Business Acumen for Contact Center Leaders

As an experienced contact center leader, you see the need to identify the contact center’s value contributions and effectively communicate them throughout your organization. Further developing your business acumen can help you do this more effectively.

Business acumen is a set of skills and knowledge that give you new perspectives and the ability to see the big picture of the contact center and the entire organization. You can then use that picture to make better judgments and decisions. Mastering the skills involved in developing strong business cases for contact center initiatives will help you make an impact on your organization and move the contact center—and the organization—forward. This course focuses on the financial, influencing, negotiating, partnering, and communication skills that will further develop your business acumen so you can have a greater impact within and beyond the contact center.

Introduction

• What is business acumen?
• The key drivers of any business

Module 1: Financial Management

• Why improve your financial skills?
• Budgeting and forecasting
  • Differences between budgeting and forecasting
  • Types of budgets
  • Approaches to preparing the budget
  • Types of expenses
  • Preparing a financial forecast
  • Forecasting staff costs
  • Sunk costs and prospective costs
• Conducting financial analyses
  • Types of analyses
  • Ratio analyses
  • Thinking like the C-Suite
  • Break-even analysis
  • Analyzing variances
  • Knowing when and how to react
• Financial planning for the long-term
  • Things to consider with long-term financial forecasts
  • Capacity planning
  • Capitalization
• Creating and managing an RFP process
  • Writing the RFP
  • Designing the evaluation plan
  • Issuing the RFP
  • Reviewing the proposals
  • Awarding the business

Module 2: Influencing, Negotiating, and Partnering

• Influencing
  • Conducting a stakeholder analysis
  • The elements of influence
  • Dealing with office politics
  • Nurturing work relationships
• Negotiating
  • Negotiation styles, techniques, and strategies
• Partnering
  • Critical factors for successful partnerships
  • Strategies for building partnerships
  • Partnering with customers
  • Alignment

Module 3: Communicating

• Communicating UP
  • Managing your boss
  • How CEOs think and lead
  • Talking to the CFO
  • Choosing the right media
• Writing business messages
• Storytelling
  • Why tell stories?
  • Types of stories
  • Strategic storytelling
  • General storytelling tips
• Presentations
  • Considerations
  • Getting and maintaining attention
  • Secrets for effective presentations
  • Delivery tips
• Communicating with data
  • Tips for visualizing data
  • Guiding principles for communicating with data

Module 4: Promoting the Center

• Where the value lies
• Business case elements
• Estimating project costs
• Estimating cash flows
• Cost-benefit analysis
• ROI

Conclusion and Next Steps

• Managers
• Directors
• VPs

• The three levels of value for the contact center and how to communicate that value to other parts of the organization
• Advanced financial management skills that are essential for all senior leaders
• Creating a sound business case for the contact center and communicating recommendations to the C-Suite
• How CEOs and CFOs think, lead, and how best to communicate with them
• Making appropriate vendor selections by creating and managing an effective RFP process
• Conducting a stakeholder analysis to better support and partner with other parts of the organization
• Techniques for nurturing work relationships, managing office politics, and building internal partnerships
• Methods for making an impact and persuading others
• Tips for communicating up the organization
• The craft of strategic storytelling
• Presentation approaches and considerations
• How to make the most of visuals, including best approaches for communicating with data

List Price: Varies

Course Duration: 2 Days

This is a 2 day instructor-led course delivered by ICMI Certified Associates. If you have questions about which course is right for you, ICMI Account Manager is available to help. Complete the Request Information form to speak with your Account Manager.