BTS offers way to be virtual boss

Published in THE STAMFORD ADVOCATE
By Richard Lee, STAFF WRITER
Posted: 03/12/2009

Rommin Adl, Executive Vice President of BTS USA Inc., stands in the company's office at First Stamford Place. BTS, a developer of customized business-simulation software, is launching BTS Tournaments in the United States next month.

Baseball, basketball and football come to mind when thinking of team sports, but now a company that has its U.S. base in Stamford is translating the excitement of team competition to the business arena.

BTS, a developer of customized business-simulation software, is launching BTS Tournaments in the United States.

The technology was developed by Finland-based Business Game Factory, which BTS bought in 2003.

Now, companies can pit teams of three to five in these tournaments, as they simulate running multinational companies over four years. The games provide a cost-effective way for managers to apply business skills, according to Rommin Adl, executive vice president of BTS USA Inc. The first tournament is next month.

"BTS Tournaments is truly a unique offering in the e-learning, virtual learning space. We have been successfully offering this in Europe and other parts of the world for several years," Adl said, touting the games' usefulness in a tough economy. BTS has been spreading the word to its 125,000 North American clients, saying the games help build skills in strategic and systems thinking, finance, customer focus, marketing and competition.

"Throughout its 12-year history, BGF has served more than 30,000 participants in 65 countries, including teams from Accenture, Ericsson and Nokia. Participants give the experience extremely positive reviews," Adl said.
Rommin Adl, executive vice president of BTS USA Inc., stands in the company's office at First Stamford Place in 2004. BTS, a developer of customized business-simulation software, is launching BTS Tournaments in the United States next month.

Tournaments are held over eight weeks with four to 10 teams.

"Our new tournament portfolio is built based on excitement and engaging learning with a variety of customization options. We believe the competitive nature of our concept will be received with great enthusiasm," said BTS Senior Vice President Taavi Thiel.
Businesses increasingly see the value of serious gaming, said Lisa Mercurio, director of the Fairfield County Information Exchange at The Business Council of Fairfield County.

"Many now in the workplace have been raised on simulation gaming -- to take that platform into the global marketplace to train and strengthen distributed work forces makes sense," she said. "Competition can be a great teacher, particularly in challenging economic times.

"The future for serious gaming is strong as people adopt technology and "Millenials" -- those born from 1977 to 2000 -- enter the workplace, but companies must see benefits, said Thomas Keitt, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc.

Developers of online training games pitch them as cost-efficient, Keitt said, and that may be the case in a disaster simulation.

"Things get squishy when you talk about business training -- custom games can cost between $300,000 and $1 million," he said. "Over the long haul, these games might save the company money if they use the game over and over, but it can be a great upfront investment."

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/business/ci_11900307

BTS Launches First U.S. Online Business Tournaments

Leading Customized Simulations Provider Offers Cost-Effective Tournament Solutions for Business Skills Training

Stamford, CT, February 10, 2009 – BTS, the world leader in customized business simulations and other discovery-based learning solutions, today announced the launch of BTS Tournaments in the U.S. BTS Tournaments integrates BTS-owned, Finland-based, Business Game Factory (BGF), the world leader in web-based business simulation tournaments, with BTS's development and distribution expertise. Now U.S.-based teams can participate in these acclaimed business tournaments, in which teams of 3-5 people run a simulated multinational company over 4 fiscal years, against real competitors in a virtual market environment. Generating high levels of excitement, these open tournaments provide a flexible and cost-effective, yet powerful way for companies to give managers an integrated application of business skills in a time-sensitive, competitive environment. The first U.S. tournament heat will commence in April.

Like BTS custom simulations, BTS Tournaments emphasize an engaging and effective way for managers to build business acumen including: strategic & systems thinking, financial acumen, customer focus, market and competition savvy. The program is also a powerful team building experience. BTS Tournaments boasts many years of success in "serious business games." Throughout its 12-year history, BGF has served more than 30,000 participants in 65 countries, including teams from Accenture, Ericsson, and Nokia. Participants give the experience extremely positive reviews -- 98% would recommend the BTS Tournament experience to others.

In a challenging economic environment, learning and development organizations are increasingly turning to BTS for new solutions that provide the high engagement and impact of discovery learning for both business acumen and strategic execution. BTS will offer three types of tournaments to meet a variety of client needs:

• Global Tournaments: open tournaments for teams from a variety of companies, industries and geographies globally to enhance business acumen, strengthen execution skills and build teamwork

• Custom Tournaments: client-specific tournaments customized to solutions for clients with distributed and global workforces who need to align the organization to their strategy and enhance business acumen of business units, departments or high-potential leader groups

• Sponsored Tournaments: custom and/or best practice industry tournaments for companies, organizations and associations that need to build brands, strengthen networks and align to shared goals

"BTS Tournaments is truly a unique offering in the elearning/virtual learning space. We have been successfully offering this in Europe and other parts of the world for several years. Our upgraded platform and new tournament portal will make this a valued offering by our clients and companies seeking high impact, cost effective learning in a tough economy" said Rommin Adl, executive vice president, BTS. "This product is just one of a suite of highly innovative interactive tools and custom built solutions. We expect this to be a continuing trend for the coming year into which our investment will reap benefits for customers."

