Financial Analysis Tools and Techniques: A Guide for Managers

Proven Techniques for All Managers and Financial Professionals to Generate, Understand, and Act Upon Key Financial Information

The syntax and "code" of financial analysis, along with the avenues for arriving at appropriate and useful answers, have long seemed like a foreign language to nonfinancial managers. Financial Analysis Tools and Techniques simplifies the process, and provides busy managers and professionals with the guidelines they need for conducting effective analyses and making sound economic trade-offs and business decisions.

In a business systems context, this essential book explains how to:

Interpret financial statements
Develop financial projections
Evaluate business investment decisions
Assess the implications of financing choices
Derive the value of a business or security
Understand the role of analysis in creating shareholder value
Financial Genome by Modernsoft, Inc.

This advanced knowledge-based business analysis and planning software is fully integrated with this book , allowing users to:

Access data from databases, spreadsheets, user input
Develop free-form or structured analyses with consistency
Produce a wide variety of customizable financial statements
Create integrated financial pro-forma projections
Download Financial Genome for a free 30-day trial from www.modernsoft.com (See Appendix I for details)

Since the first of its ten editions appeared in 1963, Erich Helfert's seminal Techniques of Financial Analy sis has provided business students as well as financial practitioners with a concise and practical overview of financial analysis tools and concepts. What sets this classic text apart then, and continues to distinguish it today, has been its focus on the continuous interrelationship between management decisions and the economic value of a business, explained in a unique systems context.

Financial Analysis: Tools and Techniques adapts this seminal reference to today's fast-changing professional market and establishes a new benchmark for direct, concise, and practical financial analysis information and interpretation. Specifically addressing key analytical needs in the tumultuous twenty-first-century business environment, it comments on valuable business applications of the tools and concepts with insights from Erich Helfert and his consulting clients.

Providing focused analyses of the economics of business investments and valuation, presenting discussions of cash-flow trade-offs and time-value analysis against the strategic backdrop of the business system, and emphasizing enhancement of shareholder value through value-based management (VBM), Financial Analysis: Tools and Techniques will help all nonfinancial managers to make sound investment, operating, and financing decisions. Concise yet sufficiently detailed, it covers the full range of financial analysis issues, including:

Managing the business as a system
Financial statements
Funds cycles for manufacturing, sales, and service
Cash management
Ratio analysis and performance
Pro-forma financial statements
Financial modeling
Leverage
Financial growth plans
Time value of money
Analysis of investment decisions
Using return standards
Cost of capital
Financing choices
Definitions of value
Shareholder value and value-based methodologies
Financial Analysis: Tools and Techniques is a quick and easy read for the nonfinancial manager and an excellent refresher and reference for the financial professional. In conjunction with its companion software Financial Genome, it represents the next step in financial analysisone that gives financial analysis and economic decisions their proper importance and context in the successful operation of a business.