Business Strategy Game results of Skyline University Students
By Dr. Beena Salim
Associate Professor, Skyline University College, UAE
12 students of Skyline University participated in the online game of Business strategy in the fall semester 2011. Every year students in strategy management course of MBA, under the guidance of Dr. Beena Salim, enroll into the Business strategy game where they compete with Universities around the world. They started their game in the month of September 2011 and will complete their last year of the game next week which is in December 2011. There were 5 teams from the University this year. The students will have to take 20 decisions a week regarding company performance.
n It’s an online, PC-based exercise where you run an athletic footwear company in head-to-head competition against companies run by other class members.
n The marketplace is worldwide—production and sales activities can be pursued in North America, Latin America, Europe-Africa, and Asia Pacific
n There are 12 market segments—4 geographic segments each for branded footwear sales to retailers, for online footwear sales direct to consumers, and for private-label sales
There are 5 important performance targets the company leaders have to make while playing this game of actual decision making and implementations of the same. The five important targets are earnings per share which should improve 7 % annually through year 15 and 5 percent thereafter. Return on equity growth at 15 % or more annually, Maintain a B+ or higher credit rating, Achieve a image rating of 70 or higher through styles and models of shoes offered, and achieve stock price gains of 7% till year 15 and 5 % thereafter annually.
The students of skyline is in the 9th year of their game which is called 19th year as the company was passed on to them from the 11th year of the company operations. The four teams of skyline played extremely well during the course duration when the game was conducted. Although in the beginning they were finding it very difficult to take decisions on pricing, model allocation, materials to be used, manufacturing cost, corporate social responsibility, sales foreacast, brand ambassador to be selected etc, later on they started understanding more about how their decisions can affect the company performance. For some students it was challenging as they involved more and more in the game and its decisions. Skyline team got a Gold star rating in the 16th year.
In the 19th year we have skyline team companies among the 100th top ranking teams from around the other universities playing the game across the world. They are ranking 50 in some indicators of performance. Kudos to all the teams who participated in the game and brought laurels to the University in their own ways. This game of initiating multiple decisions related to their company each year did enhance the competitive spirit among students. Team A shoes run by Ms. Zulaikha and Ms. Zainab ranked 50th in earnings per share at the end of the game world wide.
Congratulations are in order for our final semester MBA students class who earned a Global Top 100 ranking for their company's BSG performance during the week of 5-Dec-11 through 11-Dec-11.The co-managers of A Shoooes Land (Company A) earned a Global Top 100 ranking on the following performance criteria: Zuleikha and Zainab are the decision makers of this group or company.
Earnings Per Share - Their EPS of $17.92 was the 50th best EPS performance of the week, worldwide!
Stock Price - Their Stock Price of $269.12 was the 75th best Stock Price performance of the week, worldwide!
The co-managers of DLifestyle (Company D) earned a Global Top 100 ranking on the following performance criteria:
Earnings Per Share - Their EPS of $14.60 was the 96th best EPS performance of the week, worldwide!
Stock Price - Their Stock Price of $240.90 was the 93rd best Stock Price performance of the week, worldwide!
The co-managers of EDeMarche (Company E) earned a Global Top 100 ranking on the following performance criteria:
Earnings Per Share - Their EPS of $14.51 was the 98th best EPS performance of the week, worldwide!
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