Statoilhydro Business Development off to Semi-Finals

The BTS Tournament certainly triggered our competitive instincts, and our goal was of course to win! In the first round we planned fairly safe. We made our decisions based on analyses without taking much risk, which resulted in reasonably good results. There was another team that did exceptionally well and obtained a huge lead, which made us realise the importance of our competitors. Therefore we worked even harder towards the next deliveries to understand our environment and lay out a strategy for how to catch up with the leading team.

We believe we got paid for spending the necessary time to investigate the details. We were also courageous, coupled with a good portion of common sense; You have to stick to your strategy as well as adapt to the changing environment. This has made us more aware of how to treat uncertainty in decision-making.

The Kon-Tiki team members are of three different nationalities based in four locations on two continents. As a result, the work was conducted switching from one language to the other via phone, video conferences and not necessarily during regular office hours. Meetings were also held from airports, taxis and even from the delivery room (one of the team members became a dad the day before the 3rd round).. We clearly see the potential of the telecom business!

Best regards,

(on photo above, from left to right)
Ragnhild Ulvik: Senior Analyst (Team Leader)
Martin Debaig: Business Developer
Gudmund Hartveit: Business Developer
Nidia Alvarez Crogh: Project Leader
Lene Landøy: Business Developer


For further information:
Please contact James Baker-Duly at BTS Interactive: +46 735 109397

NOKIA TEAM: There can be only one…

Reflections of Team Primrose from the BTS Global Tournament

In addition to referring to a catchphrase of a movie starred by Christopher Lambert, this wisecrack vividly depicts the grim realities of the BTS Global Tournament. In the simulation we found ourselves struggling with the challenges imposed by the management of a company operating in a number of interraled fields of business. What is more, we quickly realized that we are not alone, but pinned into a heated struggle with five other teams all with the same goal of winning the divisional victory.

The tournament was a great learning opportunity. It did not, however, let you learn by the easy way. Throughout the competition, we had to rethink and revise our strategies and keep a close eye on the other teams trying to anticipate what they had in mind. But this is the core of the experience – competing against teams of professionals from around the world with knowledge that only one team will prevail. This is the occasion when one learns fastest and most efficiently – the baptism by fire.

Team Primrose wants to thank all the other teams in the BTS Global Tournament Division 26 for a tough challenge. The battle for market share and profitability taught us all important lessons, but unfortunately – there can be only one winner. As Conner MacLeod finds out in the above mentioned movie – the business competition is not an easy one but worth the struggle as the reward is a place among the immortals.

Team Primrose consisted of four persons from Nokia located in both Salo and Espoo in Finland:

Matti Torkkeli, Senior Manager DSN Design (Team Leader)
Kaj Lindfors, Senior Manager, Supply Logistics
Antti Rissanen, Manager Mid Term Supply Planning
Sami Sarpola, Manager Supply Capability Management

StatoilHydro: Our BTS Tournament experience: so far so good

We were all excited to be BTS Tournament participants and StatoilHydro Oil Trading and Supply’s representatives in the Tournament. The Oilers team consists of members with different backgrounds, both when it comes to education, work experience and nationality. This proved to be very beneficial in the competition.

The test round was very useful in that it gave us a chance to "feel the simulation" and try out different correlations. We were very curious about our competitors – who they were and how they would position themselves.

We decided to start out fairly safe in the first rounds. We planned to be more aggressive and take on more risk in the final rounds – but why change a strategy that seemed to work? As the Tournament continued, we got smarter and were able to get more profit out of our strategy. We also got better at analysing the market and reading our competitors. We were not the only ones getting smarter though - the race got really close at the end – luckily we pulled the longest straw.

This Tournament has been a great learning opportunity for us. We now have a better understanding of what it is like to run a business. Having to work as a team, agreeing on strategy and dividing tasks is always an important lesson. Last but not least, this was an excellent opportunity to get to know other young professionals in our company.


Best regards,

Linn Strømsvåg – Business Analyst Crude and Condensate (Team Leader)
Thomas Eltervåg – Contract Handler
Igor Volner – Contracts Coordinator
Jon Berntsen – Business Analyst Risk Monitoring
Natalia Vennikova – Sr. Business Analyst Risk Monitoring

For further information:

Please contact James Baker-Duly at BTS Interactive: +46 735 109397

Nordea Latvia: We’re in the semi-final!

From the left: Rolands Abele - Head of Product Development, Aiga Babre - Deputy Head of CSU, Girts Strazds - Local risk manager, Anna Meilere - Sales Manager, Rihards Petkevics - Credit Analyst.

Rihards Petkevics, Captain of Nordea team “K 15”, Credit Analyst:
“We’re glad that we have proceeded to the semi-final despite the tough competition. The main driving force that helped to win the competitors was the team spirit. Each of us acted in the interest of the team and was motivated to achieve the best result. No doubt that professional experience of the team members in various fields was important. Deep knowledge of company financial analysis, project / team management and decision skills helped to win the tournament. Team’s daily work was organized to make the best of each meeting by analyzing the market situation, forecasts and previous year results.”

Our team was in charge of a mobile telecommunication services provider and adopted strategic decisions regarding promotion of products in the market, prices and amount of investments. Our core strategy was similar to Nordea operation strategy as we chose “in the Middle of the road tactic” meaning not to exaggerate with product prices or volumes but be somewhere in the middle between our competitors’ offer. From the beginning of the tournament, we tried to calculate the most efficient way of capital management and the possible amount of investments. As years of the simulation passed by and as competitors changed decisions significantly, the important factor was flexibility of our decisions and proper reaction to current market situation. Consent of all team members in decision making process was important and in discussion process the best solutions were chosen.

