s essential to realize that a company and partner’s success are connected. So to be the best partner, it’s essential to have a good understanding of not only your own company’s financial drivers but also have a complete understanding of your customers as well. You need to be able to see the opportunities not only from the perspective of your own company but also from the viewpoint of your customers. With this knowledge, you will be better equipped to develop ideas for your customers with a complete understanding of their struggles or pain points, making it more likely that your customer will agree to move forward with your proposal. During our Building Business Acumen for Sales course, we’ll help you to better understand the five business drivers, achieve alignment with key corporate stakeholders, understand how to present ideas to improve investment, and then how to package those ideas and projected financial outcomes into impactful business cases. By actively participating in this course, you’ll become more proficient in identifying, analyzing, creating, and presenting big growth opportunities to your customers. ✅ Learn more about what business acumen training can do for your sales team at https://www.acumenlearning.com/sales-training ✅ Get more information on Acumen Learning https://www.acumenlearning.com/ ✅ Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more business acumen tips and tricks #businessacumen #businessstrategy #salesstrategy #salestraining #learninganddevelopment #sales Play Video Play Video 01:44 Online Business Acumen Training Business acumen isn’t just about the financial make-up of companies, it’s about understanding the role you play in your business’s success. Where do you fit into your company’s money-making strategy — and how can you take your career to a higher level by becoming a business leader? Hi, I’m Kevin Cope, and I’ve converted my New York Times bestselling book "Seeing the Big Picture" into an online course accessible to everyone. In this course, you’ll learn the fundamental drivers at the foundation of all companies, and gain skills and vocabulary to not just speak, but think like a CEO. We’ll take you through a two-part course that will first build your foundation with the 5 Business Drivers, and then teach you how to use financial statements so you can discover the trajectory of any company — and receive professional credits on completion. You’ll receive tools and resources you can continually use throughout your career, like the Executive Alignment tool, Quarterly Earnings Call workbook, Action Plan, and more. You’ll also get twelve lessons so you can take your team through a year’s worth of case study activities to expand their business acumen. And finally, you’ll have access to a catalog of earnings call labs where one of our senior financial consultants will teach you how to listen to earnings calls by breaking down Fortune 500 companies’ numbers. Business acumen training is for everyone. Whether you’re a job seeker, entrepreneur, professional, or looking for a customized version of the course for your team, it’s never a bad time to further your career. Today’s the day — get year-long access to SeeingTheBigPicture.com and take charge of your career. I’ll see you in the course. ✅ Visit https://www.seeingthebigpicture.com/ to get access to the online course! (Oh, and we offer discounts for military personnel + their family members, veterans, and students.) ✅ For a copy of "Seeing the Big Picture" visit https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Big-Picture-Business-Credibility/dp/1608322467 ✅ To learn more about us and our online training programs visit https://www.acumenlearning.com/ #businessacumen #businessstrategy #financialacumen #financialstrategy #learninganddevelopment #HR #leadershipdevelopment #training #onlinetraining Play Video Play Video 01:14 A Different Kind of Virtual Training We don’t want you to feel like checking your email is a better use of your time than participating in a poorly taught training. That’s why we’ve made a virtual class that’s as much a discussion for you and your peers as it is instruction for your career. Play Video Play Video 02:20 Business Acumen Training at Waste Connections Hear from Waste Connection's leadership on the impact of Acumen Learning's business acumen training. Play Video Play Video 01:06 What is the meaning of business acumen? We get asked a lot about how we define business acumen, so we're here to quickly answer that! Business acumen is a competency that a lot of companies measure their employees on. We would define it as really understanding the fundamental money-making process of your company, and then making sure that your priorities and strategies align with that money-making process. Regardless of the size of the company and the industry, the business acumen fundamentals are the same, and it's important that everyone within the organization understands those fundamentals. If you're a new employee, understanding what you do every day that fits into the bigger picture is really important and brings meaning to your role. Understanding the broader business realities of the organization, allows you to start to put into context what you do every day and the economic value and contribution you bring to the company. It starts to bring some meaning and context perspective to what you do every day in a way that allows you to get excited about what you do every day. ✅ Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more Business Acumen videos! ✅ For more on our business acumen training visit: https://www.acumenlearning.com/ #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #businessacumentraining #financialacumen #financialstrategy Play Video Play Video 01:39 Building Business Acumen for Sales Outperform everyone. You need your sales and marketing team to deliver profitable results. Yet most buyers are fed up, tired of reps who don't understand what's driving their business. Building Business Acumen training (BBA) helps sales and marketing teams understand how all the moving parts of a company work together to optimize profitable results for your company and customers. Your customized Building Business Acumen sales and marketing course will establish your team as essential partners to your customers. They'll learn what to listen for, which questions to ask, and how to