What type of financial modelling training is most suitable and cost-effective? Excel is a dangerous tool in the wrong hands and financial modelling is complex, technical and comes with a high risk of costly errors.Here’s a summary of four different training approaches:
1. The Zero Cost Option
“On the job” training is free and surely young graduates are intelligent and know all about computers? Excel comes in the same package as Word and PowerPoint. Therefore, how difficult can it really be?
This is a seriously high-risk option. When I first started financial modelling, there simply was no training and I shudder to think of some of my early modelling solutions.
Trial and error is one way to learn but, judging from my own experience, it probably takes about four to five years for a competent modeller to emerge using this risky method.
2. The e-learning Option
E-learning has its uses. But is it really an efficient way to learn financial modelling? My course delegates give me a unanimous one word answer for that: “no”.
How easy is it to engage with a long programme with many different modules on offer? And how easy is it to find that hour long slot to run through a module? And who is checking which shortcuts the modellers need to learn next and if they are sneakily using their mouse? And what about learning logical thought processes? And what about the temptation to multitask?
I have been told that e-learning is like eating a chocolate bar with the wrapper on.
3. The Large Course Option
Large courses are suitable for subject matter involving a one-way flow of information. However, learning financial modelling has more similarities to learning a musical instrument than attending a history lecture. Dialogue is essential for a worthwhile course.
It is clear that each additional person on my financial modelling courses takes up an extra hour and a half over a three-day period. My standard course takes 24 hours of training for six people. Therefore, the same course for 16 people would need to be run over 39 hours or result in a serious loss of content. This is why I decline requests to run large training courses.
Maybe that’s a good business opportunity missed, as participants would have to return for more training. But that’s not how I like to treat my clients.
4. The Small Bespoke Option
Surely the most cost-effective method of financial modelling training is niche, delivered by a specialist, directly relevant and with small numbers of participants from the same company? This is the ideal platform for explaining the dangers lurking and tricks to learn in financial modelling. It gives participants necessary individual assistance and enforces total immersion, whilst delivering content that can immediately be put into practice.
Maybe you don’t need a bespoke modelling course like this. Perhaps you would like to take my financial modelling quiz instead.
“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” (Benjamin Franklin)
“True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, it is the refusal to acquire it.” (Karl Popper)