Why Attend
In this course, we will use Cesim’s ‘SimFirm’ simulation tool to practice essential competitive and operational decisions made by managers in real life. SimFirm is a business management simulation program that integrates the functional areas of production, marketing, and logistics. It increases the participants’ awareness of operating a company from a general management perspective.
The simulation integrates a range of concepts from various management related disciplines, including marketing, production, logistics, and financial decision making. In addition, it links the organization to the wider context of the business world and other stakeholders.
Course Methodology
This course uses a web based simulation with a graphical interface in which participants enter their strategic decisions. The task for the teams is to manage the sales and operations of an international pharmaceutical company. Key success factors include accurate forecasting and planning, analytical approaches to decision making and good teamwork. Teams will develop and execute strategies for their simulated company operating in different markets with specific customer behavior, cost structures, and currency fluctuations. Teams will compete against each other and focus on cumulative earnings as the winning criteria.
Course Objectives
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Increase awareness of operating a company from a general management perspective
- Recognize the interactions among various companies and external influences in a complex and interrelated environment
- Interpret and forecast market situations and market results and translate them into goal oriented decisions
- Use fact based analytical decision making techniques by linking the decisions to cash flows and bottom line performance
- Utilize teamwork and problem solving methods in a dynamically evolving marketplace
Target Audience
All managers and business professionals who are involved in supporting the planning and strategy of their department or organization, as well as those who are involved in core business or support department management and supervisory roles.
Target Competencies
- Strategic decision making
- Financial analysis
- Business forecasting
- Sales and marketing skills
- Critical thinking
- Production and logistics management
- Teamwork
- Quality management
Course Outline
- The power of business management simulation
- Simulation platform structure
- Simulation organization
- Flow of operations
- Main objective and winning criteria
- Decision making fundamentals
- Familiarizing teams with the case study
- Demand structure
- Factors affecting market size
- Products and market areas
- Sales and marketing decisions
- Distribution and delivery priorities
- Production decisions
- Production salaries
- Financing decisions
- Projections
- Decision checklist
- Types of generated report
- Achieving the vision through strategy
- Surpassing the competition with the strategy pyramid
- Planning for victory through determining where to play and how to win
- Applying Porter’s grand strategies
- Guaranteeing results by turning strategy into action
- Teamwork: The secret weapon of sustainable strategy execution
- Taking the team from formation to full potential performance
- Leading a team through clear skies and storms
- Eliminating conflict to achieve a common team goal
- Product quality
- Investing in production and logistics
- Maximizing quality to build a lasting customer impression
- The PDCA cycle
- Supply/demand management by embracing the customer’s perspective
- Mastering price elasticity of demand
- Elasticity and performance
- Forces that shape price elasticity
- Managing production and delivery levels for lean operations
- Creating a profitable product portfolio
- Identifying real profit pools
- The 6 steps of product line profitability analysis
- Options for under-performing product lines
- Marketing and customer care
- Creating endless promoters for your brand
- The 4 Ps of marketing
- An overview of the marketing mix
- Product
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
- Reaching all your customers through targeted promotion
- The role of promotion in marketing
- Revealing company customer care secrets
- Financial management and driving profitability
- Financial management
- The definition of accounting
- The definition of finance
- Making the right financial decisions to lead and grow
- Analyzing the key financial statements
- The 5 key financial ratios that make or break your business
