by Aminat Abubakar

Despite being the toughest course so far, I have learned a great deal from Dr. Michael Petty’s financial intelligence class. Financial intelligence is a critical factor for leadership in understanding the organization’s financial result towards making better decision making from a financial perspective. The financial information helps the executive and management in choosing the best projects for the company, and as an investor choosing companies for investments.

We learned various ways to examine companies and investments through financial analysis tools such as understanding the key financial ratios, the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC), Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), Return on Assets Decomposition, and Piotroski F_Score Model amongst others.

This class enables me to be objective, thoughtful, and be careful in my future business activities. It requires thinking thoroughly with the numbers and seeing beyond what is evident.

Additionally, this quarter we had the unique opportunity of a combined class attendance of the DBA cohorts with Dr. Michael Petty as the instructor for Financial Intelligence, and the DIT cohorts with Dr. Sheb Bishop as the instructor for Big Data. As a business leader, it shows the importance of the involvement of the information technology team in decision-making. Big data can be analyzed for insights that provide quick answers that lead to a better strategic decision-making, and implementation towards a successful business.

As for my fellow cohorts, it has been an interesting class as we continue to support each other.

My appreciation goes to both Dr. Michael Petty and Dr. Sheb Bishop for providing us with new knowledge through their diverse perspectives; quite enriching indeed.

I look forward to the next class as the journey continues into becoming a future ready and future smart thought leader.