McGraw-Hill/Irwin ©2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, All Rights Reserved GLO-BUS: Developing Winning Competitive Strategies Overview and Orientation 1-‹#› What Is GLO-BUS All About? ØDesigned for students of business schools Ø~30000 Students in 1547 classes in 297 Universities in 27 countries in the last 12 months ØCost is 45 USD/ Student covered by University ØHelp menu for every decision with cause-effect explanations, thorough business guide ØRewarding self study competition 1-‹#› What Is GLO-BUS All About? nGLO-BUS is an online simulation where you run a company that is racing for global market leadership in two product categories: wearable (and mountable) video cameras and camera-equipped copter drones. nYour company competes head-to-head against rival companies that design, assemble, and market these same two products and that are run by other members of your class. nBoth products are made in a Taiwan assembly facility and shipped to buyers in North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe-Africa, and Latin America. 1-‹#› Your Company’s Situation nAll companies start out with equal sales volume, global market share, revenues, profits, costs, product quality, and so on. nEach decision period in GLO-BUS represents a year. nThe company you will be running began operations as a maker of wearable video cameras 5 years ago. It entered the market for camera-equipped drones two years ago. nIn Year 5, your company had worldwide sales of 840,000 video cameras and 140,000 camera-equipped drones. Revenues in Year 5 were $327.8 million and net earnings were $15 million, equal to $1.50 per share of common stock. nYour company is in sound financial condition, is performing well, and its products are well-regarded by users. nYou and your co-managers were hired at the end of Year 5 to take charge of the company’s operations. The first set of decisions you and your co-managers will make is for Year 6. 1-‹#› The Decisions You Will Be Making You and your co-managers will make decisions each period relating to nR&D, camera/drone components and features, and product performance and quality, number of models (up to 21 decisions) nProduction operations and worker compensation (up to 8 decisions for each product) nPricing and marketing (7 decisions for cameras and 6 for drones) nCorporate social responsibility and citizenship (as many as 6 decisions) nFinancing of company operations (as many as 8 decisions). 1-‹#› You Have Many Strategic Options nCompany managers have wide strategic latitude in staking out a market position and striving for good performance. There’s no built-in bias that favors any one strategy. vCompanies can pursue a competitive advantage keyed to «low-cost/low-price. «top-of-the-line quality and performance. «more value for the money. vCompanies can have a strategy aimed at being the clear market leader in (a) wearable video cameras or (b) camera-equipped drones or (c) both. vCompanies can focus sales activities on one or two geographic regions or strive for strong worldwide coverage. vCompanies can pursue essentially the same competitive approach worldwide or craft different strategies for the Europe-Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and North America markets. 1-‹#› No One Strategy Is “Best” nMost any well-conceived, well-executed competitive approach is capable of succeeding, provided it is not overpowered by the strategies of competitors or defeated by the presence of too many copycat strategies that dilute its effectiveness. nIn other words, which strategies deliver the best performance hinges on the strength and interplay of each company’s strategy and decisions against the strategies and decisions employed by rival companies—there positively is no hidden-behind-the-scenes “silver bullet” decision combination that players are challenged to discover. 1-‹#› The Contest in the Marketplace Is a “Battle of Strategies” nFollowing each year’s decisions, you’ll be provided with Competitive Intelligence reports containing information of the actions rivals took to capture the sales and market shares they got. nJust as you are trying to win business away from rival companies, some or all rivals are certain to be actively striving to take sales of cameras and/or drones away from your company. 1-‹#› Some Features of the Market and Company Environment nBecause GLO-BUS closely mirrors the competitive functioning of the real-world markets for cameras and drones, you and your co-managers should run your company in a businesslike manner. You can safely assume that «All revenue-cost-profit relationships are based on sound business and economic principles. «All cause-effect relationships are rational and tightly-connected to how things work in “the real business world.” The central purpose of GLO-BUS is to provide you with a “close-to-real-life managerial experience”—one that provides you with a stronger grasp of what it takes to run a successful company in a globally competitive market environment. 1-‹#› Some Features of the Market and Company Environment (cont.) nThe whole concept underlying GLO-BUS is to put you and your co-managers in as realistic a company and competitive market setting as possible and have you manage all aspects of the company’s operations vThis allows you to test your ideas about how to run a company in a competitive marketplace vAnd you will be provided prompt and detailed feedback on the outcomes of your decisions 1-‹#› Requirements and Mechanics nYou and your co-managers can access all aspects of GLO-BUS at any time from any device (desktop, laptop, tablet, or smart phone) connected to the Internet, provided the device has a Web browser (such as Chrome or Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari or Microsoft Edge). nYou can either use the same device for all GLO-BUS sessions or you can use different devices. nGLO-BUS automatically connects to your device and your work is saved on the server whenever you press the Save button. The last decisions saved to the GLO-BUS server at the time of the decision deadline are the ones used to generate the results for your company. 