BSG Game Tips
In today’s education system, developing students with a high level of competencies and capabilities is a challenging task for every instructor. Graduates are expected to possess broad competencies like problem-solving, critical thinking, and cognitive skills when entering the job market.
The world economic trends are changing fast creating more necessities for the students to develop the ability to be flexible, expert, and adaptable. This requires an overhaul of teaching practices and learning techniques that cater to the changing economic trends.
The Business Strategy Game (BSG) comes in handy as a realistic representation of the actual practices in a virtual setup. Students use the BSG to cultivate managerial skills for decision-making purposes. Several colleges and universities use the Business Strategy Game in teaching and learning strategic management at their schools of Business Management.
What is the Business Strategy Game?
Business Strategy Game is an online business simulation game where class members are grouped into teams and assigned the task of running an athletic footwear company in head-to-head competition against businesses managed by groups formed by other class members. The company operations run parallel to those of actual athletic footwear companies.
Like in the real world, the BSG companies compete in the international market arena, selling branded and private-label athletic footwear in different geographic regions such as Europe-Africa, North America, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. The BSG company co-managers must make decisions relating to plant operations, distribution and warehouse operations, workforce compensation, marketing, online sales at the company’s website, sales, and finance.
However, the challenge is in crafting and executing a competitive strategy that delivers a respected brand image, keeping the company in contention for an international market leader, produce a good financial performance as that is measured by the earnings per share, return per share, return on investment, stock price appreciation, and credit rating.
Each decision period in the BSG represents a year, and the company you will run began its operations 10 years ago. Therefore, the first set of decisions your team of managers makes is for year 11. Once you get the Main Menu for running the company, print a copy of the Year 10 company reports, a summary of the footwear industry report for year 10, and competitive intelligence reports. This way, you get a clue on the actual standing of the company entering into year 11.
The BSG generates the complete outcome of each year’s operations roughly 20 minutes after each decision made around the deadline. As such, your views and analysis of the information in the latest Company Reports, in Footwear Industry Report, and the Competitive Intelligence Reports will serve as the basis for agreeing upon any strategy changes or making a revised set of decisions for the following year.
Benefits of Business Strategy Game
The Business Strategy Game provides your team with the opportunity to discuss the real business issues while working together to assess the options and make decisions linked to the overall company strategy. Besides, your team of managers will develop the critical thinking they need to move beyond the functional management of the company as a whole.
Your team will experience the challenge of coming up with a successful strategy, especially when frequently faced with changing competitive business environment. If your team faces these kinds of challenges, seeking BSG help online could be the best option.
Besides, your team will have the opportunity to translate a high-level conceptual strategy into concrete actions for the company and team while developing their decision-making skills. An ingenious business strategy for your team will help your team members to appreciate the significance of the strategy, identify the kinds of trade-offs needed, and demonstrating that with limited resources, not every project can be pursued.
Your team members will realize that the final decision usually involves compromising between what is needed for the overall company and personal preferences. Moreover, the key is a rational debate with a compromise for everyone to understand why the decision is taken and commit to make it a success.
If you are looking for your team’s strategy to be a success, then creation is the first step. Moreover, your strategy needs to be actively communicated to each level of management regularly. This way, it becomes a living guide for decision-making for the entire company.
How to Win Business Strategy Game
To win BSG game simulation, you need to follow some ingenious tips that are essential business strategy game tips that your team should focus on:
- Look for price elasticity: In the Business Strategy Game, the demand is dependent on the price ranges and not on any personal values. Therefore, after-sales forecast, check whether the changing wholesale and internet prices of the shoes affect the demand of customers.
- Check for celebrity and private label bids: To improve the chances of winning BSG, consider improving your marketing strategies through bidding for celebrities. Making random amounts of bids to increase your chances of winning the bid.
- Purchase more stocks in the initial stages: It is crucial to be alert and reap the most in the early stages of your BSG simulation game. To assert your financial benchmark, buy as many stocks as possible since the stock prices tend to be low at the start.
- Make 3-year financial projections: You can be penalized more if you fail to make 3-year financial projections. Besides, if you remain spot on with credit ratings, you stand a chance to continue getting benefits for it for longer.
- Bid for long-term contract celebrities at initial stages: When you approach halfway of the game, you will find that celebrity competition is increasing. As such, you need to take advantage of the early stages and focus on getting celebrities with long-term contracts.
- Always try to predict the material prices: As you progress in your simulation game, ensure to be predicting the material prices. In the BSG, the price of standard and superior materials is determined by aspects like supply and demand.
- Re-finance the loans: Working with a successful strategy in the BESG online simulation, it is, without doubt, you may be having some debts. As such, always be alert to finding opportunities to re-finance your outstanding debts to ensure increased cash flow.
- Work on sales forecast: Maximize the entries and toggle the value until you attain the maximum profit is possible for any particular entry. You can do this by focusing more on sales forecast. In the Business Strategy game, don’t bother too much about the market share but concentrate on profits.
Business Strategy Game simulation isn’t easy to win, but if you work with these ingenious tips, you can make profits and win your BSG game without a hassle. Moreover, you can benefit from Business strategy game help where professional BSG players have many years of experience.
BSG Game Tips
Winning your Business Strategy Game is not easy as it involves wide-ranging decisions on various aspects of the company’s operations. However, with effective BSG simulation tips, you can keep your company ahead of the competition. While competing with the other teams in BSG, you need to make informed decisions that can create a difference and take your team ahead of all. So, how can you win the BSG game?
Begin the Game as a Professional
As the CEO, you need the support of the other company managers. Team members run the simulation company efficiently while competing successfully. For this reason, you and your team members need to start the BSG by spending more time analyzing the results of each year to figure out the best effective strategies to lay for the next round of the game.
