Case Study: Bus & Train Operator 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 Depot & Engineering Managers in their Bus Division. 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.
Course details:
The game our client chose was a two day event. The programme comprised a half day delivered Financial Awareness session plus one and a half days of playing our Transport Game.
Game details:
The game was played by four teams of 5 players (20 delegates in total). Each team was responsible for running a small bus depot in the fictional town of Doventry.
The teams were originally given retail bus services to manage. They had to make quality decisions, such as the level of engineering expenditure, that would have an impact on their ‘lost mileage’. They also had to decide which routes to run and at what level of frequency and be wary of other teams competing on the same routes.
Later in the game the teams also had to manage contracts to deliver invoiced services to Local Authorities and other clients and had to manage cash collection from clients and payment to suppliers.
At the end of each round the teams produced a Profit & Loss Account to assess their financial progress.
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
- An introduction to lease or purchase decisions
- Budgeting & Budgetary Control
- Basic variance analysis
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 managers at the depots & in the engineering team were able to understand and therefore use their Management Accounts more effectively and were able to work with the Finance Team to ensure budgets were being properly monitored.
In addition, managers were able to participate more fully in the budgeting and budget monitoring process, thus helping to ensure the accuracy of the management information and the speed of response to variances in their business performance.