1-‹#› How Company Performance Is Judged The company’s Board of Directors has set five performance objectives for management to achieve: Grow earnings per share from $0.75 at the end of Year 5 to $1.00 in Year 6, $1.75 in Year 7, $2.75 in Year 8, $4.00 in Year 9, $5.25 in Year 10, $6.50 in Year 11, $7.50 in Year 12, $8.50 in Year 13, $9.25 in Year 14, and $10.00 in Year 15. Grow the company’s average return on equity investment (ROE) from 14.5% at the end of Year 5 to 17% in Year 6, 20% in Year 7, 25% in Year 8, 30% in Year 9, and by an additional 2.5% annually in Years 10 through 15 (thus reaching 45% in Year 15). Maintain a B+ or higher credit rating in Years 6 through Year 10 and achieve a credit rating of at least A- in Years 11-15. Achieve stock price gains of $5.50 per share in Year 6, $12.50 per share in Year 7, $30 per share in Years 8 -13, and $20 per share in Years 14-15 (thus reaching $250 per share in Year 15). Achieve/maintain an “image rating” of 70 or higher in Years 6-9, 72 in Years 10-12, and 75 in Years 13-15. (the image rating is tied to the performance/quality of a company’s cameras and drones, its market share penetration of both cameras and drones in each of the 4 geographic regions, and its actions to display corporate citizenship and social responsibility). 1-‹#› Scoring Weights The weights that will be placed on your company’s achievement of each of the five annual performance targets are as follows: v EPS 20% v ROE 20% v Credit Rating 20% v Stock Price 20% v Image Rating 20% 1-‹#› The Two Scoring Standards Two scoring standards are used in calculating “performance scores” for each company: vThe investors expectations standard (Did you meet or beat the annual performance targets for each of the 5 performance measures?) vThe best-in-industry standard (How well does your company’s performance stack up against the company with the best EPS, ROE, stock price, and image rating and against an industry-best A+ credit rating?) The scoring standards are explained in the Participant’s Guide and even more fully on the “Help” screens for pp. 1, 2, and 3 of the Camera & Drone Journal where the company scores are reported. 1-‹#› The Two Quizzes There are 2 “open book” 20 multiple-choice question quizzes built into the exercise. The quizzes are taken online and scored immediately upon completion: vQuiz 1: Covers the Participant’s Guide—its purpose is to spur you to read and absorb how things work in preparation for managing your company. There’s a 60-minute time limit for this quiz. vQuiz 2: Covers information contained in the Camera & Drone Journal, the Competitive Intelligence Reports, and the Company Operating Reports, and various aspects of company operations—the role of this quiz is to check how well you understand the numbers in the reports and the operations of the company you are running. There’s a 75-minute time limit for this quiz. Click on the links for the quizzes on your “Corporate Lobby” web page for more information—the three sample questions for each quiz give you an idea of what to expect. 1-‹#› The Peer Evaluations At the end of the exercise, you will be asked to complete a 12-question evaluation of each of your co-managers and a self evaluation of your own performance. nThese are completed online and can be reviewed by clicking on the Peer Evaluation Link on your Corporate Lobby web page. nThe peer evaluations are for your instructor only and are completely confidential. 1-‹#› What You Can Expect to Learn The game was amazing. I have personally learned much more about economics of a company as well as investor indicators than on any other lecture at the university. We learned this in practice too, because we had to strategize and use all these facts, terms and strategies to compete against other teams in real market simulation. I cannot recommend this game enough. Thank you for the opportunity to play it and learn so much. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Definitely it was worth it! Great game experience, the real impact of decisions versus learning something from the book. - the perfect way how to understand the business part of a company - team cooperation (exercise soft-skills etc.) - the game fits into course content (mainly Strategy part) 1-‹#› What You Can Expect to Learn It was fun and educational. Much more than some purely theoretical subject. For everybody in the future, read the documentation - several times. It was a little confusing at first, because the are a lot new terms present, but it got better with time. I has no previous experience with this field before, now I'm surely not an expert, but I have an idea at least. I would like to try it one more time, just to see, if I could do better. I would definitely recommend this to others. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I had fun and would surely play again;) My key take away from the GLO-BUS game is the understanding of the basic terms from finance, marketing, economy and management and their intuitive definitions. Another thing that I learned is to look with a different view on elementary real-world company strategies of the main iconic market players such as Ryanair and Apple - now understanding the possible background story lead by their investor expectations. 1-‹#› What You Can Expect to Learn I would definitely recommend others to play this game. I have learned a lot of new things about finances in a company. