Essential Skills And Knowledge Gained From A Business Administration Degree
David Morey 
A business administration degree covers a wide range of useful skills, giving you a solid foundation for your chosen career. These include finance skills and knowledge; having a sound understanding of these elements is essential for you to perform successfully in your role as a business professional.
This article will look at exactly what you’ll learn about finance with a business administration degree and how these skills can have a positive impact on the world of work.
Why Choose Business Administration?
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, holders of a business-related degree can expect a median wage of $65,000 and work in a wide range of roles, including chief executive, financial manager, and accountant. This salary alone makes a business administration degree attractive, with the prospect of earning an above-average wage and opening doors to a variety of different career specialisms.
Clearly, the financial skills that you learn as part of a business administration degree are valuable to prospective employers; the ability to make sound financial decisions for a business can make or break its success.
A business administration degree will offer instruction in a range of these skills, ensuring that you are well-placed to achieve your future employer’s business goals.
You’ll also learn about other aspects of business administration, including leadership, project management, and organizational behavior, giving you an all-around understanding of what it takes to drive a business forward.
Let’s drill down and find out more about those all-essential financial skills and how you can apply them in your day-to-day working life.
Managerial Accounting
Managerial accounting is about presenting financial information in a way that empowers your organization’s management team to make strategic business decisions.
This involves gathering, analyzing, interpreting, and communicating data so that it is clear, useful, and can be used in decision-making.
It’s a different discipline from financial accounting, which concerns preparing statements to demonstrate financial performance to external individuals and organizations; managerial accounting aims to inform your company internally.
Managerial accounting uses skills such as budgeting, forecasting, cash flow analysis, product costing, and valuation to describe an overview or specific aspects of a company’s position.
So, your everyday managerial accounting tasks could include calculating the cost of creating a new product for your company to market. Managerial accounting skills involved here would include identifying all kinds of expenses, from the raw materials to the cost of the energy needed to make the end product.
Ultimately, good managerial accounting helps a company pinpoint inappropriate spending, streamline operations, and maximize profits. It is essential for helping management teams understand their company’s financial status and make strategic long- and short-term financial decisions.
Financial Management
Financial management is a broad topic according to Lumify Learn. It deals with how to handle a company’s finances not only so that it is profitable but also so that it complies with rules and regulations. At the heart of financial management is a financial plan with the goal of creating profit for the company.
There are many sub-skills within financial management, all of which contribute to the healthy functioning of a company. These skills include:
· Creating a budget to forecast income, track expenditure, and allocate financial resources.
· Investing to secure a good return on investment (ROI).
· Managing cash flow by monitoring expenditure and income and ensuring that costs don’t exceed income.
· Understanding risk management to balance safe and high-risk investments, using diversification to spread risk, and continually monitoring risk to get a true picture of the company’s likely future financial position.
· Creating financial policies that set out requirements to operate ethically, within regulations, with regular analysis and reporting, and for the good of the company.
· Optimizing resources so that cash is not wasted and is used to achieve the best results for the company.
Together, these skills provide a safety net of knowledge that enables a company to use its finances in a healthy and profitable way.
Of course, learning about business means having a wide-ranging understanding of how the world of commerce works.
The other related skills that you might acquire in a business administration course include international business management, where you learn about trading across country borders. This involves an understanding of how other societies do business and how accounting and finance work in different regions of the world.
You will also learn project management skills, which will include forecasting and tracking costs and managing payments to suppliers and contractors.
Supply chain management is another vital skill. This involves overseeing the network of individuals and businesses that all contribute to the delivery or production of your end product or service. This will involve budgeting for and procuring the raw materials your company needs to create a product to sell.
Since the aim of companies is to operate profitably, financial skills and knowledge are present in every aspect of their everyday business.
Choosing A Business Administration Degree
A customizable, flexible, and impactful business administration degree is often a great choice for anyone who wants to progress in their career or expand their skillset.
Learning on a master of business administration online course provided by a prestigious institution, such as Kettering University, offers a variety of learning styles, including managerial accounting and financial management, which equip students with the skills and knowledge they need to apply business finance skills with confidence.
As this course is delivered online, students can work from any location and fit studying into their schedule, while the skills they learn can be applied directly to their work without delay.
Conclusion
A business administration degree opens a world of opportunities for students. The common thread running throughout its courses and modules is an understanding of finance, enabling you to make confident decisions in the workplace and helping others to progress your company’s business goals.
Business administration is the smart choice for anyone looking to upskill, progress in their career, and get a wide perspective on how companies operate and succeed. The financial skills you’ll learn in such a course will set you up to explore many different career pathways with a firm foundation of knowledge.