decipher tricky financial information and ever-changing strategies to win business. Play Video Play Video 01:59 Getting Hired With Business Acumen If you're looking to get a job and to exude business acumen in your interview, you'll want to know how the company generates money. What products does it have? What customers does it sell to? Where does it operate? Is it growing or not? How profitable is the company? You'll want to know all those things before you go into the interview to then be able to connect the role that you're interviewing for and how that will ultimately contribute to the company's success in the future. They're not just hiring you just to do the job — although that's going to be important. They’re hiring you to link your job and contribute to the company's success moving forward. Being able to make that linkage point in the interviews on how this role fits to the fundamental direction of the company and its financial performance gives you a much higher likelihood to be hired. They don't just see you as a functional person who understand the functional domain well, but as a part of the bigger picture of the organization’s success. Go to their investor relations website and get a feel for what are the latest messages, latest trends, strategies, and what the company is communicating broadly. You'll also want to understand what its top financial metrics are that they look at to measure success. You'll want to be able to understand not only where the company is now in its performance, but where it's trying to go. As you understand more on where the company is going, you can better position your role and your skills — and then better contribute to the future trends of the company. #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #HR #HRleadership #financialstrategy #financialacumen #hired #lookingforwork #interview Play Video Play Video 03:15 Why Business Acumen is Essential for Healthcare Business acumen and healthcare aren’t something that we necessarily think about in the same sentence…but they SHOULD be. Acumen Learning’s President, Ben Cook has worked with different facets of the healthcare industry for years, and in this video, he highlights why it’s important that your team has great business acumen. The world of healthcare is complex. And each part of the industry has a different set of priorities they need to focus on in order to succeed. The pharmaceutical and medical device portions of the industry focus on getting innovations to market to drive patient outcomes. Providers focus on operational efficiencies while driving patient impact. The insurance portion of the industry focuses on member advocacy, operational efficiency, and risk management. Regardless of where you are at in the healthcare industry, there is a deep need for better business acumen. Understanding how your organization makes money, how that money is used to further your mission and success, and what each person can do to further impact your organization and your customers is progressively getting more vital given the interdependency of the industry’s constituent parts, the complexity of the regulatory environment, and the global nature of competition and patients’ needs. Competency is now more vital than ever to your success as a leader and as an organization. Play Video Play Video 01:13 Why Business Acumen Should Matter to Everyone So, why does business acumen matter to an organization? Well, I’d suggest that companies don’t improve performance simply because the CEO says that it should. It happens because individuals throughout the organization make really good business decisions. And that only happens when individuals throughout the organization understand how the company makes money. And in their role, they make the right kind of decisions. Decisions that are not only good for them and their department, but also good for the company. Individuals want to know how they matter, how they make a difference, and how they fit in with their organization. In other words, they want that line of sight between their role and the decisions they make, and how it impacts an organization's results. So, people they want to matter, they want to fit in, and I’ve often thought this quote is really relevant around this idea: people work hard for a paycheck, harder for a person, and hardest for a purpose. So, if you really want people’s hearts and minds, their innovation, their mindshare, then help them understand their role in the organization improving company results. It really gives them a sense of how they fit in, and how they matter to the organization. #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #HR #HRleadership #financialstrategy #financialacumen Play Video Play Video 01:20 We Have an Impact Hear from participants of our course on how business acumen training helped them to see the bigger picture of their company. Play Video Play Video 01:44 Why Business Acumen is Essential for IT Teams I’m sure your CIOs and IT leaders are some of the best when it comes to technical know-how but that’s no longer enough if you want to optimize your team in creating growth. Now is the time to optimize IT operational efficiency to drive business value and strategic agility. Hi, I’m Jeff Cope, a Senior Financial Consultant at Acumen Learning, and I’ve had the opportunity to train some of the top technology companies business acumen. When you think IT, you think optimization and performance, but there’s a missed opportunity if companies don’t leverage the talent of their employees in improving the vision, strategy, and action of IT in business outcomes. Imagine what you could accomplish if your teams understood how they fit into the overall strategy of your business. Your IT teams aren’t just support. They’re a critical component — and really backbone — of your company’s success. Why shouldn’t they also be intimately familiar with its big picture? And leveraged in shifting your company towards its goals? With business acumen, your team will better understand how to speak the language of business, allowing them to see how their decisions and ideas will impact the entire company. Not only will this training impact their decision making ability, but it will also allow them to be more effective at presenting meaningful ideas and opportunities at the leadership level. And who doesn’t need more of that in their company?