CIMA mastercourse on powering strategy through budgeting

CIMA has organized latest Mastercourse on the role budgeting plays in implementing strategy, as a value addition for senior managers - finance as well as non finance - who are responsible in the functioning of company wide budgets.

Starting with a basic discussion on strategic planning models and control framework, the program examines the conventional wisdom in budgeting.

It further reveals how to improve the overall budgeting process to make it a value creating activity in deriving competitive advantage.

Budgets play an important role in company management. Whilst the strategic plan gives the overall direction of the company in a dynamic environment, budgets become the fine tool in operationalising the strategies.

However, the wide range of criticism on budgeting includes the usual: the process is too time consuming, too costly, too distorted by gaming and too focussed on cost control.

The Mastercourse will be lead by Kapila Dodamgoda who started his career as an Engineer at Hayleys and later shifted to Vanik Incorporation to take up a career in Merchant Banking. At Vanik he held several positions in Trade Finance and Corporate Finance Divisions.

In 2000, Kapila began a progressive career at MAS Holdings, where he rose through the positions of Financial Controller and General Manager and played an active role in the overseas expansion program in India, Vietnam and Madagascar.

He was the Finance Director of MAS Investments before he started his consulting career in finance.

The Mastercourse is designed to give the non finance person a deeper understanding of the overall process and better appreciation on how the functional budgets are linked with the organizational budgets in achieving the overall objectives, and the finance person a paradigm shift of thinking from budgeting as a mere operational planning and cost management exercise to a more value added process to the organizational process.