Hyperion Systems Engineering - Business Simulation, removing managers from their everyday environment, and challenging them with a new but somewhat similar environment.

Simulation is the most advanced and effective management training method that exists today. The first simulator was a flight simulator, built in 1929 by Ed Link, an American piano and organ manufacturer who was fascinated with flight and aviation. Since then, simulation has become a billion dollar business, with applications in the military and civil aviation, the army, the industry, high technology etc. Today, the latest made for PC flight simulation software can be bought at retail stores for a few dozen pounds. The capabilities of today’s PC’s have also enabled the creation of business simulations for the training of management employees. Already in Europe and the US, large companies in the telecommunications, fast moving consumer goods, financial and other industries benefit from training their middle management staff on key top management skills required to manage companies in competitive and ever changing markets. Business Simulation allows the learning of concepts through experience, thereby increasing the retention level of key concepts and their application, and at the same time is risk free. Business simulation offers the capability to appropriately immerse employees of a specific company in a market somewhat similar to their own company’s market. The simulation intends to challenge them to understand key concepts of top level management, not to apply their knowledge of their specific industry or activity. Experience has shown that this is best achieved by removing them from their everyday environment, and challenging them with a new but somewhat similar environment. The lessons learned from this experience can then be freshly applied in their own business environment upon their return to their company. Experience has also shown that if you immerse employees in an identical environment to their own, there is a strong tendency for them to do things “the way they always do them”, and to have much more resistance to experimentation. Experimentation is one of the fundamental intentions of business simulation. How it works In business simulation training, the participants become members of the top management teams of competing companies that operate in a common simulated market. The type of decisions they are expected to make repeatedly over the duration of the course fall under key strategic business areas such as: target market and competition analysis, suppliers management and negotiation, marketing and advertising spending, new product development, employee management, distribution channels strategy, financial strategy etc. The unique feature of business simulation training is that it allows participants to go through the cycle of Analysis-Planning-Implementation-Control (APIC) a number of times. This unique opportunity in training allows the participants to really understand how their comprehension of the business variables affects their decisions, how as a team they arrive at these decisions and what the impact and consequences of their decisions are on their company’s performance. In addition, throughout the duration of the simulation, the participants have the opportunity to reflect on how their own style of management – particularly their “soft skills” – affects their own performance within the team as well as the performance of the team in general. During the business simulation, a training team closely monitors skills such as decision-making, negotiation, leadership, conflict resolution etc. and participants are called to reflect on their skills as they use them over the duration of the simulation. More importantly, over the duration of the simulation the training team offers practical advice and coaching tips to individual participants or groups, which the participants are called to apply immediately in practice. This freedom to experiment in real time with different skills and styles of application during the simulation is one of the most effective “soft” skills learning methods available today. Objectives The objective of the simulation is to give participants the opportunity to experience the top management environment. The main learning objectives are: -Planning and Strategy (The importance of planning and how to plan, how is strategy formulated from sometimes incomplete or conflicting information) -Understanding the Business Environment (Analysis and understanding of customer requirements, market segmentation, suppliers, competitors, distribution and logistics, marketing, Financial Data etc.) -Global Vision (Putting it all together, understanding cause and effect relationships of the various business variables and their impact on success; benchmarking and the creation of best practices for the management of the company) -Management Skills (teamwork, negotiation, conflict resolution, problem solving, stress management, leadership etc.) Currently in Cyprus, we are designing industrial simulators for the petrochemical industry internationally and are using business simulations for the training and development of management staff in Cypriot companies.