Courses

CBA® COURSE OBJECTIVES

MARKETING COURSE

The CBA® Marketing course provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of marketing including:

• The marketing plan
• Strategic planning 
• Marketing research
• Feasibility studies
• Customer relationships and understanding the consumer
• Segmentation, target marketing and positioning
• Product planning, development, pricing and distribution
• Promotion management including digital marketing

These concepts are especially important for those helping small businesses, as marketing is often a mystery to small business owners and managers. In today’s competitive environment, your clients likely need to make plans and implement them, while simultaneously monitoring rapid changes in competition, regulations, legislation, the economy, society and technology.

This course is composed of nine (9) modules:

• SESSION 1: Introduction to Marketing
  This module provides an overall perspective on what marketing is, the processes it involves, and various philosophies of marketing.
• SESSION 2: Strategic Planning and the Marketing Plan
  Organizations cannot succeed without planning, and marketing plans must support the organization's mission, vision and objectives.
  This module looks at strategic planning and mission, key marketing strategies, analysis necessary for such planning, and the basics of a marketing plan.
• SESSION 3: Marketing Research, Feasibility Studies, and Sales Forecasting
  Marketing thrives on information.
  This module looks at the knowledge that is crucial to understand the environment, the consumer, the competition, the likelihood of a project's success and potential profitability, and the evaluation of the organization's marketing efforts.
• SESSION 4: Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) and Consumer Behavior
  Marketing centers on consumers.
  Firms cannot succeed if they do not understand consumers fully and deeply and provide them with value and satisfaction.
  This module looks at how companies accomplish these tasks.
• SESSION 5: Market Segmentation, Market Targeting and Positioning
  Organizations cannot be "all things, to all people (or to all businesses)."
  In almost all cases, both consumers (and businesses) have different needs, wants, and desires such that they cannot be satisfied by one option.
  This module examines the ways in which marketers divide the market into different interest groups (segments), select one or more segments to target with an appropriate marketing mix, and position the product or brand in the marketplace to appeal to the target market.
• SESSION 6: Product Management
  Consumers seek solutions to problems and marketers help to solve those problems by the products and services they offer.
  This module looks at products and services (and how they differ in terms of marketing), the importance of customer service in providing value to the consumer, the process of developing new products/services, and the need to build a strong brand.
• SESSION 7: Price Management
  Pricing the product or service is an important part of the marketing mix, as price is the only thing that generates revenue.
  This module examines price, costs, break-even analysis, and various approaches to setting and adjusting prices.
• SESSION 8: Place Management
  Products and services need to move from the providers to the consumers in a timely, efficient, and effective manner.
  This module discusses Channels of Distribution and Supply Chain Management with a focus on satisfying the goals of the channel members and the consumer.
• SESSION 9: Promotion Management
  Firms must be able to reach their target audience with information about the company, brands, and products.
  This module focuses on the promotion element of the Marketing Mix, with a good understanding of our target market's values and media exposure habits, and our goals and objectives, with a special emphasis on digital and social media marketing.

ACCOUNTING/FINANCE COURSE

The CBA® Accounting and Finance course provides an overview of essential issues regarding the areas of accounting and finance. The objective of the course is to impart enough information and develop sufficient basic skills to allow the student to understand the impact that these subject matters have on small businesses. The lack of an understanding of, or lack of financial information in general, represent major causes of business failure.

This course covers business organization, accounting, tax, business planning, financial statement analysis and other specialized analytical techniques. This course is one of the more quantitative areas in the program. The work in this course will require effort by the students to work out problems using basic mathematic skills and to learn more advanced analytical techniques based on those skills.

This course is comprised of nine (9) modules:

• SESSION 1: Business Entities
  An introduction to the way that businesses are organized and taxed.
• SESSION 2: Business Planning
  An examination of the business plan and its uses and purposes.
• SESSION 3: Financial Statements
  An introduction into the various types of financial statements, what's on them, and what their use is.
• SESSION 4: Financial Statement Analysis
  How to use the information found in financial statements to understand a business.
• SESSION 5: Financial Projections and Cash Flow Analysis
  The basics of making financial projections.
• SESSION 6: Managerial Accounting
  Break-even analysis and other forms of managerial accounting.
• SESSION 7: Sources of Financing
  Types of SBA programs available and a discussion of other funding sources.
• SESSION 8: Cost of Capital and Capital Budgeting
  The basics of cost of capital and capital budgeting.
• SESSION 9: Valuation
  A review of the processes for valuing non-public, closely held firms.

HUMAN RESOURCES COURSE

The CBA® Human Resources course offers a comprehensive review of major concepts in the area of human resource management. Particular focus is given to competitive advantage derived from improvement upon HR planning, selection, recruitment, training and compensation practices. Vignettes related to the hiring, management and termination of people in the workplace will be offered as a means to delve into topics from both a practical and theoretical perspective.

This course is comprised of seven (7) modules:

• SESSION 1: Introduction to HRM (The changing HR environment; Legal issues in HRM)*
• SESSION 2: Affirmative action debate
• SESSION 3: Staffing (Recruitment, Selection)
• SESSION 4: eRecruiting debate
• SESSION 5: Ensuring positive performance (Training, Performance Management, Compensation)
• SESSION 6: Organized labor debate
• SESSION 7: Gender and pay debate

*The basic course topics covered by the typical HRM textbook.

GRADING INFORMATION

You need to achieve 80% or greater in each of the three courses to complete the CBA® non-credit certificate. 

If you receive a grade of less than 70%, a retake exam is necessary.

NOTE: Each participant will be allowed to retake one exam at no charge. If more than one retake is required, the CBA® candidate may need to register again and pay the course registration fee.