SKF Austria goes BTS World Finals 2008!

Coming from Steyr, a small town in the middle of Austria, SKF rolling bearings as well as SKF BTS Tournaments participants conquer the world.The motivated finalists are team leader Erwin Uebleis (controlling), Simon Blasl (business development), Joerg Schlager (supply chain) and Klaus Zeppezauer (human resources) - in the picture from left to right. Veronika Pfeffer, participating in the first round, stepped out due to her pregnancy. Veronika, in this way we wish you all the best for your personal challenges ahead!

Over the last five years, SKF - a Swedish company and world leader in rolling bearings and relevant products - has sent over 30 teams from 17 nations to participate in the BTS World Tournament. "Out of those, three teams have made it to the semi-finals, and we are the first team to enter the World Finals", says team leader Erwin Uebleis without hiding his pride.

Being among the top six of over 320 participating teams of this year´s Global Tournament is certainly something special. "The first three will make it to the BTS awards ceremony in Cannes. However, we won't compete for the third place - we will go for victory", says business developer Simon Blasl, knowing his optimism was always reasonable so far.

Not everyone was so happy from the very beginning - besides the BTS Tournament, there was a lot of "real" work to be done. However, what SKF does - we do properly, and with the success in the first round, the fire got started. "Now we see the BTS Tournament as an excellent way of learning in a challenging, competitive environment and working as a team close to the reality of company management - including the time pressure" says Six Sigma Black Belt Joerg Schlager.

"The competition became more and more realistic. In the semi-final, personnel was increasingly important, as it is in reality. In the final round, we will probably have to think about proper training of our virtual employees - for example by BTS", says Klaus Zeppezauer, representing the HR part.

The Team of SKF Austria looks forward to the upcoming challenge of the World Finals - take the chance now or never, following the SKF vision "To equip the world with SKF knowledge".

Elisabeth Krennhuber, Personnel and Organizational Development, SKF Österreich AG

Global BTS Semi-Finals 2008!

In September 2008, the Global Semi-Finals of BTS Global Open Tournament were held. Representing 17 countries, 38 best teams from the entire tournament year were competing against each other. The time for decision-making was short, adding more spice to the tournament excitement.

We are proud to announce that 6 of the semi-finalist teams qualified and are on their way to the BTS World Final. It will take place this November. The best three teams will be invited to our prestigious BTS Awards Ceremony, held in Cannes on the French Riviera.

Please welcome the following teams to the BTS World Final:

• Nordea Bank Finland - Latvia branch: Team NORDTEL
• Schenker - Poland: Team LOGICART
• SKF - Austria: Team SKFonic
• Accenture - Spain: Team DTN
• Ericsson Business Unit Networks - Sweden: Team KEY
• Nokia – Hungary: Team CREATEAM

Congratulations to all the teams who were participating in the BTS Business Tournament!

And all the best to the Finalists! May the best team win!!

Taavi Thiel
Senior VP, BTS

SNPower Invest win the BTS Global Energy Tournament

Teams from the Energy sector competed against one another in one of the most challenging Global Business Energy Tournaments to date!

SNPower won the Tournament with Vattenfall taking second place and Norsk Hydro in third. Jan-Erik Felle of SNPower's team “yPhone” said, “SN Power Invest participated with a team bringing in representatives from different functional areas to mirror the way we would work with many of our daily corporate tasks. The competition gave individual team members a good insight into how a company functions as a whole, and proved to be a good way to develop the key business skills of market analysis, strategy formulation, pricing, production planning and financial analysis. The competition proved to be a very good way to mimic the market dynamics, where tough competitive strategies have a direct effect on the market and ultimately on the fate of a company and its profitability. The Business Tournament proved to be a good learning experience as well as a tool for letting colleagues from various areas of our company get to know and learn from each other in an informal and fun way. A very good experience on the whole”

SNPower are now entered into the BTS semi-finals, where they will compete against other international division winners, upon success, they will be off to the BTS Finals from which the top three teams will be invited to Cannes, French Riviera for the BTS Award Ceremony.

