Event Planner Journey

It's not only the Finance department that needs to understand budgeting and finance essentials. Given the importance of finance for non-finance professionals, it's in everyone's best interest to have some basic knowledge of one of the most important aspects of business finance - budgeting. In this course, you'll learn to identify the characteristics of an effective budget, the stages in planning one, and how to distinguish between budgets types. You'll also explore budgeting concepts and techniques such as historical and zero-based budgeting, variance analysis, capital budgeting, and performing budgeting calculations.

To maintain your company's finances, you need a strong knowledge of business finance. And to improve the financial well-being of your company, it's vital to understand key financial statements, such as the Income Statement, Cash Flow Statement, and Balance Sheet, as these will hint at problems and possible solutions. This course will give you an overview of these three statements. You'll also explore typical examples of financial statements, learn how each financial statement relates to the other, and discover what each one indicates about your company's financial position.

Risk taking can revolutionize business, but you need to know when and how to take a strategic risk when the opportunity arises. Managing risk means effectively assessing a threat by recognizing the probability of that risk occurring and evaluating the impact of the risk should it occur. In this course, you'll learn to define strategic risk taking, what holds individuals back, and how to make calculated leaps of faith.

Creating a business plan helps you clearly see the opportunities and obstacles you'll inevitably face as you pursue your business idea. By implementing a business plan, you stand a better chance of getting the support you need to succeed. In this course, you'll learn about what a business plan is, the business planning process, and the steps you need to take when creating a business case. You'll also learn how to carry out an internal analysis and about the key elements examined in any external and SWOT analyses. Finally, you'll learn about activities that can help you when implementing a business case, including developing action plans and determining how the implementation should be measured, monitored, and assessed.

Business execution is the "how" of getting things done. As a leader, you can use business execution to drive performance and strategies in the right direction, to solve problems, and to inspire others. In this course, you'll learn about the characteristics that define effective business execution culture. You'll also become familiar with the three elements needed to execute a business plan: practice, planning, and people. Finally, you'll learn actionable strategies for fostering a business execution culture.

For the new project manager, the essentials - what you need to know to undertake your new responsibilities - are not always obvious. Project management involves a lot of moving parts. In this course, you'll learn some of the foundational concepts, such as what a project and its project environment and scope are. You'll learn what you'll be responsible for, and things you'll need to understand before planning begins. You'll also learn where to go to access useful information and how to identify the different types of people who will have an interest in the project - its stakeholders.

Prior to begining any project - before you plan the budget or create the schedule - you need to develop a clear vision for what the project is to achieve and how it will achieve it. That involves clarifying what stakeholders expect to see in the end, all the tasks that will need to be carried out, the resources you will need, and who will be doing the work. These are your project scope and the project team required. In this course you will learn about these aspects of project management. You'll learn how to complete a work breakdown structure to nail down all those big-picture details so that your project gets off on the right foot.

As a project manager, once your project scope has been clearly defined, it's time to estimate and plan. Drawing on information from the initiation phase, you must now determine how much time and money will be required to meet objectives and complete the project. In this course you will learn how to develop the project schedule and cost baselines for your project budget, and use them to monitor and measure performance throughout the project.

The history of business is the history of project management. Just as our ideas of how to conduct business continue to evolve, so do our conception of the project manager's role, the characteristics of a project, and the project life cycle itself. Traditional project management had its time and place, but today's landscape calls for innovation and adaptive leadership. In this course, you'll explore how project management approaches have evolved to address changing project environments. You'll learn about the transition from purely empirical, waterfall models of PM to more adaptive, hybrid, and agile project management techniques.

For those responsible for managing projects, understanding the project basics is essential. Project management is affected at every stage by the organization, the social environment, the project stakeholders, and many other aspects of the context in which the project is carried out. In this course, you will learn about project characteristics, including key terms and concepts and the project manager's role. You will also explore PM competencies, product and project life cycles, enterprise environmental factors, and organizational process assets that can influence project outcomes.

Social media is one of the most vital technologies companies can use to attract, connect with, and retain customers. If you want to meet customers where they are, that's the place to be. In this course, you'll learn why social media is such an important tool of persuasion for businesses. You'll explore how companies use social media today as a key component of a persuasive communication strategy. You'll also learn how to analyze your organization's social media channels and marketing strategies to strengthen and maintain your relationship with your customers.