· First Round (Year 11)
Most players play hard from the first round, thus increasing S/Q, the number of models, reduce the price, putting for advertisement three times higher than average, and bidding for celebrities. On the other hand, other players gamble for the private market with a high price, a large volume to lead.
Regardless of what the other competitors do in Year 11, your focus should be winning. However, if you loose and the share price will go down. This way, you end up buying the share at a lower price. That is overall good. But you need to identify your strategy first in the following three aspects:
- Quality S/Q
- Number model
- Lower cost (lower price)
How can you identify your strategy? It is quite simple.
- Spend at least 30 minutes to learn every screen of decision: This way, you can be sure to put your ideas into the screen. Regardless of what you want with your business strategies, do it. However, make sure you do it correctly on the software.
- Spend an additional 30 minutes to read and understand reports: Understanding the reports allow you to be informed when making decisions for the next rounds. The business strategy game is very competitive, so start your fights right from round one and fight hard if you want to win. In the BSG game, you should have objectives, becoming the top, the leading group, and the other improving the outcomes of each game you play. The least make more profits after every game and not getting into bankruptcy after few rounds of play.
· Round 2 to Round 10 (Year 12 to Final Year 20)
From round 2, there is a risk that other groups can set the same strategy with the winner – can be you. More than two groups following the same strategy suffer the same difficulties since they create direct competition among their target market. That is regardless of the low price, high quality, or variety of models.
Keep in mind that you are managing a multi-national company, and shareholders are not interested in dividends but the stock price. Therefore, ensure your profit increases after every round to make the game better and for real business.
Apply the Theory inside You
Winning the BSG game is essential. Should you win, it would mean your tips are more favorable, and your competitors may learn from you. Nonetheless, learning from your and other groups’ failures is also necessary. As such, you can play the game frequently, any time you get it interesting.
Even so, how can you apply the business strategy knowledge and skills in the game? Do that by answering the following questions?
- What are the core competitive advantages?
- What are the niche markets that your competitors don’t see?
- What is the low-cost strategy?
- What is the high-quality strategy?
- What is the company’s differentiation strategy?
- How can the company lead the market in 10 years?
- How can the company defend the position if you are leading?
- How can the company overcome tough competitors who seem to know most of the things you know?
- How can the company jump over other competitors?
- How can you apply the knowledge from the textbooks?
- How can you apply the ancient wise in the Arts of War of Sun Tzu?
- How can we apply the wisdom of strategies like Cao Cao to Professors Peter Drunker, Igor Ansoff, Philip Selznick, James Collins, Bruce Handerson, Michael Porter, and Alfred Chandler, among others?
Know the Game, Your Competitors, and Know You
The following tips can help you get around the BSG and possibly be the winner.
- Know your strategy
You can know your strategy in several ways. These include;
- Check the Competitive Intelligent Report.
- Keeping track of the closest competitor you would like to get ahead of, check their price, S/Q, and other things like celebrities, advertising, plant capacities, and bidding price.
- Try to move away from your competitors if they are applying the same strategy.
- Keep Costs Low
Lowering the costs come with lots of benefits. You can lower the costs by increasing training and upgrading facilities. This way, you will save more money while getting a high S/Q. Besides, you don’t have to spend more on high-quality materials. Don’t forget to upgrade your plants as a strategy.
- Keep Track of Profits
Whenever you change and sharpen any decisions, you should keep track of your net profits. However, if you need a few points for the image, consider using the Corporate Citizenship but take note of the expenses. Also, consider workforce diversity and ethics training.
- Upgrade Current Plants
The S/Q upgrade is the best option if you choose high-quality strategies, while setup cost reduction is ideal if you decide to have several models. Should you consider selling a factory, don’t upgrade it because you will lose that investment.
- Know Your Competitors
The most crucial thing is the find out what prices your competitors have. If you set your price lower, you will sell more but lose due to low profits.
- Focus on a Strategy
You can win the game if you follow the High quality and the Low number of models. You can also win if you settle for Mid quality and a High number of models. These strategies are easy to see in the real world of business. Do not focus too much on the market share but focus more on profits.
- Control the Private Label Market
Should you have excess capacity, consider this market and manufacture at full capacity. Besides, you can lower the cost per pair of shoes. Moreover, consider the best margin for this market and ensure you can have the contract. But keep in mind the risk of jumping up or going down with the high bid price. Always check the market snapshot and the private-label segment.
- Optimization
Optimizations are the last task you can do before finalizing each year. Go up and down each decision a couple of times to get the optimal profits. For instance, you can change the Industry Average to +2% or +4% to attain the optimal. You can also ensure the S/Q since it is the first decision. Also, make decisions about the number of models, then the price. These are the three most crucial decisions to make in the game. Moreover, this may be a lesson in the real world of business as everything comes with quality, models, and price.
- Branded Production
Here, you have to tie materials, styles, or features and TQM until you attain the desired S/Q. Besides, you can set best practice training high, maybe at 5.000. The styles or features can be at 50, while the TQM can be set at 2.50. Keep in mind to check your profits and ensure they get as high as possible.
- Branded Distribution
In the first year (Year 11), you only have two factories, and you need to distribute to four markets. Look at the demand for each market, then divide each plant supply for each regional market.
- Celebrities (Get at least One)
Find out how much you want to bid for each celebrity. You can do this by checking the bid prices for the previous year. However, keep track of profit since you are cutting from the profit for PR products.
To this point, you are set to dominate your industry and win the Business Strategy game. With that, you can do the same over and over again, for every decision round. However, you must tie your values and settle for the best combination to optimize your net profit. Profit is crucial in the BSG game.
However, if you experience difficulty winning your game, type ‘Help with My BSG.’ You will get professional from BSG game help.
