How often have you felt that you are a cog in an organizational wheel? How often have you found your decisions being overridden by your superiors?
How often have you felt the “need to know” what's happening elsewhere, so as to take better decisions and to develop a wider perspective of your organization?
To answer all these questions finance club of Bharathidasan Institute of Management, Trichy conducted “YUDHVIDYA-08”, a management simulation game. The main objective of the game is to formulate a strategy in a competitive environment and to make critical decisions across functional departments as a team.
The Game involves decision making for a company with focus on a particular performance measure. It is played for four quarters, where each quarter is defined as a three month period. At the beginning of every quarter, a new business opportunity will dawn. The teams will take decisions, whose combined impact will be communicated through reports at the end of each quarter. After receiving the reports of the quarter another round of decisions have to be taken keeping in mind the past performance as well as the new scenario which has emerged. Although all teams will start the Game with the same assets, financial structure, production capacity, product mix and potential for success, the wealth created or lost will depend on the path charted by the team as well as by the competition in every quarter.
The decision making time, Standard and Additional Decision Forms, business situation, constraints and context is described before the starting of each quarter. Every team is required to read and understand the information before initiating “play of the Game”. Sample Decisions Forms and other relevant material are given in the Sample Section. Although it may appear that there are too many decisions to take, the team will gradually see which decisions need to be taken more frequently than the others. The set of documents along with other papers are given during the play are to be read in conjunction with the manual. The information contained therein will override any information contained in the manual. Late submission of the decision forms may attract penalty of a specified amount, which shall be deducted from the profits of the defaulting team. The team’s performance is gauged using Cumulative Profit after Tax (PAT) of all the four quarters, for deciding the winning team.This game served as a learning process and as an arena for testing of acquired experience and knowledge with a little fun. It is the best opportunity that one can get to the real situation without taking financial and career risks.
