Income-Outcome® Business Simulations: Details

Audience-Appropriate Learning for Business Acumen

Income/Outcome® business simulations are not one-size-fits-all programs. Instead, they are a family of simulations and each level of the simulation focuses on business drivers and decision-making skills that are appropriate to the audience.

This innovative ‘flexible platform’ was created in 1996. The simulations remain unique in their use of common imagery, common dynamics, and common language throughout the range of audience-specific programs. This commonality continues into The Company Board, a proprietary presentation of your company’s current financial position.

For: All Wage Earners

For: Anyone in the Company

For: Managers, Account Executives, Channel Partners

For: Senior Managers and Executives, Business Unit Leaders, Strategic Planners

Understanding

Initiative

Planning & Analysis

Strategy & Execution

An hands-on overview of how a business runs. Includes investment, cash flow, and planning for profit.

Demonstrates the relationships between price, volume, costs, and profit.

Employees learn how the pieces fit together, and how their job impacts working capital and the bottom line.

Provides experience in running a business in a competitive environment. Includes setting prices, producing financial statements, monitoring cash flow, and planning for growth and profit.

Enhances everyone’s ability to communicate, implement and exercise initiative.

Focuses on skill-building exercises in planning and analysis. Includes: extensive market planning, Cash Flow Forecasts, Budgets and Variance, Break-Even Analysis, and key ratios including the Income/Outcome Triangle For Ratio Analysis.

Creates the appropriate mindset for planning, and for understanding partners and customers.

A challenging simulation that models the competitor-driven instability of the global marketplace.

It can incorporate specifics such as foreign exchange and hedging, tax structures, mergers and acquisitions, international variations in market drivers. Teamwork is crucial.

Business Basics

Target Audience
Frontline employees, internal staff, support personnel and individual contributors.

Business Basics teaches the foundations of finance and builds on those foundations through the exploration of simple business dynamics. This program creates and develops "business visualization" skills; employees see how and why their decisions and actions impact the performance of the company.

Business Basics is the scripted story of the start-up and expansion of a company. It provides a dynamic business scenario for learning - as teams manage their growing "game board" businesses, the learning "plays out" on the board and in the classroom discussion.

Learning begins with the Income/Outcome® simulation board and the modeling of simple financial statements that track the position and performance of a company. It continues with the introduction of some real-world problems such as inventory build up, falling prices, and cash flow. It culminates in the discovery of a real-world business dynamic: a business that wants to survive must be willing to change.

Each "company" is given an opportunity to introduce change and innovation by improving a business dynamic (production capacity, cost structure, market position, cash flow); they then measure results and compare those results to their expectations (and against the other teams in the "industry").

Employees develop a big picture understanding of business, and see themselves as part of the business.

Develop the business literacy of your workforce. Ensure that they can:

Read an Income Statement and Balance Sheet
See themselves in the business and know how they impact these financial reports
Make better choices in everyday activities leading to reductions in costs, inventories, and working capital

Benefits of Business Basics for front-line employees:

Take-away of a big picture understanding of the needs of the business
Better able to implement directives
Communicate issues that impact business results
Increased respect for management decisions
Greater sense of involvement

A complete program runs in 4 hours. This includes a business visualization module based on The Company Board, our proprietary presentation of your company’s current financial position. This module connects the classroom learning to your real-world business.

Programs are presented by our certified facilitators or yours (trainer certification available).

This program fits seamlessly with longer, more complex Income/Outcome offerings. Use the complete family of simulations to build organizational alignment through the development of a common language and shared understanding of business.

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Finance for Everyone

Target Audience
People making decisions that impact sales and operations - individual contributors, team leaders, and supervisors.

Finance for Everyone teaches the pieces of a business and how they fit together, and clarifies what the business needs in order to be healthy. Learners make interlocking decisions in all the major areas of a business, then review and defend their results.

Finance for Everyone requires constant decision-making - what prices to set, whether to increase capacity, how much money to borrow, what R&D to pursue, and how to improve prices, cost structure, and cash flow. It models the real world, giving learners the opportunity to make decisions in one area and see a clear view of the impact throughout the organization.

Learning begins with the Income/Outcome simulation board and the modeling of simple financial statements for use in tracking the position and performance of a company. Teams take control of their business by taking the initiative on pricing, capacity, marketing, borrowing, etc. The decisions made in one department impact the ability to make good decisions in other departments; and every decision made by a competitor impacts a team’s positions and results. Every learner experiences a universal business truth - each decision they make impacts the company in three areas: other departments, the ability to make future decisions, and the company’s bottom line results.