Members of the yPhone Team are Hilde Gillebo, Kathinka Rudlang, Inge Løvåsen, Markus Wilkens and Jan-Erik Felle.

BTS would like to congratulate SNPower on their achievements and we wish them well in the semi-finals, well done!

For further information regarding the Global Energy Business Tournament or team registration:
Contact - James Baker-Duly
james.bakerduly(#)bts.com, +46 735 10 9397

Vattenfall Poland was ambitious from the very start!

SPoT Team representing Vattenfall Distribution Poland will compete in September's BTS World Semi-Finals. On the photo: Przemek Karaś, Olek Knesz, Karolina Mucha-Kuś (team leader), Asia Burcon, Andrzej Szyp and Przemek Waszczyk.

The competition gave us an opportunity to feel like Top-Managers for a while! During the Tournament, we got an overall picture of making business, and it also showed us clearly how different parts of the company interact.

We learnt to develop trust in each others’ opinions, listen and communicate in an effective way.

What made the tournament the most exciting was the competition aspect. It was an extra source of motivation and it influenced our performance in a dynamic environment.

All in all, we experienced the BTS training as both exciting and rewarding. We also had a lot of fun!

Katarzyna Markowicz, HR, Vattenfall Distribution & Sales, Poland

John Holland ready to take on the world!

Our team from John Holland (Australia's leading contracting, engineering and services provider) came from a diverse set of backgrounds. This diversity in skills and management style added to colourful, but fruitful, discussions on our BTS Tournament strategies. We found the development of our sales and marketing strategies behind a consumer product challenging at first due to our contracting backgrounds, but it didn't take us long to develop our style.

With the true spirit of the ANZACs, after trailing for the first two rounds, we didn't give up, but decided to stand behind our strategy and our consistency finally paid dividends in rounds 3 and 4.

John Holland, although predominantly operating only in Australia, is now ready to take on the world in the BTS Semi-Finals!

John Holland team: Greg Taylor, Jeff Price, Glenn Palin, Paul Gallo and Robert Rabie.

In Sandvik Systems Development we know how to run a business!

We're doing IT! Team Sandvik SSD/SIT is a recently established Company with focus on growth and profitability within the business. Strange, isn't it?

Sandvik SSD/SIT is a fusion of skilled workers and managers from different companies and that is one of our key factors, says Jerker Lantz, the president of Sandvik SSD/SIT. Another one is our aggressiveness, stamina and agility. Quick decisions and risk management is our guiding star, he continues. Jerker is the Chairman of the Board and beside him he is accompanied by Anders Öhlund and Daniel Eriksson.

“Sandvik SSD/SIT” was the name we gave to our company in the BTS Business Tournament, where we were faced with a challenge of running a global company with thousands of employees.

In reality, we all work for Sandvik; Jerker is working as a release manager and project leader for Sandvik Systems Development. Sandvik Systems Development is one of two data companies within Sandvik AB with main focus on developing data services for the Sandvik business. Daniel Eriksson is working as license manager for Sandvik Information Technology. His role is taking care of all different kind of licenses and to coordinate all activities around licensing within Sandvik. Sandvik Information Technology has the responsibility for all data production within Sandvik. Anders Öhlund is responsible for data integration within Sandvik. He is also working for Sandvik Information Technology, where he runs a team with responsibility for all integration services within Sandvik AB.

IT is Business and Business is IT. Sandvik SSD/SIT are running IT and therefore, of course, we can run the business...

Nokia proceeds to BTS semifinals!

”The simulation produced a strong team building effect, which is not so common in traditional training events. The competition is definitely a positive aspect and drives people to think through all the new learning and strives them to understand the decisions they are making. I believe that the learning value can be easier applied this way in the future. Our team will be able to perform better in areas such as pricing of products, solutions and services and understanding product / brand value on demand creation. ´

The simulation and the competition were well organized and we are eagerly looking forward to the BTS Semifinals.”

Hannu Eronen, Director, Services and Software, Nokia

Metsä-Botnia enters to BTS Semifinals!

Los Molineros: Kim Lindström, Timo Malmi and Soili Numme.

