CIPS L5M4 Video Course Advanced ContractFinancial Management

Making complex topics easier to understand

At Level 5, we're starting to take some of the procurement concepts you’re already familiar with and look at them in much more depth. L5M4: Advanced Contract and Financial Management also introduces a lot of new topics that can sound pretty complicated when you first come across them.

My job is to break them down, explain them in straightforward language and then use examples to show you what they actually mean in the real world.

We'll look at collaborative product development — which sounds rather complicated — by talking about how the COVID-19 vaccines were developed.

We'll explore Social Value through the real-life example of an organisation funding education for its workers' children.

And throughout the course, we'll use real organisations, practical examples and my own procurement experience to make the theory easier to understand — and much easier to remember when you get into the exam.

Moving from describing to analysing

One of the big differences at Level 5 is the depth you're expected to go into in your exam answers.

It's not just about remembering a definition and describing what something means. You'll increasingly be asked to analyse, assess and examine the concepts you've studied.

That becomes much easier when you genuinely understand the theory rather than trying to memorise paragraphs from a study guide.

Throughout the course, I'll help you build that understanding and make connections between the theory and real procurement situations.

I'll also point out the areas I think are particularly important for the exam and discuss the different ways CIPS could turn the content you're learning into exam questions.

Learn at your own pace

You'll get 5+ hours of video content covering all four Learning Outcomes.

The syllabus is broken down into manageable individual lessons, so you don't have to sit through enormous lectures. You can work through the course whenever it suits you, pause to make notes and come back to individual topics when you're revising.

You can use the course alongside the CIPS study guide or as an alternative way of learning and revising the syllabus if you find some of the more complex topics difficult to get your head around from the book alone.

More than just the videos

For every Learning Outcome, you'll also get a Resource Pack containing additional reading and videos to help you explore the topics further and build your bank of real-world examples.

There are also 109 practice questions throughout the course. I don't provide model answers to these — they're designed to make you go back through what you've learned, practise retrieving the information and think about how you would approach the topic in an exam.

Who's teaching you?

I'm an ex-teacher, I'm MCIPS qualified and I work in procurement.

That means I'm not simply reading the content of the study guide back to you. I've studied for the CIPS exams myself, and I can relate what you're learning to real procurement situations and organisations to help the theory make sense.

I also answer student questions personally through the course Q&A.

My aim is to make the more complex parts of L5M4 feel manageable, help you properly understand the theory and give you the confidence to analyse and apply what you've learned when you get into the exam.