The growth of mobile devices and social media have dramatically changed how consumers interact online. This has had a profound effect on how businesses market services and products to their customers. The facts about Digital are compelling. People prefer to interact online, mobile devices now account for over 50 percent of web page views, the current worldwide total number of Internet users is 4.5 billion, and social media users worldwide represent 3.2 billion people. In this course, you'll learn how digital provides opportunities for understanding the customer journey, creating sustainable business growth, and fostering more highly functioning organizations, teams, and individuals. You'll also learn how organizations can benefit from applying digital technologies and practices to their marketing plans and strategies. This course was developed in partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute. (www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com) For those who are interested in pursuing a certification, please contact the Digital Marketing Institute directly via this website: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/lp/skillsoft

According to recent research, over 90% of business-to-business customers carry out online research before they make a purchase decision. It's clear that it's important for every business to have an online presence. Today, when customers have a need or a problem to solve, the first step is to search for an answer online. In this course, you'll learn about how customers search for solutions to their needs and how businesses can match those searches with the right online presence. You'll also learn how an online presence can be designed to engage and connect with customers, building strong relationships to support your business, as well as how you can increase conversion by optimizing your website content for searches. Finally, you'll examine the role of email marketing, which continues to provide one of the highest returns on investment of any digital channel by examining the key elements of compelling email communications, including how they align to your customer's journey, and how they can help you to achieve your business objectives. This course was developed in partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute. (www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com) For those who are interested in pursuing a certification, please contact the Digital Marketing Institute directly via this website: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/lp/skillsoft

More than ever, people are using social media. They aren't just interacting with friends, but with businesses as well. Today, customers expect businesses to reach them on social media. As a result, social media not only gives businesses invaluable customer data, it provides an effective way to promote products and services to grow the business as well. In this course, you'll learn the key features and benefits of social media for businesses, and become familiar with its key concepts and terminology, essential to understanding the role it can play in engaging with customers, providing support, advertising, and generating business. You'll also learn about the most popular social media tools, and how personal branding and an active community can be a real differentiator for your organization, and how it can support your overall business objectives. This course was developed in partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute. (www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com For those who are interested in pursuing a certification, please contact the Digital Marketing Institute directly via this website: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/lp/skillsoft

With the rise in Digital, businesses are challenged to carefully consider how customer and employee data are captured, stored, and retained. Because data security risks such as data breaches and cyber threats regularly affect organizations, businesses do well to plan, manage, and mitigate against these internal and external risks. Without careful management, risks can easily get out of hand, especially in a social media environment. This can cause serious damage to a business or its brand. In this course, you'll learn about the risks that can affect organizations online, how, without careful management, they can grow beyond control, and ways to manage and mitigate against them. You'll also review the potential impacts of various risks related to Digital, such as a data breaches and cyber threats, and how proper planning can prevent them. You'll explore how the rise in social media increases the likelihood that small events can quickly become a global issue for a company, and how issues that arise must be treated with care, using pre-defined guidelines. In addition to these risks, you'll examine various business challenges associated with Digital, such as lack of digital skills faced by many companies, the need for innovation, and difficulties related to an organization's structure. Finally, you‘ll review evolving regulations around the use of Digital, and how to ensure that your approach is aligned with local market requirements. This course was developed in partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute. (www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com) For those who are interested in pursuing a certification, please contact the Digital Marketing Institute directly via this website: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/lp/skillsoft

Get started with Excel 2019, the spreadsheet application included with the Microsoft Office 2019 Suite. During this course, you will familiarise yourself with the interface and some of its features, including the ribbon, status bar, zoom, and various view modes. Begin the course by learning how to find the application on the desktop and open it. To get the most out of Excel, you need to understand how the interface is laid out, so the course next explores the application. This leads into the zoom function, which can be used to adjust how to visualize the spreadsheet in Excel by making data entries larger or smaller. Discover how to examine mode views, which in Excel features three different preset view modes: Normal, Page Layout, and Page Break. Conclude the course by observing how to move between documents, allowing work on multiple documents simultaneously while using a number of tools to organize a workspace. In order to practice what you have learned, you will find the Word document named Excel 2019 for Windows: Getting Started Exercise as well as the associated materials in the Resources section.

Create a new spreadsheet and workbook, with Excel 2019. During this course, you will begin by learning how to create and open a document, and then learn how to use document templates. This leads into how to manage worksheets, which are used in Excel to manage different sets of data within a workbook. Next, observe how to save your worksheet or workbook as an Excel version or pdf; and recover unsaved documents. Learn how to insert headers and footers, useful if you have additional information to insert into a spreadsheet. Examine how to set your print area; adjust your print page layout, and then print your document. Discover how to check for compatibility issues; edit your document properties; and check for personal information in your document. The course concludes by showing how to create an accessible document, and how to protect your document or restrict all access with a password. In order to practice what you have learned, you will find the Word document named Excel 2019 for Windows: Creating & Saving Workbooks Exercise as well as the associated materials in the Resources section.

Delve into data manipulation techniques with Excel 2019 for Windows. In this course, learners can explore various ways to insert, edit, and manipulate data. Begin by learning how to select cells in order to apply changes to individual or multiple cells. Then learners will discover different ways of inserting, editing, and replacing data in a spreadsheet, and observe how to insert special characters. The course continues by demonstrating how to edit multiple worksheets simultaneously; delete items in a spreadsheet; and how to use the undo and redo actions. Explore how to create automatic data series; use the Flash Fill feature, and insert dropdown menus. Delve into configuring the spell check and autoCorrect options; transferring, and copying and pasting data. Complete this course by observing how to move data from one worksheet to another, and transpose a data range. In order to practice what you have learned, you will find the Word document named Excel 2019 for Windows: Inserting & Manipulating Data Exercise as well as the associated materials in the Resources section.

