Service Challenge Simulation

SERVICE CHALLENGE replicates a service company providing three levels of service to different types of customer with decisions covering pricing, promotion, resourcing and quality improvement.

Originally designed in 1989, Service Challege has been in use since then and it was completely revised in 1998 & 2002 (incorporating our latest design paradigms).

DURATION: Approximately one day (although they can be run, in an accelerated manner, in half a day).

TARGET AUDIENCE: The simulation is designed to be used by trainees, junior management to middle management, functional specialists and supervisors. Or, abbreviated or with additional tasks, with senior management.

METHOD: After a short briefing the training group is divided into several teams of four or five participants. These teams consider the problem facing them and then make a series of decisions that are fed, by the tutor, into a microcomputer that simulates their effect. The results are returned for the team to analyse before making their next decisions. This decision-making cycle is repeated for at least six periods. At the end of the simulation phase the teams reunite to discuss and compare results.

NUMBER OF TEAMS: Thesimulation may be used with between two and eight teams that compete and interact directly with each other.

AVAILABILITY: This simulation is available off-the-shelf and a comprehensive Trainer's Pack is provided allowing trainers with little or no experience with simulations to run the simulations.

KEY LEARNING

The simulation involves running a complete business with decisions covering marketing (pricing and promotion), finance (bank loans) and resourcing (levels and quality). So, it is especially suited to help participants appreciate the general management of a complete company, its main functions and how they interact.

During the simulation, participants will be concerned with creating a profitable, growing business that survives. They will develop an understanding of business purpose, how this is influenced by their decisions and how business objectives and measures interact.

Participants without management experience may be especially challenged by the need to deal with ambiguity and make decisions without perfect information and, where, some information is provided as qualitative comments about the business.

The simulation introduces participants to financial fundamentals (costing, Profit & Loss Account, the Balance Sheet, cash flow and key ratios).

Optionally, using the work sheets provided, participants can test their understanding by preparing the financial reports manually.

For more advanced use, the Progressive and Compleat versions provide information on break-even, profit analysis and economic value added.

Besides considering how customers respond to changing prices, promotion and market sizes, participants must consider the effect of the competitors' actions and the financial and operational consequences of their decisions.

Optionally, using the tutor's audit, the trainer running the simulation can provide market research to help teams identify the responses of the markets to their decisions.

For each market served, existing customers must be persuaded to buy regularly and new customers must be persuaded to start buying. To do this, the teams must balance short term profitability needs with maintaining long term relationships and how price, promotion and the quality of the service impact these.

Participants need to decide how each service contributes to the business's profitability, growth and cash flow. (For more advanced use, an optional report shows each service on a profit or investment centre basis.)

With decisions covering changing resourcing levels and quality investment, participants must forecast sales and match demand to resourcing levels. This must take into account the uncertainties of the impact of marketing decisions, competitive actions and the dynamics of changing markets.

With participants working in small teams, they have the opportunity to share experience and knowledge, present and promote different viewpoints, and develop their people skills.

Optionally, at the end of the simulation, teams can be asked for make a formal board presentation covering objectives, strategies, process, the future (of the simulated business) and learning.

Documentation is provided separately for the UK and US Versions MS Word format and comprises:

A Participants' Manual that provides, for the participants. a description of the simulation, a description of their task and how to use the software.

The Decision Forms are the forms used to communicate a team's decisions to the trainer.

The Work Sheets are optional and are provided to allow participants to create manually the financial reports from the Preliminary Results and the Previous Period's Results.

The Reporting Pack documents the reports produced by all versions of the simulation. (Our design approach means that it is very easy to change these reports to reflect those your company/industry uses, training needs and business isues.)

Using the Simulator provides, for the trainer (and computer support staff), information about installing the simulation and the use of the software.

Running the Simulation provides, for the trainer, information about running the simulation.

Briefing is a MS Power Point briefing explaining the simulation to the participants. (You may find it useful if you review this before reading the briefs.)

Specimen Results are provided in Adobe PDF format and illustrate output from the simulation thus:

Preliminary Results are those produced and printed seconds after the period is simulated. They provide information for the teams to work on while their full results are prepared.

Standard Results are the detailed results showing a team's business results. The results shown here are the results produced for all periods for the Classic or Assessment versions of the simulation and for the first period of the Progressive version of the simulation.

Business Research is the report provided to teams showing their relative positions in terms of the marketplace and financial results.

Tutor's Audit provides comparitive highlights of team results to the tutor to allow he or she identify which teams need coaching and which need challenging.

Team Commentaries provides on an individual team basis additional reports analysing their business performance and lists strengths and weaknesses.

Reconciliations are provided to help the trainer answer questions about how results were calculated. Thus, if a team asks how a result was calculated the trainer can select and print the appropriate report.

	UK Versions	US Versions
Participants' Manual
Background Notes
Decision Forms
Work Sheets
Reporting Pack
Using the Simulator
Running the Simulation
Briefing
Preliminary Results
Standard Results
Business Research
Tutor's Audit
Team Commentaries
Reconciliations

This is provided to allow you to download an evaluation version of the Service Challenge simulation. Before you do this you must have two blank formatted floppy discs available (labelled Disc 1 and Disc 2). Also be advised that the Cab files will take some time to down load.

The table below shows the files to download, their description, size and the floppy disc to save to. Once all files are downloaded, place Disc 1 in your floppy drive. Click Start and then Run and enter A:\setup.exe. The program will then install.

If, instead of installing from the Web, you are installing from the CD-ROM version of this resource you can install directly by clicking setup.exe and opening the file.

File	Description	Size	Disc
setup.exe	Installation Program	137 Kbytes	1
Setup.lst	Installation Data	5 Kbytes	1
Servic1.cab	Simulator Files (1)	1,281 Kbytes	1
Servic2.cab	Simulator Files (2)	810 Kbytes	2

Most recent update: 21/07/03
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Phone & Fax +44 (0)20 7537 2982 E-mail jeremyhall@simulations.co.uk