The Centre for Sustainability and Enterprise Development (CSED) at the University of Ghana Business School has organized a Business Skills Training Programme in conjunction with Novartis; the second largest pharmaceutical firm in the world.

The training workshop which took place recently at the Yiri Lodge at the University of Ghana, was facilitated by faculty officers from the Department of Accounting, Biomedical Engineering, Marketing and Customer Management; as well as Operations and Management Information Systems.

The CSED is a an advocacy, training and research centre set up at the Business School at the beginning of 2014 and funded by DANIDA and it is specifically dedicated to promoting enterprise sustainability through research, education, skills training, outreach (dissemination) and international collaboration.

Opening the programme, the country Manager for Novartis Ghana, Roland Addo-Hammond said the company had decided to sponsor the training programme in order to enhance the business acumen of pharmaceutical firms in Ghana who were partners to Novartis. Mr. Addo-Hammond added that Novartis employed a global strategy to empower its value chain partners so that as they sold quality drugs, they also worked to ensure that these partners grew and became strong business entities.

Topics that were covered at the 2-day Business Skills Training Programme include inventory planning and management, customer service, financial accounting for SMEs as well as pharmaceutical marketing and merchandising. Specific topics covered on the inventory planning and management course included types of inventory and their functions, the supply chain, inventory management models and managing inventory costs.

The Financial Accounting for SMEs course which was facilitated by Dr. Agyenim Boateng of the University of Ghana Business School on topics like accounting basics for medical and pharmaceutical professionals, analysis of the balance sheet, analysis of the income statement and analysis of the cash flow statement.

Some of the participants who shared their thoughts after the programme expressed their satisfaction with the topics covered under the programme. They generally felt that the intellectual materials they had received at the workshop were practical enough to help improve the running and operations of their pharmaceutical businesses.

Novartis is a world-acclaimed organisation known for the quality products and services it provides to the right patients at the right time. It is a full member of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associates and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. In 2013, Novartis was ranked number one in sales in the pharmaceutical industry world-wide.

The company disclosed that it would be rolling out, in the near future, more innovative programmes in Leadership and Management and hoped to partner CSED in the running of same. The CSED, headed is led by Prof. Robert E. Hinson of the Department of Marketing and Customer Management at the University of Ghana Business School, thanked Novartis for its support and the facilitators for making this important training workshop happen.