Skills to Elevate Talent

Skills for Accounting & Finance Teams

When Your Future Leaders Need an Extra Boost

Your team’s role has vastly evolved—you’re no longer simply analyzing balance sheets and forecasting spend the way you used to. Your partnership across the organization is even more essential today. Your team needs to have the basic accounting and finance skills to provide that same level of guidance, but they're also expected to have more digital literacy and business skills across a variety of programs, reporting capabilities and an understanding of data analytics to name a few. Now you need to couple those accounting, finance and digital skills with complementary know-how like communications and marketing to build a bright, well-rounded team.

At DeVryWorks, our solutions consultants help guide you through talent succession planning. We’ll work alongside you to help you identify future leaders, assess skills needs and orchestrate learning pathways to help empower your team. Your succession plan should be specifically designed to meet the unique needs of your team—including tactics like skill building, employee retention, diversity advancement and talent sourcing.

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Featured Content for Finance and Accounting Leaders

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Skills to Develop Your Accounting and Finance Teams

Countless factors go into running a successful business, but few are more important than your people. To stay ahead of the competition, you need a consistent way to develop your skilled talent with a keen eye on diversity. Of course, that's often easier said than done, but it doesn't have to be.

Our digitally enabled, flexible learning pathways are designed with your team’s success in mind. While what we offer is unique to your talent needs and business, we’ve highlighted some of the more common skills areas we hear are gaps for leaders in accounting and finance.

Account and Finance Skills

Accounting Information Systems

Reducing manual processes has its perks—reduced demands on your team’s time and risk mitigation. To help your team implement digital tools for your department, you might first start with an integrated, automated accounting system. These programs can include ledgers, transaction process cycles, application controls, information security requirements and business information systems integration.

Forecasting and Budgeting

Your team is consistently working with other departments and teams to forecast and budget appropriately. Ensuring your team has the most current understanding of various processes to account for resource expenditures, long-range budget forecasting and departmental forecast planning can help mitigate liquidity risks and increase returns on excess cash.

Investment Fundamentals and Security Analysis

To help drive returns from your company’s excess cash, your team might skill up on how to make investment decisions. By exploring the nature of securities, mechanics and costs of trading, the way in which securities markets operate, the relationship between risk and return, equity securities, fixed income securities, portfolio diversification and the concept of valuation.

Administration and Management

Guiding your team to better understand the fundamental management theories that drive organizations and programs forward can create better organizational relationships. Could your team use a skill boost in leadership, planning, project management, and resource management?

Money and Banking

Accounting and finance teams work with a variety of partners, but their bank partner may be one of the most critical. Therefore, your team needs to understand the global financial system and how financial services companies play a role in money movement, investments, funds acquisitions, credit extension as well as capital markets.

Digital and Complementary Skills

Big data and Analytics

Data mining, business intelligence and managing big data is something you’re likely grappling with. Accelerating your team’s ability to gather, store, report and analyze important data through skills like business analytics, social network analysis, relational database management and data warehousing, data modeling and decision trees can help them understand and report on business objectives and drive positive results.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Finance and accounting teams are becoming increasingly more reliant on advanced technology. Giving your team the basic understanding of how these tools function can help them understand their potential impact on your business. We can show them how to develop and train machine learning models and apply linear regression to make predictions, work with control systems related to applications such as robotics, natural language processing, data analytics and artificial intelligence.

Cyber Security

Since your accounting and finance team is responsible for the flow of cash, they can often become the target of cyber-attacks. Through hands-on exercises and projects, they’ll create, plan, implement and monitor security solutions to protect critical data, networks and prevent future attacks. Your team can also explore the design of an organization’s security systems procedures, standards, protocols and policies, as well as how to ensure operational security follows standards, policies and laws.

Global Supply Chain

Many organizations these days deal with complex, and strained supply chains. Having your team knowledgeable about strategic procurement and how to build operation systems to evaluate and select a supply chain transportation strategy can help them become more strategic enlightened partners.

Sales and Marketing

With marketing technology and demand generation being a large driver of leads for sales, your team could benefit from understanding marketing fundamentals like consumer intent, creating promotions, developing advertising campaigns and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs). Through fascinating case studies, interactive tutorials and real-world projects, our programs can help your team understand this key revenue driver.

Communications

Your team’s ability to communicate is crucial to budget management, forecasting and sharing insights. But building confidence, clarity and credibility takes practice. Could your team use help honing their skills in professional speaking, developing written and verbal communications, creating presentations and providing management support?

Why DeVry?

Benefits of Developing Continual Learners

By creating learning pathways for your team to cultivate the business skills needed, you’re helping to future-proof your organization. You’re also helping to empower them to fulfill a career journey that could establish them as leaders of tomorrow.

See how skills development programs can benefit your organization beyond just improving the capabilities of your team. Here are a few benefits you could see from a partnership with DeVryWorks.

Increased Innovation

Not everyone equates finance and accounting teams with innovation, but you know that's just not the case. Today your team is eager to learn new ways of approaching their work. They’re ready to build the confidence to think creatively about their routine tasks as well as new ways of making improvements. When you foster diversity of thought and encourage next-level thinking, you encourage your team to bring the next brilliant idea to life.

Honed Problem-Solving Skills

Your team is notorious for thinking ahead—it’s in their nature. Fine tuning those problem-solving skills and applying them across your organization can help your team anticipate issues and develop proactive solutions. Making your team an even more powerful partner.

Boosted Employee Engagement

Offering a development track can sharpen your team’s skills and ultimately advance their career. When your team feels they’re on a clear career path, that supports and values their ideas and aspirations, their engagement and productivity is likely to rise.

Shalom Suniula

Insurance consultant, USI Insurance Services | DeVry and Keller alumnus

My position as an insurance consultant offers an opportunity to advocate and give back to sports in a meaningful way. DeVry and Keller played a huge role in helping me prepare and understand how to transfer skills and discipline from one profession to the other.

Partner with DeVryWorks to Build Your Accounting and Finance Team's Skills

Our skill-building programs can equip your team with new tools, different ways of analyzing information and becoming more comfortable with technology advancements in your field. We know you’re facing unique obstacles, so we’re here to work with you and create a plan tailored to your team’s needs.

In New York, DeVry University operates as DeVry College of New York. DeVry University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission (HLC), www.hlcommission.org. The University’s Keller Graduate School of Management is included in this accreditation. DeVry is certified to operate by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Arlington Campus: 1400 Crystal Dr., Ste. 120, Arlington, VA 22202. DeVry University is authorized for operation as a postsecondary educational institution by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. Lisle Campus: 4225 Naperville Rd, Suite 400, Lisle, IL 60532. Program availability varies by location. In site-based programs, students will be required to take a substantial amount of coursework online to complete their program.