Our team name LMFB comes from the Spanish words Los Molineros de Fray Bentos. We chose this name because Timo and Kim were helping in a pulp mill start-up in Fray Bentos, Uruguay. Molineros are men who build and fix wind mills that are used for pumping water for cattle. These pumps are crucial in the parts of the countryside that have no electricity, since there are over 12 million thirsty cows.

We were not able to meet as a team during the first two rounds, and after those rounds our team rank was 4. For the last two rounds we met and put much more effort into the decisions. We were mostly unanimous in our strategy and decisions; only some fixed expenses caused some disagreement. Timo wanted to spend more than Soili, but Soili understood better the impact of the growing market. A quickly growing business area does not necessarily need all that much marketing investments. We managed the risks by minimizing hazardous investments but also tried to seize the opportunity to generate profit for the company or difficulties for our competitors.

Molineros are ready to take the challenge in semi-finals with a relaxed Uruguayn attitude: Now or Mañana!!

BTS Awards 2008, Cannes, French Riviera, 3-6th of April

The Top 3 teams of the world’s biggest business tournament were again rewarded in Cannes on the French Riviera. The venue was again very chic and prestige with plenty of success stories around the business tournament together with some good wine and delicious food.

“This year we had the great pleasure of having 9 nationalities present in the Awards, which is the new record. All teams presented their own cultures in an informal way during the Award ceremony with super enthusiasm and on top of the business talent we could also see some great “show star potential”. I would like to thank all the business tournament stars and our host and hostess Mr. Stefan and Sirpa Widomski”.

Below you can still see the final rank of the top 3 teams in the world:

1. Pöyry Consulting, Finland

2. Tecpterol, Argentina

3. SEB, Lithuania

Many thanks to all the participants for this year’s tournament!

Taavi Thiel
SVP

BTS Tournaments

Losing is not an option - UPM Kymmene

OptiComm team from left to right: Denis Voyat, Juha Ukkola, Niels Schepers, Kevin Smith.

OptiComm team from UPM Raflatac set off to the business tournament with the above motto and came out as the winner of its division. The team is now preparing for the semi-finals that will take place in September. The members of the winning team come from different functions and countries in Europe. They posses s a range of business experience in marketing, business development, management accounting, supply chain and process development.

"We are all used to working in international teams, but have never worked together in this set-up before. Today's on-line group work facilities enabled us to work together seamlessly despite the distance. It also gave our team the flexibility to schedule our meetings around daily business agendas. I think we may even have proceeded more slowly had we had face-to-face meetings, as they typically include more argumentation," Juha Ukkola explains.

"We felt most excited during the entire tournament, which helped the team to weld well together. The competition in our division was very tough and we had to increase the level of precision every round to stay ahead of the others. The simulated environment created a high level of motivation for learning in a most subtle way," Ukkola says.

"We do not make similar business decisions in our own work, but we quickly got the hang of making such decisions. It was learning by doing," Niels Schepers explains.

"I was able to use statistics to propose company direction that I don't really have exposure to in my daily life. Essentially the training forced me to have a helicopter view so to speak rather than focusing on the detail," Kevin Smith says.

"The element of competition added an extra dimension to the business simulation. After each round we found the tournament more exciting...especially when the intermediate results proved we were on the right track. We achieved the victory through a good team work and our learning," says Denis Voyat.

"The tournament is an innovative learning solution introduced by UPM as part of the Learning to Lead framework. It's a great opportunity for the team to learn about business dynamics, and practise decision making in a safe environment, " explains Paul Norrington, HRD manager at UPM Raflatac, who advised the team to participate the business tournament as a training for a large commercial project they were to deliver.

SKF Austria proceeded to BTS Semi-Finals!

Finishing in first place, ahead of our eight competitors, it is the first time SKF Austria reaches the semifinals of the BTS Tournament! Our team consists of persons out of different departments (Sales, Controlling, Human resources, Quality and Supply chain), the different experiences supported our decision-making-process. After a period of 10 exciting weeks, where the simulation illustrated us the economy processes in a realistic way, we learned how top management has to balance the different requirements from customers, employees and shareholders. The training is an excellent team building exercise and we are looking forward to the September semifinals.