Decisions

DECISION AREAS

Company Setup

  1. First, you and your team should do is choose a name for your company. You only have to keep one thing in mind: Make it Different and Bold! We do not want names made up of the initials of your names, or other boring names!

  2. Second, you must decide the roles each of you will play as directors of your company.

  3. All of this should be defined before the start the simulation.

Team roles

Each team will have to distribute the Senior Manager roles between the members.

If your team is made up of 5 people, the five roles (CEO, CSO, COO, CFO, CMO - further explained below) are easy to split.

If your team is only 4 people, each member will take on one of these roles - CSO, COO, CFO, CMO - and one member will take on CEO in addition.

If your team is only 3 people, our suggestion is that one person takes CSO + CMO, another takes COO, and the last takes CFO + CEO.

To maximize learning opportunities, we encourage you to rotate roles after every cycle so everyone gets exposed to more decisions and consequences.

Don't worry, each team member can be assisted by the entire team in the decision process. You are not alone!

CEO - Chief Executive Officer

You have a critical role in your organization. Besides the two decisions explained below, the CEO is in charge of Dispute Resolution between other C-Level executives.

You must decide whether your company should engage in the development of new products. If so, remember that New Product Development implies a development cost as well as an investment in plant and equipment and patents and licenses.

Also, Capacity Planning falls under your responsibility. You will also decide should you want to expand your manufacturing capacity. New product launches get you automatically into level 1 production.

CFO - Chief Financial Officer

As CFO, you are responsible to determine the payment terms given to your customers. You already know the importance of Cash Flow for your company. For your clients, it is also a very important variable, so if you give them credit they will also take it into account when choosing the company they are going to buy from.

Additionally, you are responsible for the long-term financing of the company.

COO - Chief Operations Officer

The COO is in charge of the company's supply chain. In this simulation, you don't have to worry about purchasing raw materials and packaging, machine maintenance, etc.

But there are two critical decisions you will need to make:

Selecting your suppliers is important in order to offer good product quality, and make your product more attractive to customers.

You must also decide how many units of each product you want to produce every cycle, based on your existing inventory, your capacity, and your CSO's demands.

CSO - Chief Sales Officer

Do you want to offer your customers a discount? The price positioning is not everything, but it undoubtedly influences your customers' purchasing decisions. Juggle your numbers and decide whether you want to offer a discount for each product category.

Also, you must make a sales forecast in order to be prepared for what's happening in the market. This sales forecast will automatically translate into a Forecast P&L that will help the company make the final decision.

CMO - Chief Marketing Officer

Point of Sale Marketing investment is an important aspect if you want customers to choose your products instead of competitor products when placing their orders.

Investing in Social Media will also give you a competitive edge.

You can invest individually for both per product category.

Finally, you can also research the market for future trends. You may request Market Research for each Product Category at a cost of 1.5m each. Speak to the Facilitator about it.