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I would recommend playing glo-bus to anyone who is interested in how the companies work more in depth. You can try to compete with others on simulated market and experience a collaboration in strategies to achieve profit. There is a lot to think about and learn. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I would take part in the game again. It was very useful to see behind the scenes of the economical and marketing decisions of the companies. For me, there were many economic information, which I had to study. Even now, I don't remember all of the terms mentioned in Globus games. But now, when I hear such terms as ROE, I know the area it belongs to, I understand the basic context and I can easily find the information. I think it is practical to have this knowledge. In next years, it would be great if every student participated. 1-‹#› What You Can Expect to Learn I think that it would be a good idea to make a game mandatory . 1. Game presents you with a lengthy tutorial which is actually pretty helpful in the game. 2. Reports are packed with information and if you are willing to invest the time you can really fine tune your strategy. 3. There is a huge amount of ways to go and even trying out some for fun or scientific purposes seems to be educational. 4. Projected performance part of the game is a quite helpful tool. 5. Dynamic information screens and tools recalculating in real time are amazing. 6. I also like the fact that game has options to be a better, more ecological company. Overall I would recommend the game to the next group of students and I would advice them to really read into the statistics throughout the game to win. 1-‹#› How Do You Register and Get Started? The registration process consists of four steps: nStep 1: Have your assigned company registration code handy (this code is used to put you into the database for this specific course and to certify you as a co-manager of your assigned industry and company). Your instructor provides this code. nStep 2: Go to new.glo-bus.com nStep 3: Click on the “Create Student Account” button and enter the company registration code provided by your instructor in the box. nStep 4: Continue on to the next step of the registration process where you will enter a Prepaid Access Code that is specific to YOU ONLY – your instructor will provide you with this code via email. 1-‹#› Naming Your Company nShortly after registering, you and your co-managers should decide on a name for your camera/drone company. nYour company’s name must begin with the letter of the alphabet that you have been assigned. Names can be up to 20 characters. To name the company, click on the Company Name menu item near the top of the Corporate Lobby screen, and enter your company’s full name in the space provided. nAll company names are “public” and appear in the Camera & Drone Journal; thus you should select a name that you are proud of and that reflects the image you want to project to your customers, shareholders, other company stakeholders, and the general public. 1-‹#› Some Procedures nSee the Decision Schedule link on your Corporate Lobby Web page for the dates and deadlines for the decisions. The decision deadlines are strictly enforced, since the results are processed automatically on the GLO-BUS servers minutes after the deadline. nThe results of each decision will be available online about 15-20 minutes after the decision deadline. nYou will be notified via e-mail as soon as the results are ready. At that point you can log-on, see what happened, and proceed with the next decision. 1-‹#› Tips for Success nMake use of the short Video Tutorials—these are particularly helpful early on when you are trying to become familiar with the software, the menus, the information on the screens, and how to proceed. nWhenever you want more in-depth explanations and details than contained in a Video Tutorial, click on the Help button at the top of a decision screen or report page. vThe Help sections for decision screens provide information about each decision entry, full explanations of cause-effect relationships, and tips/suggestions about what to do and not do. vThe Help sections for any page of the Company Reports, the Camera & Drone Journal, and the Competitive Intelligence Reports explain what the numbers mean, how they are calculated, and how to use the information to good advantage. 1-‹#› Tips for Success nLearn as much as you can from the practice decision(s)—the chief purpose of the practice decisions is to help you become fully acquainted with vAll the menus vThe decision entries vThe on-screen calculations that appear when you make a decision entry vThe information that appears on all the various reports that become available after each decision round is complete nAfter the first practice round, follow the Suggested Decision Procedures (see the Participant Materials menu on your Corporate Lobby page) The more you learn from the practice rounds, the better your chances for getting off to a good start! 1-‹#› Tips for Success nRun the company in a serious, professional manner. The overriding purpose of GLO-BUS is to give you practice in making business decisions, learning to craft winning strategies in a competitive market, and being held fully accountable for the results of your actions—just as managers in the real-world are held accountable for the performance of the companies they run. nBe very wary of trying something that is imprudent or highly risky or un-businesslike (things that would get a manager fired in a real company). vStudents who resort to trying to “game the system” usually shoot themselves in the foot. vThis is not the time to be a daring adventurer out to win some variant of a videogame by making wild decisions or extreme decision entries.