Business Acumen

This module focuses on the associate level outcomes of CIPDs core knowledge area.

As people professionals, it’s critical that we understand organisations– their purpose, future direction, priorities and performance – as well as the external influences and trends impacting them.

We also need to understand the wider world of work – and how organisations contribute not only to the lives of their employees and customers, but society as a whole. Understanding these aspects of work enables us to anticipate external events and internal issues, and identify how we can add the most value – and, therefore, contribute to the sustained success and development of organisations.

Within this area you’ll also find the practical business knowledge that you need, such as financial literacy, business planning, and supplier management. Knowledge of how to use these business skills is critical to operating successfully as a people professional within different types of organisations and environments.  

This is why Business acumen is one of the largest knowledge areas in the new Profession Map; we need a deep understanding of the world of work if we are to be effective in creating value for organisations, their employees and wider society.

Business acumen is all about seeing the bigger picture from a strategic perspective and recognising that all decisions no matter how small can have an effect on the bottom line.

This course will enable students to enhance their marketing, financial acumen, improve their judgment, business sense, interpersonal and decisiveness skills.

This Business Acumen course will also give students an advantage everyone wishes that they had. The course will help students recognise learning events, manage risk better and increase their critical thinking.

Given the speed and unpredictability with which the world is changing, businesses need the assurance that all employees are consistently making decisions in a way that helps the company achieve its objectives particularly in terms of the range of products and services that are designed to match customer expectations. There is a strong connection with the People Practice module, particularly in terms of how organisations can drive sustained organisation performance by creating a high-performance work organisation (HPWO). A high performance workforce, increased team diversity and inclusion can add a competitive edge to an organisation. This will result in better decisions being made around strategic objectives and outcomes. It will also result in meeting customer needs, maintaining and sustaining brand loyalty and increased revenue to the organisation. This will be demonstrated throughout this module.

Building and implementing strategy requires a deep understanding of how companies create a long-term competitive advantage. Companies need to combine effective strategic planning with business acumen to develop a data-driven and insightful sense of how the moving parts of a company work together to grow and thrive.

This course will improve the students understanding of how operations, marketing, sales and other functions coordinate to create and execute successful business strategy. Students will also polish their leadership skills to become more business savvy.

In addition, this course will communicate to students, that to gain increasing visibility and roles as strategic advisors to business leaders, employees at every level of a business need to know how their company makes money and operates systemically as a total business.  Professional employees need to know how to hold a meaningful dialogue with business leaders and how their work drives the business forward. This course will demonstrate that the competition of modern markets has expanded the responsibility of business literacy beyond the purview of senior executives. All levels of management and operations need to keep themselves ahead of the curve. 

In addition, Business Acumen has the ability to influence a whole organisation and provide that additional edge that will lead to success.

Achieving synergy between business and customer requires cooperation and engagement with everyone in the chain. It requires the keenness and the speed of good business acumen.

Business acumen is an operational awareness of how a variety of factors could work together for the overall benefit of the organisation as opposed to that of a limited, departmental viewpoint. It is about working with the rest of the team to develop disciplined strategies for performance excellence, product leadership and customer intimacy. 

1. consider organisational ecosystems, what they deliver and how they attract customers to products and services;

2. apply financial literacy and financial levers in determining financial success;   

3. examine business success in the context of executing strategy through people;

4. analyse people strategy tools that ultimately leads to better performance outcomes for an organisation; 

5. show how the marketing and sales functions allows an organisation to identify customer needs, move from idea to finished product/service in order to generate revenue;

6. analyse current issues and trends in business acumen thinking and informed/evidence based decision-making.