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Day: September 27, 2019

What Businesses Hire a Corporate Financial Analyst?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning
Reading Time: 3 minutes

‘Information is power’ but only to those who know how to use it well and make sense of it! Let’s start this note by finding out what does this astonishingly hefty job tile holds in its realm.

The primary task of a corporate financial analyst involves analyzing piles of data and deriving something meaningful out of it, making sense of the numbers even when it’s not very evident in the first glance. fin
The job role involves making strategic decisions based on the finding supported by the database.

Comparing the records with that of a previous couple of years to see how well or bad the company is performing in the contemporary. They also assess the performance of stocks, bonds commodities and other investment tools to provide their recommendations and investment guidance to individuals and companies.

Where do they fit in?
Capitalism is all about maximizing profit and these guys know how to lead a company to prosperity based on facts and figures.

The role of a financial analyst is such that every business at some point or the other needs it if it’s planning strategic growth. If I have to keep it simple yet philosophical, I would say if a company is willing to learn from its past mistakes and prosper in the future, it needs the expertise of a financial analyst.

The investment banks, pension funds, insurance companies remain the predominated segments for absorbing the talent pool of financial analysts. Majorly all those corporations who are deploying money as a commodity, dealing in large chunks of money on a continuous basis are the prime employers of this job title.

Investment houses happen to have their own funds which require a well-calculated investment risk and return benefit, the financial analyst adds value by providing them with their insights based on the data analyzed.

In the world of finance, there are two types of firms, buy-side firms, and sell-side firms. Understanding the role of financial analysts in both contexts will help us in obtaining better insights.

The role of a buy-side firm is to make investment decisions, these are the firms who have massive capital to deploy for investing and generating profit in the future. Some big players include Fidelity, Blackstone, Citadel, etc.
The role of financial analysts working for a buy-side firm includes making investment strategies for their employer with the help of data insights and suggesting different avenues for investment that will help maximize the ROI.

Coming to the sell-side firms, these are the firms that sell investment banking services like acquisition advisory, trading services, stock research, etc. While working with sell-side firms financial analysts mostly write research reports and recommendations for stocks, whether to buy, hold or sell a particular security. Their remarkable compensations speak volumes for the weight they hold in the capacity of a financial analyst for a sell-side firm.

In addition to the prime employers, any business house that deals in a lot of data and is dependent on using data insights to function and be profitable will necessarily employ a financial analyst. In today’s changing technological landscape data is the king and strategic use of data’s army will help win the war of business.

As the experience of financial analysts increases, they chose a particular segment a niche sector to focus upon and thus their job role gets more particular and defined. Some of them are fund managers, portfolio managers, risk analysts, rating analysts, etc. They cater to specific segments within the industry by leveraging their experience in a particular field.

Companies like Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Fidelity Investments are some established players in the financial domain and they have a plethora of opportunities for those who want to pursue a career as a financial analyst.

Conclusion
In the contemporary world where economies are growing at an enormous scale, the key driver of growth remains the financial industry. Piloting this growth is the people working in the capacity of a financial analyst who uses complex data to provide strategic solutions and in turn help to drive investments. Investment firms, pension funds & insurance companies are some of the prime employers of these skillsets. Other than the prime employers there is a lot of prospects in companies that are data-centric.

How Big Data Can Help Boost Sales?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning
Reading Time: 3 minutes

How Big Data Can Help Boost Sales?

Selling in general

Sales form the backbone of any organization. You need the revenue to soar up in order to quench up your profit maximization quest, that is what every capitalist aspires to do. No matter how good is the product or the services of a company, it will only grow the bottom line if it gets a good top line, i.e. sales.

Ever wondered how do salespeople close the deal and how do they manage to convert clients on the basis of leads? Well, the process is long and complex, it needs a lot of dedication and commitment to stay at the top of the game. If you ask a salesperson how did they manage to work wonders with a mere lead, the general response will be that they identified the needs of the customer and aligned it with the benefits provides by the products/ services they were selling.

A good salesperson knows the customer inside out and for that, you need to spend a considerable amount of time and money tracking the whereabouts of your customers and maintaining a personal relationship to some extent. You have to be a detail-oriented person who knows the nitty-gritty of things and is able to use the information to your benefit.

Sales in times of the big data

Sales in the times of the data revolution have changed drastically and more in favour of the salespeople easing their work with technology and insights. The above-mentioned approach to sales was commonplace until big data became the next big thing and technology evolved to complement this transition.

In the present scenario, whatever you need to know about your customer is available at your fingertips, thanks to big data. Name, number, email, address, etc. have become very generic and no efforts are required to gather the same. More advanced data about particular preferences, be it food habits or their personal hobbies everything and anything is available for those who use the World Wide Web and smartphones.