Refine your data's appearance with Excel 2019 for Windows. In this course, you will discover how you can align data, use colors and themes, resize rows and columns, and insert tables and borders in Excel 2019 to change data presentation. Learners will begin by observing how to set a data type, and then format and align their data. Next, observe how to use colors, which can help data stand out for the reader and make the table easier to read. Discover how to change the cell style; use document themes, and use formulas to modify the text case. Explore how to create clean, professional looking titles, and format titles to make them presentable. Create tables to ease organization; resize columns and rows; insert borders, and columns and rows. Conclude the course by observing how to transfer format styles. In order to practice what you have learned, you will find the Word document named Excel 2019 for Windows: Formatting Data Exercise as well as the associated materials in the Resources section.

Put formulas to work with Excel 2019 for Windows. In this 12-video course, learners will observe how to work with formulas, including built-in formulas such as SUM and COUNT. You will begin by discovering how to insert a formula by using the function library, and then perform simple calculations within an individual cell. Explore how to use automated formulas in a table; create automated cumulative tools; and insert subtotals. Following on from this, you will learn how to count cells in a range by using different formulas, and then rank values, which is extremely useful if you want to find out where a particular value places on a list of data entries. The course also explores how to examine rounding a number, to round up or down your data values; use replacement formulas when you need to make changes; convert number types, and factorize the results of a division. Conclude the course by observing how to create random values. In order to practice what you have learned, you will find the Word document named Excel 2019 for Windows: Using Basic Formulas Exercise as well as the associated materials in the Resources section.

Solving problems requires strategic thinking. You need to ask the right people the right questions to get to the source of the issue and find the solution. In this course, you'll learn about identifying stakeholders, gaining their input and trust, and using analysis techniques to get to the root cause of a problem.

Before you start looking for solutions to a problem, it's helpful to know what people want in an ideal world. This will give you some direction and aid in the strategic thinking needed to create alternative solutions. In this course, you'll learn how to define ideal states and generate and evaluate problem solutions. You'll also learn how to recognize and avoid common pitfalls when solving problems.

When the time comes to make a final, critical decision, you need to be able to understand the reasons for making that decision, as well as its possible consequences. You must also assess the effectiveness of your decisive action in solving a particular organizational problem. In this course, you'll learn techniques for making decisions based on key criteria, such as costs, time constraints, and organizational goals. You'll explore different decision-making styles, and how each can help in problem solving. You'll also learn how to plan, manage, evaluate, and celebrate solution implementation.

Systems thinking allows you to understand how systems work, as well as your role in them. Systems thinking affords you the ability to see the interrelationships among all events, putting you in a better position to address problems.

In order to make the best business decisions, you need to confront - and overcome - your cognitive biases. In this course, you will learn techniques for identifying cognitive bias, as well as strategies for overcoming specific biases.

An organization's social and political landscape can provide opportunities for positive leadership, influencing others in order to accomplish team and company goals. In this course, you will discover methods and strategies for effectively influencing a team to accept your ideas. You'll be introduced to the importance of political awareness and the essential skills involved in utilizing positive influence, while avoiding the negative, when persuading others. You'll also have an opportunity to practice methods for influencing effectively and ethically.

Getting things done in the business world requires more than simply issuing orders. And most of us don't have the titles or authority to issue them in the first place. Along with being credible and building trust, you get results without direct authority by using persuasion and influence. Effective persuasion methods and influencing skills are the difference makers for getting results, with or without positional authority. This course will help you engage and enlist others in getting things done without the resort of formal power. It explores persuasion techniques and ways to promote influence through effective communication, reciprocity, the exchange of professional 'currencies', and persevering through resistance.

Authority carries a certain positional power. A title grants a person some power and authority, but even that has its limits. To meet goals and get results requires developing a sense of personal power that goes beyond the job description and that print on the business card. Personal power stems from personal credibility, influence, and political savvy. Even those with the most humble job titles can know how to get things done. In this course, you'll learn how developing personal power and credibility, and using them for building trust with your coworkers and organization, allows you to increase your influence at work and reach your goals.

In the business environment, one of the most prized skills is the art of negotiation. Whether it's agreeing prices with suppliers, setting deadlines with clients, or getting a raise from a manager, strong negotiation skills are a must, and are often the deciding factor between success and failure. In this course, you'll learn how to sharpen your negotiating skills through effective preparation and by focusing on the important issues at hand. You'll explore the tools that will help you communicate for success. You'll also learn common best practices for countering ineffective negotiation techniques, and for overcoming negotiation challenges.

Negotiation is not a game where the "winner takes it all" - it's a relationship-building process where those involved try to understand each other's needs and think creatively about solutions. Central to this process are effective negotiating skills. In this course, you'll learn how to build and maintain trust so you can find common ground with the other party. You'll hone your negotiation skills by exploring how people with different personality types may react during negotiations. You'll also learn how to manage emotions and interests, facilitate agreements, and overcome continued resistance. Finally, you'll learn how to close a negotiation so that all parties involved are satisfied.