The breaking point in the simulation was the third year as this was the year when we set and fulfilled ambitious sales targets. In the third year, our market share of five products out of six was with the highest market share. The third year was, to a large extent, crucial for the course of the tournament in our division. In the fourth year, our task was to keep the leading position which we gained in the third year.

During the training, we gained confidence in our capabilities, we improved team management skills and understand the decision making process better and gained trust in each other. Also the possibility to develop analytical skills and better knowledge of operations of a mobile operator services provider can be mentioned as benefit.

We would like to gratefully thank the organisers of the BTS Business Tournament and competitors for the good time that we had and the possibility to have time off from our routine work.

Nordea Latvia

FORTUM Distribution: Virtual Team enters the Global BTS Semi-Finals!

From left to right:
Lene Løkkeberg – Responsible Business Customers and Tariffs
The team’s leader: Staffan Andersson – Settlement Engineer
Petri Juhala – Technical Customer Advisor
Maarit Laiho – Process Manager

The team’s name: FORTUNE.

Team structure
Our team consists of team members from Sweden, Norway and Finland with different experiences and starting points. The only thing common for us (except working within same company) was that none of us had much of economical experiences. But in the end, this might have been one of our success factors.

In the beginning our team was not the strongest possible: participants missing, no leader and scattered in 3 countries. But once the roles were clear it started to come together. Our bearing force was the core of the team: leader Staffan and meeting facilitator Lene. The team warmed up till the end and we became stronger and stronger round by round.

The beginning and the end
The beginning almost slipped from our hands: just in time before the BTS Tournament started we were able to have our first introduction meeting: it all started to come together. Still we were missing parts of our team: but we started to learn what the whole thing was all about.

After first round we were at third position: far away from the leader team. Second round was a disaster for us: we tried to do our best, but dropped to 4th place. Even though we were just behind the third place it still felt pretty heavy. We were a little confused: at the time our main goal was to understand how the simulation works. How our decision affected our position, what did other teams do and how should we prepare ourselves to upcoming rounds.

Third round was the turning point for us: we started to gain to leader team and our previous decisions started to pay-off. We finally found the balance and managed to do the right adjustments.

The fourth and last round we polished our adjustments and tried not to be distracted by the other teams. We focused on making solid investments and not making hasty decisions just to get market shares.

After a rocky start what were our strengths? How were we able to make it through?

Learning by doing
One of our main goals was to understand how our decisions affected our position. We tried different things and after results we always analyzed how decisions affected the outcome. People whose background isn't in economics require a lot of work to understand numbers and economical terms all at once, but we were able to make it happen. It was interesting to see importance of investments.

Efficiency in meetings
We didn't have a single meeting face-to-face. All of our meetings were held with communicator and via phone: no travelling, clear facilitation, fast decision making and common agreement of decisions. Our longest meeting took 2 hours.

Intuition or simply luck?
The common sentence from us was: let's go with this and see what happens. After two first rounds we didn't fully understand what was happening. Once we got the understanding it was pure curiosity to see how our decisions affected results. It was very exciting to see the results.

Patrick Ekman, Manager CS Relations/Business Development, FORTUM DISTRIBUTION AB

BTS Crowns 2008 Global Tournament Champions

Teams from Accenture, DB Schenker, SKF Take Top Honors

CANNES, France and STAMFORD, Connecticut, June 10, 2009 – BTS, the world leader in customized business simulations and other discovery learning solutions, today announced the winners of the 2008 BTS Global Tournament. The top three winning teams defeated hundreds of competitors in a series of simulations to run the most successful multinational corporation, as defined by a Balanced Scorecard - encompassing market share, revenues, cash on hand, and stakeholder satisfaction. Top winners DB Schenker Poland, second place winners Accenture Spain, and third place winners SKF Austria were honored in an awards ceremony hosted by the BTS Tournaments division of BTS on April 25.

"These three teams put their business acumen, teamwork and entrepreneurial skills to work to successfully run three simulated companies over four-year periods, and have gained at least that many years of experience, as well as cross-disciplinary expertise, in the process," said Taavi Thiel, senior vice president, BTS, and head of BTS Tournaments.

The winners of the 2009 BTS Global Tournament will be determined in late 2009. The 2010 BTS Global Tournament commences September 9, with additional first round start dates of October 6 and November 4. More information about BTS Tournaments is available at www.btstournaments.com and www.bts.com.

About BTS
BTS is the world leader in customized business simulations and other discovery learning solutions that enable leading corporations to change, grow and succeed. We partner with our clients to develop the mindset and capabilities that their people need to accelerate change and improve business results.

BTS has 300 highly talented professionals serving over 400 clients, including 40 of the US Fortune 100 companies and 25 of the Global Fortune 100 world’s largest corporations. Select BTS clients include AT&T, Ericsson, Kimberly-Clark, Nokia, Sony, Toyota, Unilever and Xerox.

BTS adds value to its clients through three practice areas: Strategic Alignment & Business Acumen, Leadership & Management, and Sales. BTS also has strong capabilities in Operational Excellence & Project Leadership and offers an innovative Engage for Change process.

BTS serves its clients from offices in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Scottsdale, Stamford, Beijing, Bilbao, Brussels, Helsinki, Johannesburg, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Mexico City, Oslo, Singapore, Stockholm, and Sydney.

For more information please visit www.bts.com.

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