Tailored or Custom Business Simulation?

Should I Go with Tailored or Custom Business Simulation?

This is a great question! But like always, it depends. As a general rule, the more budget you have to spend on a simulation, the better it's going to align with your training content and corporate development goals. But, there is a point where you only have so much to spend.

3 Reasons To Use a Tailored Business Simulation:

1. Limited Budget- If you're on a limited budget, tailored simulations are a great way to get into the world of very aligned, engaging, and applicable training programs.
2. Off the Shelf or Canned Business Simulation Just Don't Fit - In many cases, a canned solution just doesn't do the trick. Its hard to extract what is going on with your corporate development from a generic business that sells widgets. A tailored simulation removes this problem from the world of business simulations and corporate development.
3. Limited Time- You can bring a tailored simulation from concept to training in much less time than a custom business simulation

3 Reasons To Use a reasons to use a Custom Business Simulation:

1. Complex Integration of Corporate Strategy and Corporate Development Goals - When you are looking to combine corporate strategy with business acumen with leadership development, a custom business simulation is pretty much required.
2. Large Organization With A Deep Need For Effective Leadership - When you have a large roll out of a very complex initiative around leadership development, a leadership development simulation is pretty essential.
3. Highly Complex Business or Organization - If you are in a large complex multi-product global organization, a custom business simulation is probably going to be required to simulate your company’s solution and process.

So, in summary, it comes down to price and complexity. If you have a limited budget, it's a no brainer, go tailored. If you have complex needs within a complex organization, again, no brainer... go custom.

Hope this helps!

More Than The Business Simulation

When people think of a Sim training program, they often think of just the software itself. In reality, this is only a part of a leadership development simulation or business training simulation. A very important part of the solution is the case study. The case study often is thought of as secondary when it should be thought of equally important.

Importance of the Case Study for a Leadership Development Simulation or Business Training Simulation

The case study is where the corporate strategy, structure, uniqueness and details are revealed. This is important stuff! Because people often get over excited about the software part of the simulation, the case study is usually sent to the back burner. It is very important to keep the case study in focus or the foundation of your corporate development program will be diluted. Here are some key things to think about:

- Does your case study take into consideration your corporate development needs?
- Does your case study take into consideration the corporate strategy?
- Does your case study have enough information for participants?
- Does your case study have too much information (yes, this can happen)?
- Does your case study share a story and foundation?

These are some important parts of a case study when using a training simulation for corporate development. In many cases, its not a bad idea to hire a copywriter. Adding a sense of reality without duplicating your company verbatim is the balance you're trying to find.

So, in summary, don't put the case study in the background. You'll find its equally as important and needs ample attention.

Hope this helps!

Top 3 Trends We See in Business Simulations Today

Hello World-

Are you asking, "What are the latest trends in the strange world of business simulations?" Of course you are :^). Well, since you probably aren't really asking that, we'll ask for you:

Top 3 Trends in Business Simulations

3. More Focus - We're seeing a trend towards people using a business simulation for a specific outcome or use. For example: Diversity training. This is an example of an application where a business simulation is deployed for 1/2 day. Gone are the monster multi-day business simulation training program. If you're considering getting a huge multi-day simulation, you either must have endless budget to spend or a consultant has taken over the steering wheel of your training program or leadership program.

2. Special Focus on Immediate Knowledge Application - We've been seeing this for some time, but its happening more. There is an increased need to be able to have participants immediately use the skills they learned from practice within the business simulation.

1. More Accessible Business Simulations - We're seeing greater and greater accessibility to business simulations. This is great news and primarily due to lower cost of development and platformization of the technology.

Hope this helps!

Computer Based Business Simulation or Paper?

Hello World-

When most people think about a business simulation, they automatically have visions of computer screens, tablets, phones, mice, and keyboards. They also begin to think about data management, modeling, game theory, equipment setup, financial modeling, reporting, and more. This creates that hot feeling of being completely overwhelmed.

As Bill Hall wrote in his book about getting started with business simulations and serious games, have you ever thought about starting small and starting with a paper based simulation? If not, this is definitely something you should think about. Paper based business simulations can be incredibly compelling and very easy to manage. You don't have to create a board game, game pieces or anything fancy. Just print out some materials and you're on your way.

Paper based simulations are a very effective way to get started using business simulations, strategy simulations, or business gamification. Here are 3 tips to get you started:

1. Clearly define what the participants need to teach. The more tangible and clearly defined the better
2. Work from the goals of the learning backwards. Create all simulation exercises from the goals.
3. Create units of measurement. What this means is there needs to be a means to measure. In very simple terms: Scoring :^)

If you do a search for paper based business simulations, you'll find quite a few examples out there. This might be a great place to start.

