This course is designed to show you how use quantitative models to transform data into better business decisions. You’ll learn both how to use models to facilitate decision-making and also how to structure decision-making for optimum results. Two of Wharton’s most acclaimed professors will show you the step-by-step processes of modeling common business and financial scenarios, so you can significantly improve your ability to structure complex problems and derive useful insights about alternatives. Once you’ve created models of existing realities, possible risks, and alternative scenarios, you can determine the best solution for your business or enterprise, using the decision-making tools and techniques you’ve learned in this course.
MS
It is a nice course for those who want to revisit the concepts of NPV, IRR and those who want to understand about Financial Planning / Financial Modeling.
RA
Very practical, precise and applicable. Love the Excel Sheets and the explanation in helping differentiate metrics vs judging scenarios while getting the numbers right.
SR
The course material and examples are very useful. I really like the CF spreadsheet at the end of week 4 as this is very organized CF model and I can use this as reference to build my own. Thank you!
CE
I took 2 full semesters of accounting courses in college and did not get the understanding of the material as well as I did in these modules. This course is wonderful and very eye-opening!
AD
This course was very insightful. It's a great refresher course if you have a finance background. It's also beginner-friendly if you do not have finance background.
SC
Best course to understand the project valuation and the concept of IRR and NPV. Awesome way of explanation with real examples.Thank you coursera for being my Mentor.
NO
The professor should add more into the calculating the present value of growing perpetuity as most of the projects are followed by other project or these go for an extended period of time.
DS
Module 2 quiz was really tricky and I felt the lectures should have provided a more similar example. Could not get the NPV calc in problem 5 no matter what I tried
EE
I think I would be more helpfull if you worked in more detail on the example. Rather than just reading of the slides, it would be much better if we could follow you step by step in calculatons.
EF
If anyone is interested to get a head start with excel and valuation, this is a great course. The best part is you can re-visit the videos for references.
RO
The Professors do a great job of bringing together the financial concepts, MS Excel as a tool and asking questions to evaluate alternative scenarios to inform better decision-making.
RC
The course taught and highlighted concepts in a clear, comprehensive and friendly way. Another very good velue out of this class was how to better-use excel spreadsheet. Thanks!
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There were a lot of assumptions that they did not thoroughly explain and went over mostly conceptual cash flow movements. Hardly used Excel at all and didn't really relate to the rest of the courses in terms of statistical analysis used.
Tries to cram a huge amount of financial accounting into less than 4 hours of lecture. There's no way anyone could assimilate all the information if they don't already have a finance background.
The professors just read from the slides.
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Not very practical, want to learn more modelling skills but what I've learned were just some basic financial theories
Class was too simple, especially with regards to scenario analysis. Professors should've covered scenario manager tool, data tables and other scenario analysis techniques. Also, the methods used were academic, e.g. week 3; professors should've taught NPV/IRR via DCF analysis.
Very little modelling in this course, instead you get some accounting lectures which are pretty difficult to follow if you have no previous accounting knowledge. Very boring lectures, too!
Turned out to be a course in financials rather than modeling. The whole specialization could have been designed to make better progress in modeling.
Thank you for the wonderful course. It gave us substantial information to evaluate a project based on NPV and IRR. The sensitivity analyses and the consequent scenarios were spelt out lucidly.
Just about finances.
Brief Profile: Sohail Butt
I am a man of 58 years old and having an experience of almost 30 years of Business Management of Pharmaceutical & Nutraceutical Industries of Pakistan. Presently I am having my own Consulting Company " AIMMS CONSULTING" and extending my services as Management Consultant to different companies of said sectors.
I am of the conviction that learning is never ending and have a habit of learning new ideas about my favorite subject about Social Media Marketing.
I really appreciate highly the efforts of my respected dynamic, highly competent & honorable Professors Richard Lambert & Robert W. Holthausen and enjoyed the course material and videos presentation of this course. Mind blowing conceptual approach was adopted especially in the areas of Decision – Making Scenarios. Overall it was my superb experience of learning.
SUGGESTION:
MY PERSONAL HUMBLE REQUEST, Please make also the important components of course material as a part of this Certificate with % AGGREGATE so that it has a much more worth & impact for the courses participated.
A separate Transcript must be issued with having Aggregate % Score and important Components of participated course.
Hard Copy of this certificate mail to my home address in Pakistan. Please use my credit card,I am ready to pay all expenses in this connection.
Thanks & best wishes to all Coursera Team.
Excellent class: it is one another very well organized class of coursera via the Wharton School. The instruction level is advanced, the scientific quality is of Wharton School and it covers a business approach of Financial Engineering and Financial Management. The second module is rather than difficult for beginners but no gain without pain! The syllabus of this course is organized as:
- Module 1: Time Value of Money
- Module 2: Financial Increments of Cash Flows
- Module 3: Business Strategies in Financial Analysis
- Module 4: Analytics using the previous topics of modules 1-3 (using a given spreadsheet)
For the new learners, try to understand the new knowledge with some time gap between lectures and quizzes. It helps. Good luck!!
Excellent design, optimum amount of information to cover both the foundation, but also practical application of each of the items in the financial statements and their inter-connections. Pace of 3rd and 4th modules a little fast. Hard to keep up with that pace if the learner has a tired mind. Don't recommend to take those lessons after working hours, or when otherwise tired :). Dedicate solid 2 hours with fresh mind, and you will benefit greatly from this course.
After tax cash flow chapter I really learned a lot, I like how the questions in the Business and Finance modeling section are all very practical and close to real life scenarios. I have strong accounting background and was able to complete the quiz with a good score, even so, we need to be very careful what the question is asking for, every question has a little twist, and using excel to simulate the cash flows is a good tool to layout in a logical and clear way.
Through the course, I could learn the tools to decide whether to accept or reject a project. The course has given examples of the Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, Payback period method, and other techniques of analysis. The instructors also explained business strategies in financial terms and how to value a new product venture using scenario analysis. It was an excellent course.
The first half of the course was intense, in a good way of course. The lectures were clear and the tests were also not very straightforward. However, the second half was a complete disaster. Everything could have been made so much more interesting had the instructor actually shown how the Excel spreadsheet was made, instead of just describing it. The explanations were pretty good though.
This is a great course! I have worked in the Operations sides of the business and this course gave me much need perspective into the corporate finance and account domains. Thank you to the two Professors involved. Great content and easy to follow and understand the reasoning and the why.
Professor Richard Lambert made this course, short and sweet, very easy to understand and follow along. I learnt so much from this course. I have also taken other courses on NPV but this is the one that gave me the epiphany about NPV and IRR. Thanks for making this course. Grateful!
The teachers were very knowledgeable, and taught this information well. My ONLY concern is that Module 3 contained a lot of information that would have made Module 2 easier to understand, and as such the content in Module 3 should have been presented before the content in Module 2.
This course was incredible!
The concepts and ideas in this course are extremely useful for your job, regardless of what field of business you are in.
I have applied several tools I learned through taking this course to make me more effective in my current position
the lecturers were very friendly while explaining every bit of study material, and throughout the course I was mesmerized by the way they teach. overall this course is must to do for those who want o take important decisions for their business firms. so 5 star