ABOUT THE CLIENT

Founded in 1983, our client is the world’s leading business restructuring consultancy firm based in the United States of America. It delivers performance improvement, turnaround management and business advisory services to organizations seeking to transform operations, catapult growth and accelerate results through decisive action.

They employ over 3,000 people in 55 offices across 24 countries in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, making the firm one of the largest privately held global professional services firms. Powered by client’s restructuring heritage, their professionals assess business process management risks to help businesses address key areas impeding performance and implement sound solutions.

WHAT BUSINESS CHALLENGE WAS THE CLIENT EXPERIENCING?

The financial analysts at our client’s Dubai office are supposed to develop financial models for the companies they consult and present it to their key stakeholders. However, it was observed that although these analysts were technically sound, they were not developing standardised models. Every analyst had a different way of developing and formatting their models.

The models they used to conduct financial analysis were rigid, lacked structure and were not audit friendly. Moreover, they were often found to be outsourcing certain model development tasks to their US head office. This inconsistency and delegation of tasks added to their time taken in conducting the analysis, therefore creating bottlenecks.

The client wanted a learning solution that would:

• Ensure their analysts are aware of the current industry best practices for developing financial models
• Provide them with skills and tools they need to create a standardised, flexible and review/audit friendly financial models
• Develop models which incorporate industry best practices and are flexible to accommodate clients’ ad-hoc needs
• Equip their analysts with MS Excel automation to reduce the delegation of tasks as well as the reporting turn-around time

WHAT SOLUTION DID KAPLAN PROVIDE?

Three Statement and Advanced Debt Modeling

HOW DID KAPLAN WORK WITH THE CLIENT TO DEVELOP THE SOLUTION?

• To develop the learning solution, Kaplan used the ‘collaborative customization’ approach
• The course outline, the content and the learning outcomes were developed by conducting multiple rounds of consultative interviews with key stakeholders of the organization and Debt Restructuring team
• It incorporated facilitating the participating analysts to create a Debt-Restructuring Model from scratch which would be user friendly, flexible and consistent with industry best practices

HOW WAS THE TRAINING DELIVERED?

• The training was delivered face-to-face (F2F) over three days. It was interactive and included real-time business scenarios, MS Excel training
• Following was the break-down of the training agenda:
  – Day 1: Three Statement Modeling
  – Day 2: Three Statement Modeling
  – Day 2: Advanced Debt Modeling

WHAT ASPECTS WERE HIGHLY APPRECIATED BY THE CLIENT?

• Collaborative customisation of program and content through consultative approach
• Industry experienced trainer, ex-financial modeler conducting the interactive delivery
• Comprehensive support material for effective embedding of learning
• Project management geared towards well-executed programme