Hope this helps!

Top Tips To Getting Starting With a Business Simulation

Hello World!

Happy New Year! Hope you're well. Let's dive right in!

Are you looking to get started using a business simulation? Great! Here are some of our top 5 tips to getting started:

Top 5 Tips To Using A Business Simulation

1. Start Small! Don't try to do too much too fast. A tightly focused and highly content aligned simulation is the way to go! You might be tempted to do too much too fast. Try to take a step back and make sure you are staying core to the top 3 reasons you're using a business simulation. Or better yet, the top 3 metrics you'd like to measure success against.

2. Go Paper? This might seem strange, but are you sure you really want to go with a computerized business simulation or software business simulation? I'm sure you already know how hard it is to manage technology, now try to imagine creating a business simulation on top of that and then having it all work. Yikes! In many cases, a good solid paper based simulation might go far. It will also potentially save you money as well.

3. Get Aligned. What does this mean? It means to ensure the reasons you think you need a business simulation align with the solution you are looking at. This might seem like common sense, but we can't tell you how often we've seen people far from where they thought they'd be just due to the confusion of getting started using these action learning tools.

4. Get Buy-In. You're going to find that there might be some resistance (or curiosities) about using a business simulation. It is a good idea to get people involved. Getting people involved does add complication up front, but it will make the process easier down the road.

5. Create a budget. Yes, this seems obvious, but it is important. This will automatically create focus for you when getting started using business training simulations.

We hope this helps. Happy New Year!

Top Tips To Getting Starting With a Business Simulation

Hello World!

Happy New Year! Hope you're well. Let's dive right in!

Are you looking to get started using a business simulation? Great! Here are some of our top 5 tips to getting started:

Top 5 Tips To Using A Business Simulation

1. Start Small! Don't try to do too much too fast. A tightly focused and highly content aligned simulation is the way to go! You might be tempted to do too much too fast. Try to take a step back and make sure you are staying core to the top 3 reasons you're using a business simulation. Or better yet, the top 3 metrics you'd like to measure success against.

2. Go Paper? This might seem strange, but are you sure you really want to go with a computerized business simulation or software business simulation? I'm sure you already know how hard it is to manage technology, now try to imagine creating a business simulation on top of that and then having it all work. Yikes! In many cases, a good solid paper based simulation might go far. It will also potentially save you money as well.

3. Get Aligned. What does this mean? It means to ensure the reasons you think you need a business simulation align with the solution you are looking at. This might seem like common sense, but we can't tell you how often we've seen people far from where they thought they'd be just due to the confusion of getting started using these action learning tools.

4. Get Buy-In. You're going to find that there might be some resistance (or curiosities) about using a business simulation. It is a good idea to get people involved. Getting people involved does add complication up front, but it will make the process easier down the road.

5. Create a budget. Yes, this seems obvious, but it is important. This will automatically create focus for you when getting started using business training simulations.

We hope this helps. Happy New Year!

TechTip: Private Cloud Storage: OwnCloud For Simulation Development

Hello World-

This is a little off the beaten path for a post, but we're so thrilled with a piece of technology, we thought it worth sharing.

Do you know of DropBox, GoogleDrive, or Microsoft OneDrive? Of course you do. So do we. But, we take data security extremely seriously. We also believe in technology simplicity and effectiveness. As a result, we took a look at a solution called OwnCloud.

OwnCloud is a solution that lets you create your own version of DropBox, GoogleDrive, and OneDrive (and soooo much more). Best of all, you retain complete and total control over OwnCloud. It is incredibly easy to use and is written by the open source community. We have been testing OwnCloud for Simulation Development and we have two words: It Rocks!

OwnCloud just works and works exceptionally well! Since it's mostly larger companies that read these posts, you'll love the fact the OwnCloud is Open Source, but you might be even more excited to know there is a turnkey commercial version available as well.

We have chosen to run OwnCloud on a $49 open source single board computer called BananaPi. We installed Linux onto an SD card, loaded up OwnCloud, and we had a complete Cloud Storage solution up and running in a matter of an hour or so. The BananaPi/OwnCloud 'server' has 15 computers banging on it all day long. Of course, you'd probably want to run your OwnCloud on serious iron, but this is a nice example of scalability.

We can't recommend OwnCloud enough. Its secure, its fast, and it just works.

You can learn more here:
OwnCloud Open Source
OpenCloud Commercial

Happy Holidays!