It doesn’t matter how insignificant a piece of information is, big data stores everything it can. Mostly the insignificant information about individuals combines to form a meaningful database that helps to obtain statistical inferences about a hypothesis.

For salespeople the big data is like a personal genie, they don’t need to wait long hours for meetings that might not even be relevant at the slightest in hope of conversion. Big data helps to boost sales by allowing salespeople to act upon the customer data available.

Big data Analytics Courses help salespeople by providing the required database to analyze past data and optimize their pricing given the demand and supply of the product or the services. It also aids in providing better visualization of the data to put in the right context. Other uses of big data in sales can be understood by the compelling case studies of the consumer.

What’s necessary for better conversion? Well, a good marketing stint of course. Marketing has evolved drastically over the past decade, with big data marketing that has eased the pain for salespeople through better targeting and advertising of the product and services offered.

From making predictions about what can sell well to designing the products that the existing customers need, big data helps a whole lot to make sales easier and more predictable than ever. Big data is also used to shape customer preferences.

The big data serves a special purpose for companies that are starting up and early in the process, it helps the companies to analyze data generated by the peers in the industry who already have been there for a significant amount of time and then helps to identify the loopholes and design their products and services better.

Conclusion

Sales are the backbone of every organization. You need revenue and profits to continue and grow your business empire, most of the expenditure related to operations is financed by the revenue generated through sales. In today’s scenario, big data plays a crucial role in increasing sales and in turn profitability of an organization. It helps the salespeople to target the right customer and design products more aligned with the needs of regular customers through its data insights.

What is the Scope of a Corporate Financial Analyst?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning
Reading Time: 3 minutes

What is the Scope of a Corporate Financial Analyst?

In this globalized world, the companies are growing with lightning-fast speed hence diversifying its operations. To keep up with the dynamic nature of the corporate surroundings, professionals have to strengthen their expertise to contribute significantly to the growth. Especially those finance guys.

Why are these companies growing? The answer to it is really simple though reaching there takes a quite lot – maximizing revenue. And the revenue which comes in has to grow multiple folds and to do this you need a lot of insights. There walks in your Finance guy.

A financial analyst has a role to lay in every organization- big or small. It is one of the most desired careers by people who have a knack towards managing money. The financial analysts play a more relevant role in the Financial services sector.

They are the pioneers of money. An analyst starts with a junior role brushing up his skills and moving forward to a senior role with the experience. The more they expose themselves to the industry, the wider become their career opportunities.

The financial services industry is made up of complex components and to break through is quite difficult. The typical work of a financial analyst includes examining financial data of companies, drawing valid conclusions from those statements and making business decisions thus preventing it from any monetary crisis.

A corporate financial analyst helps the companies to make the best use of the money available with them by making the right investing and budgeting decisions. Financial Analysts know their companies inside out and they keep a constant tap of the market which surrounds the companies. They use their expertise and the vaguely available data to draw conclusions, make predictions and take actions based on those conclusions.

At times, a company decides to merge with some other company and some decide to buy others. All of these are not decided overnight. Months of studies, analysis, and contemplation are done by these analysts who predict various scenarios and make such conclusions. An analyst can never rely on those principles which he learned during college. He has to be in touch with everything which is going around.

Also, the field of financial analysis has various niches that can be handled by financial analysts who have varied interests. The role of the Financial Analyst also depends on the company he works for. If he is on the buyer side of the business, his focus would be on how to manage the funds available, how to spend, how to make investment decisions that are in the best interest of the company, etc. These analysts don’t have a final say in any decisions taken by the company on how to use the conclusions drawn.

If the Financial Analyst is on the seller side of the business, he has to keep a tap on all elements involving different types of securities in a particular industry. They give their recommendations on what securities to buy, sell or hold. When to buy, sell or hold a particular security.

They also analyze various portfolios, the perks they reap and the risks which are associated with the combination of securities the portfolio is made up of. These insights are highly valued and are always the foundation of investment decisions. The insights can help the analysts to bag a huge amount of money as these are not very obvious insights.

Some financial analysts also work for various investment banks, where they curate securities, make bundles and portfolios with their knowledge and then sell it to the commoners at their price. They research a lot and analyze the performance of various securities, give them a price and make ‘buy and sell’ recommendations to the clients and helping these banks sell them.

Conclusion
These judgment and curation skill sets are uniquely blended in a Financial Analyst. This makes the Financial Analyst one of the highest-paid professionals in the Corporate arena. They use their power of risk analysis to make the opaque layer of the Finance world transparent also helping companies to make growth decisions and putting the right foot forward, transforming the world into aware finance capital.

Also Read: Future of Financial Analyst in India