What is the aim of this course?

Many companies despite having profits still have problems with cash. In other words, they have to improve their liquidity. This topic is not widely discussed and a few management consultants, as well as managers, know how to do it in practice. Therefore, more companies die because of problems with liquidity than due to low profits. Luckily, there are a lot of techniques that will help you in a structured way to look for ways to generate more cash from the business.

In this course, I will show you different methods that you can use to improve the cash position of your business. You will learn the following things:

1. How to identify potential ways to improve your liquidity, especially quick wins

2. How to estimate in Excel how much cash you can generate from a specific solution

3. How to pick the optimal solution

4. How to prevent the firm from going bankrupt due to liquidity problems

This course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting firms and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, performance improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest firms from Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B, and services sectors that I worked for. We have helped numerous firms improve performance and escape bankruptcy, by using techniques and frameworks shown in this course. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who now are Partners in PE and VC funds, Investment Directors and Business Analysts in PE and VC, Operational Directors, COO, CRO, CEO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, etc. On top of that my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 124 000 students including people working in EY, McKinsey Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Alvarez & Marsal, PwC, Dell, Walgreens, Orange Citigroup, Cisco, IBM, and many others.

I teach through case studies, so you will have a lot of lectures showing examples of analyses, tools that we use. To a lot of lectures, you will find attached (in additional resources) the Excels as well as additional presentations, materials shown in the lectures, so as a part of this course you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modification, be applied by you or your team in your work.

Why did I decide to create this course?

Most firms and universities don’t show how to manage and improve a firm’s liquidity in practice. They concentrate on the analysis of financial statements and calculating ratios. This, unfortunately, does not prepare you for a situation in which liquidity is a huge issue. Liquidity is the second biggest reason why companies fail, so as a Management Consultant or a Manager, most likely you will come across this problem at some point.

This course will help you become an expert in improving the liquidity of the firm. This skill will prove very useful not only in consulting but also later on when you become a director or you move on to build your own business. By giving you exposure to real-life cases and analyses I want to improve your skills in liquidity management and liquidity improvement. Thanks to this course, you will know what and how to do it during performance improvement as well as turnaround projects. We want to provide you with frameworks that will open your eyes to the active management of liquidity.

To sum it up, the course will help you become an expert in liquidity management and liquidity improvement on the level of McKinsey, BCG, Bain, PwC, Deloitte, EY, and other top consulting firms. That is why, I highly recommend this course to Managers, Management Consultants as well as Investment Directors working for PE, Directors, owners / founders of businesses.

In what way will you benefit from this course?

The course is a practical, step by step guide loaded with tones of analyses, tricks, hints that will significantly improve the speed with which you generate new business ideas. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will learn:

1. How to identify potential ways to improve your liquidity, especially quick wins

2. How to estimate in Excel how much cash you can generate from a specific solution

3. How to pick the optimal solution

4. How to prevent the firm from going bankrupt due to problems with liquidity

You can also ask me any questions either through the discussion field or by messaging me directly.

How the course is organized?

The course is divided into 10 sections. Currently, you will find the following sections:

• Introduction. We begin with a little intro into the course as well as some general info how the course is organized

• General framework. In the second section, I will show how to the general framework for liquidity improvement and liquidity management. We will use it throughout the whole course.

• Reduce Inventory. In this section, I will show how to generate cash by reducing inventory. Inventory in most businesses is a must if you want to sell your products and scale the business. That is why it so vital to reduce the inventory if you want to get more cash.

• Reduce Receivables. In the 4th section, I discuss methods that you can use to reduce receivables. Most firms don’t sell directly, so a lot of money is tied up in receivables. Luckily, there are certain ways to lower receivables and increase cash position.

• Improve Payables. After that in the next section, we will have a look at how you can generate additional cash by improving payables. Most companies have plenty of suppliers that they have to pay for their services and goods. A lot of additional cash can be generated by optimizing the payables.

• Restructure Debt. Another way to improve the cash position is to restructure the debts you have and to make them cheaper to service or change the schedule of payments. In this section, we will discuss the general framework and we will have a look at case studies.

• Improve Margins & Revenues. Many managers forget that one of the ways to get more cash is simple to increase the margins or revenues. This may help you, under certain conditions, improve your cash position. We will discuss the main methods and we will have a look at case studies

• Revise Investment. In this section, we will have a look at how you can save cash by revising investments and picking the right ones from the point of view of your cash position.

• Strategic Moves. In some cases in order to improve the cash position of your firm you are forced to do more drastic moves. This requires a change to the strategy as well. We will discuss this issue in this section.

• Cut Costs. In this section, we will have a look at how you can generate cash, improve liquidity by reducing costs.

You will be able also to download many additional resources

1. Useful frameworks and techniques

2. Selected analyses are shown in the course

3. Links to additional presentations, articles, and movies

4. Links to books worth reading

At the end of my course, students will learn to…

• How to conduct Liquidity Improvement Projects

• How to find ways to improve liquidity, generate more cash

• Estimate in Excel the potential impact of different projects on the firm’s cash position

• Apply the right frameworks and techniques from your management consulting toolbox

• Identify quick wins when it comes to liquidity

• Manage Cash

• Conduct Investment Analyses

• Restructure Debt

• Reduce Receivables & Improve Payables

• Reduce Inventory

Who should take this course? Who should not?

• Management Consultants and Business Analysts

• Managers

• Analysts working in Strategic Departments

• Startup Founders

• Investment Directors

• Controllers

• Financial Directors

What will students need to know or do before starting this course?

• Basic or intermediate Excel

• Basic knowledge of economics or finance