Does it seem that your business areas all speak a different language?

This programme is about everyone working together to build a more profitable business!

Create cross-functional business teams that can work towards a focused strategy.
Learn to work across departmental boundaries, and make effective business decisions.
Increase coordination and get managers to think strategically about cash flow.

The Experience

In just two and a half days, this simulation helps key employees from all your business units understand general operations, your competitive position and limits on your company's resources so they can make informed and effective business decisions.

During the simulation, six capital intensive companies (teams) compete for customers, markets and profits in a rapidly changing marketplace. Modeled on a manufacturing organization, they confront and handle situations involving strategic planning, purchasing and production, corporate intelligence, finance and accounting, marketing and sales, and product and market development.

The overriding challenge in this board-based simulation is to make the right investments at the right time - and to get the required return. Participants are challenged to consider the future implications of their decisions, and quickly realize how actions taken in one part of the company impact operations in others.

Working together, employees begin to build their own bridges across departmental boundaries, opening lines of communication and developing financial competence along the way.

More details

"You know the program is effective when people from manufacturing, sales and marketing become sensitive to each other's needs and understand how the other operation works."

Manager, 3M

"I better understand my personal impact on financial results and hope to find ways to make things better... I hope everyone takes this. It's good material for developing increased understanding of financial terms and interactions in the business environment. I learned the importance of adapting to market changes... and the need for different functions to work towards the same overall strategy."

Participant, Hewlett Packard

Participants experience the strategic, business and financial fundamentals of navigating a capital-intensive company over a ten-year period. At the start, their company is relatively healthy, but the competition is closing in (and they happen to be seated in the same room!).

The management team - comprised of finance, production, marketing and corporate intelligence - faces tough investment decisions: Invest now, or later? Pursue all markets, or just a few? Take the lead, or be an early follower? Efficient assembly lines, or flexible flow shops? Borrow money, or earn it first? Stick to the basics, or pursue the cutting edge?!

Participants will use financial statements and financial ratios as planning tools to boost productivity and profitability. Then bring new skills and insights into reality!