Top 5 Trends of 2010

Hello SimDevGroup Community-

Wrapping up a great year for business training simulations, we thought it would be appropriate to review the top trends we saw for 2010. Ten is too many, so we capped it to five. Easier to digest and in general more informative. Here goes from 5 to 1:

Trends in Business Training Simulations and Corporate Training and Development:
5. Simplicity- We clearly saw the training and development community wise up and we are ecstatic! Simulations don't need to be monstorous and shouldn't be! You need to focus on what's important: your training and development content. A business training simulation is simply a tool to support your corporate training content. Stay focused!

4. Leadership Development- From our perspective, it looks like companies have decided to invest heavily in their top talent. With the background and demographics of top talent changing, it was very clear that the training and development community decided it was important to engage people in the utilization of the internal leadership competencies. We're doing back flips over this and participants love it. People really seem to resonate with applying leadership competencies to the business. It was an exciting year for leadership development.

3. Very Focused, Very Efficient- This has to be the results of a tough economy and in our humble opinions, this is fantastic. Corporate Training and Development managers seemed to have focused brilliantly on what is most important: Apply the critical corporate training and development objectives. Focus is a great thing and corporations usually wind up stronger in the long run.

2. Challenging Participants (and themselves)- We're talking corporate training and development managers going well beyond powerpoint. Corporate Training and Development managers sat around tables and said, "We really need to push participants out of their comfort zone and challenge them." From our perspective, you did a sensational job at achieving this. We watched participants, squirm, sweat, and really think hard about applying your content. Well done!

1. Self Facilitation- It seems as though times have clearly changed in this decade. As a quick statistic, we saw a 47% rise in self facilitation in 2010 alone. WOW! This is fantastic and we applaud your bravery. As many learned, facilitating a custom business training simulation is not for the faint at heart. Most performed very very well, but learned its not as easy as it appears. Keep it up!

This is it. The top five trends we saw for 2010. We think that in general, these are trends in the right direction. Well done and please keep up the good work, focus, and bravery.

Cheers to 2011! Its going to be a terrific year.
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Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays from SimDevGroup!

The holidays have snuck up on us as it seems to have everyone. We've been very busy developing customer business training simulations for the new year. Looks like many people have big training plans for Q1 and Q2. Thus, we're almost at full capacity. Feels like training and development activity seems to be climbing and we're happy to see everyone very busy.

We'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you. We feel very lucky to have worked with the wonderfully smart and devoted training and development managers this year. We have felt the pressure you have felt and from our perspective, its been a great year of interesting and well thought out business training simulations. We applaud you and your dedication to your profession.

Our holiday hours will be here and there. We have a lot of work to do for Q1 so we'll probably still be floating around the office. Feel free to give us a call or drop us a note. We'd be happy to talk.

Happy Holidays and cheers to new business simulations in the new year!

Its A Cloudy Day

Hello SimDev Community-

Its a cloudy day here. Its raining outside and inside for us. Yes, of course we're talking about the weather. We're also talking about cloud computing. It's been awhile since we've mentioned this. Instead, we've been focusing on Business Silos, Business Simulation Facilitation, Business Training Simulations, and Leadership Development Simulations. But this doesn't mean we forgot about cloud based computing. Of course we haven't. Cloud based computing is really the future of computing.

Some day, the internet will be as common as electricity. No matter where we go, we will be electrified by the internet. Think about it: Cars have electricity, boats have electricity, airplanes have electricity. Heck, even submarines have electricity. Lets apply that to the internet. Some day, no matter where we are, we will have the internet. We're in the early stages of this with devices such as Android or iOS. Much of our lives are connected in one way or another.

Thus, we're developing solution for the future that are entirely cloud based. We're hoping to begin to roll out a cloud based business training simulation in the first half of 2011. Of course, we're going to take baby steps to ensure quality and usability. SimDevGroup actually already uses various cloud solutions. We just keep it invisible and call it "Magic". Our cloud based business training simulations are part of the reason we can offer such world class solutions at canned prices. This is because we don't own or manage much infrastructure. Most of our customers like this even though they don't say, "Hey, thanks for utilizing the distributed redundant live syncing and app services." In any case, we're happy to make business training simulations and leadership development simulations accessible to everyone.

Have a great week.