Develop the business acumen of your employees. Ensure that they can:

Take initiatives in everyday activities leading to reductions in costs, inventories, and working capital
Work creatively with customers and suppliers, and look for profit opportunities
Understand how and why their everyday decisions and actions impact other areas of the company

Benefits of Finance for Everyone for your employees:

Develop a big picture understanding of the needs of the business
Better able to take appropriate initiatives
Communicate rapidly and effectively with other departments
Increased communication up and down the management hierarchy
Greater sense of involvement

A complete program runs in 8 hours. This includes a business visualization module based on The Company Board, a proprietary presentation of your company’s current financial position. This module connects the classroom learning to your real-world business. Programs are presented by our certified facilitators or yours (trainer certification available).

This program fits seamlessly with other Income/Outcome offerings. Use the complete family of simulations to build organizational alignment through the development of a common language and shared understanding of business.

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Finance for Managers & Sales Professionals

Target Audience
People engaged in budgeting, targeting, forecasting and analysis - individual contributors, managers, and sales groups.

Finance for Managers requires teams to be competitive in all areas of a business. They develop their planning and analysis skills and gain practical experience in budgeting, targeting, forecasting, and using a variety of performance metrics.

Finance for Managers requires constant decision-making - what prices to set, whether to increase capacity, how much money to borrow, what R&D options to pursue, how to improve prices, cost structure, and cash flow.

Learning begins with the Income/Outcome game board and the modeling of simple financial statements for use in tracking the position and performance of a company. Learners gain practical experience in the use of a range of financial planning and analysis tools including cash flow forecasting, budgeting, and ratio analysis.

Develop the business acumen of your management teams. Ensure they can:

Prepare budgets, targets, and forecasts
Integrate cash flow planning with planning for sales, costs and profit
Partner with customers and suppliers, structure sales and purchases, look for profit opportunities

Benefits of Finance for Managers and Sales Professionals

Plan across departments
Clearer, faster, more accurate communication
Improved decision-making
Increased awareness of industry and market

A complete program runs in 16 hours. This includes a business visualization module based on The Company Board, a proprietary presentation of your company’s current financial position. This module connects the classroom learning to your real-world business.

Programs are presented by our certified facilitators or yours (trainer certification available).

This program fits seamlessly with other Income/Outcome offerings. Use the complete family of simulations to build organizational alignment through the development of a common language and shared understanding of business.

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Managing A Global Business

Target Audience
People who impact the strategic direction of the company - professionals, sales people, managers and executives from all areas of the operation.

Managing a Global Business offers strategy immersion - each "company" has the opportunity to expand into new product lines, enter new global markets, develop quality initiatives, implement process improvements, develop strategic alliances, and more! The teams represent a rapidly changing industry that is being destabilized by the competitors themselves. Ongoing competitor analysis and market awareness are crucial for survival.

Managing a Global Business is a very challenging team competition where the companies operate in a complex and unstable environment. The winner of the simulation is the company which achieves the “best” financial and operating results. This usually translates to the group that operates most effectively as a team in 1) the development of a clear strategy and 2) the flexible execution of that strategy.

Learning begins with the Income/Outcome simulation board and the modeling of simple financial statements for use in tracking the position and performance of a company. Teams are immediately confronted with strategic opportunities which require hi-dimension analysis and complex decision-making in an environment that continuously evolves throughout the length of the program.

Develop the business acumen of your senior personnel. Ensure they can:

Re-evaluate market, operational, and competitive positions
Create plans that consider profit, cash flow, and strategic position
Visualize the financial issues that drive the corporation and improve these key business drivers.

Benefits of Managing a Global Business for your managers and executives

Provides a solid financial grounding, independent of the career path that has been followed to this point
Raises individuals out of the product or market environment, and provides a global perspective on the challenge of business today

The complete program runs over a 3 day period (22 –- 26 hours). This includes a business visualization module based on The Company Board, our proprietary presentation of your company’s current financial position. This module connects the classroom learning to your real-world business.

Programs are typically presented by our certified facilitators.

This program fits seamlessly with shorter, less complex Income/Outcome offerings. Use the complete family of simulations to build organizational alignment through the development of a common language and shared understanding of business.

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