Case Study: Business Services Game, Financial Awareness Programme
Client requirements:
Our client wanted an interactive and engaging Financial Awareness Course to slot in to their existing Management Development Programme for Sales Managers responsible for the sale of broadband services to business and for managers at their TV company. Managers on the course were about to be or had already been given more management accounting information in the form of monthly ‘Management Accounts’. The client wanted to make the reports more accessible and understandable for the managers. They also wanted to improve communication with the Finance Team by helping non finance managers ‘speak the same language’ as Finance.
In addition the client wanted managers to understand the Investment Appraisal Reports that sales managers received when proposing the installation of new broadband services.
Course details:
The game our client chose was a two day game event followed by a one day taught Investment Appraisal day. The programme comprised a half day delivered Financial Awareness session plus one and a half days of playing our Business Services Game plus a one day Investment Appraisal follow up module.
Game details:
The game was played by four teams of 4 or 5 players (16-20 delegates in total). Six sessions were played in all, training over 100 managers. Each team was responsible for running a business selling broadband services to other businesses.
They had to make quality decisions, such as the level of customer services staff to employ and the number of support engineers to have. They also had to bid against each other for contracts, balancing the need to keep prices attractive to customers with the need to cover costs.
The teams also had the ability to manage their cash position to make the business more flexible and were faced with the problems of trying to manage receipts from customers, bad debts and payments to suppliers.
At the end of each round the teams produced a Profit & Loss Account to assess their progress.
Investment Appraisal Module:
Following the game module the groups were given a one day course on Investment Appraisal. The course included some taught technical material in the morning together with case studies for the group to attempt written to reflect the client’s business issues. In the afternoon time was spent looking at the client’s own internal Investment Appraisal Report and relating the morning’s work to this client document.
Course coverage:
The following technical details were covered throughout the two days:
- Profit & Loss Accounts (Income Statements)
- Balance Sheets
- The Accruals Principle & Depreciation
- Basic interpretation of accounts including Gross & Operating Margins
- Basic contract tendering principles
- Cash management & its impact on the business
- The impact of competition in the market
- Budgeting & Budgetary Control
- Basic variance analysis
- Basic Investment Appraisal
- Net Present Value & Internal Rate of Return
- Payback Period
- Return on Investment
Return on Investment:
The initial course feedback from delegates gave a 100% satisfaction rating on the programme’s aims of improving the engagement with Financial Information. Following the course the managers throughout the business were able to understand their management accounts and budgets fully. In addition managers felt more empowered to participate in decision making involving capital investment decision such as installing new cables to business parks and commissioning new TV programmes.