Mastering Global Expansion with trainM GmbH

The trainM GmbH offers management consulting and training in the areas of management, innovation and agile working. Managing Director Stefan Licht has been using TOPSIM business simulations since 2013 to train, educate and to further develop the abilities of the employees of various companies. With the help of our management simulation Mastering Global Expansion, he promotes cooperation between different departments and gives participants an overview of the overall business context and the characteristics of different international markets.

Structure of the Business Simulation

Up to twelve employees of a company take part in a business simulation seminar of trainM GmbH. The seminar can be held both online and in presence. On the first day, the participants receive an introduction from the seminar leader. The scenario, different approaches and decision-making options are presented. Subsequently, they play a total of eight periods of “Mastering Global Expansion” over three consecutive days.

In each period, the participants have about 60 to 90 minutes to make their decisions. After each decision round, the results are analyzed and presented by the seminar leader. This gives the participants an overview of the current figures and conditions in the market, which poses a new basis for the decisions in the next period. On the last day, every team shows the overall result of their company in a final presentation.

Some participants tend to make decisions based on gut instinct, while others create countless Excel spreadsheets, calculate everything down to the smallest detail and delay their decisions. In the simulation, just as in reality, it is important to invest the right amount of energy in relevant calculations to make sensible decisions as quickly as possible.

Goals of the Business Simulation

Professionals often wish for better communication between the individual departments of their company in order to improve teamwork and sharpen their view of internal company factors. “Mastering Global Expansion” remedies this by linking the different subdivisions in a vivid and comprehensible way. In the business simulation seminars of trainM GmbH, employees from different departments such as sales, development or project management work together to achieve a common goal.

The business game focuses on the development of business areas, in which the participants must deal with different markets and their peculiarities to be internationally successful with their company. Only through efficient teamwork, consideration of changes in the market and active communication they succeed in internationalizing their company’s activities. 

The competitive nature of business simulations has a positive effect on team spirit and promotes cooperation. Business simulations are fun and help participants to better understand interrelationships. “Mastering Global Expansion” makes it clear why there are different subdivisions of business administration and why the exchange among each other is so important for the employees of a company. 

Additional Tasks and Evaluation

Even before the participants make their first decisions, they plan their company management with a SWOT analysis. In doing so, they conduct an internal company analysis as well as an external market and competitor analysis and consider, for example, how and on which international markets they will place their products. Depending on the individual objectives of the participants, other additional tasks such as marketing campaigns or an annual general meeting can also be used. The final share prices and the teams’ final presentations are used as winning criteria.

As part of their presentation, the participants explain the current situation of their company using relevant key figures. The results provided by the business simulation make the consequences of their decisions tangible and promote their understanding of the overall business context. In addition, they present the next five years of their corporate planning in their presentations. “Mastering Global Expansion” uses sales planning, for example, to illustrate what management must do to promote certain areas of a company. In our picture gallery, we present excerpts from the participants’ presentations.

We would like to thank Stefan Licht from trainM GmbH for the exciting insight behind the scenes of his seminars with our business simulation “Mastering Global Expansion”!

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