“Our new tournament portfolio is built based on excitement and engaging learning with a variety of customization options. We believe the competitive nature of our concept will be received with great enthusiasm in the US market,” said Taavi Thiel, senior vice president, BTS, and recent president, Business Game Factory.

The new BTS Tournaments website can be viewed by visiting www.btstournaments.com. The new state-of-the-art BTS Tournament simulation platform will be launched in April and incorporates feedback from hundreds of teams who have participated in the competitions. The new tournament will provide more intense competitions to participating teams and the companies that sponsor them.


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.

# # #

Media Contacts:

Marina Greenwood
Activa PR for BTS
+1-415-776-5350
marina [#] activapr.com

Rommin Adl
Executive Vice President, BTS USA
+1-484-391-2902
Rommin.Adl [#] bts.com

NOKIA TEAM: What Is Needed for Success in the BTS Business Tournament - the Story of Team Turing&Co.

Success Factors for BTS Business Tournament:

- Motivation - Constant motivation is a must-have and the main key to success. In this case, while crunching numbers week after week it helped greatly to remember that we are on the road to Cannes.

- Crossfunctionality - The tournament demonstrates well the importance of not to sub-optimize but to think holistically, whereas the human nature tends to lure one to overemphasize the importance of his/her own functional area. Hence, a crossfunctional - or crossfunctionally minded - team is an asset.

- Time & Energy - For sure the competition required significant amount of both, but at the same time it was even surprisingly enlightening, rewarding and fun. Especially understanding the starting position and the market overall in the beginning was crucial. The last rounds were already rather routine for us.

- Strategy, Analytics & Intuition - Managing a large multinational company is challenging and we kept wondering "What would Olli-Pekka (Nokia CEO) do". Having a clear direction (strategy), understanding the situation (hard core analytics) and coping with uncertainty (intuition) proved to be a winning recipe.

- Physical Fitness - Like in any professional sport, we believe that also in this tournament excellent physical fitness takes you far. Hence we combined finetuning our analytical skills with running and gym. We plan to continue our training program and to be very fit for the semi-finals and finals - and for the beach in Cannes!

Johanna Lampinen (Development Manager, DSN Design at NOKIA),
Maija Kaukonen (Manager, Lifecycle Management - Analysis at NOKIA),
& Pekka Kokko (Manager, Marketing Investment Management at NOKIA)

Warm Christmas Season Greetings and All The Best for a Wonderful New Year!

We at BTS Tournaments are very glad to have shared another successful year with You. Everyone contributed a great deal to make this Tournament Year even more exciting. Once again, congratulations to the Finalists, who have done a tremendous job in their performance, excelling in their business acumen.

We have a thrilling surprise coming up next year, so watch this space!

As our Neighbour from The Arctic Circle - Santa - would say - Ho Ho Ho! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! Hyvää Joulua!

And a prosperous New Year 2009. Let's make it a superb one!

See you soon!

Taavi Thiel, BTS Tournaments
Together with the BTS Team

AstraZeneca Japan – We made it through !!

This was the third opportunity for AstraZeneca Japan to participate in this Business Tournament and we became the first team to advance to semifinals!

What made the difference? Our strengths were –
· Variety of members from Finance, Marketing and Human Resources
· Weekly meetings for reviews and decisions throughout the competition.
· Guys who could enjoy the competition!

Our team was from different divisions. Yoshihiko Terada is a Finance guy who works as a financial analyst, Hitoshi Ishigaki is a Marketeer who is in charge of Portfolio Strategic Planning in Oncology, Shinichiro Mori is also a Marketeer who is in charge of one of mega brands in Primary Care and Fumiyasu Sakogawa is an HR guy who coordinates trainings in our Manufacturing division. We have extremely different backgrounds and that diversity worked very well in allowing us to make decisions by influencing each other.

Also, we held weekly meetings, 3 hour meeting before submission and 1 hour meetings for result review. Feedback from the review meeting was well utilized for the next round submission. Every day we learn!

Finally, we have really enjoyed the tournament, as it was exciting and fun although it was tough. Business Tournament participation had been prioritised rather than anything else. This had to be the biggest reason why we could enjoy and concentrate through the simulation for two months! (sorry, bosses!)

We really enjoyed it and are looking forward to competing in the semifinals again in September 2009.

Our motto is – "On va gagner le Grand Prix! La fête à Cannes!!"

Sandvik SSD/SIT to the Semi-finals of BTS Business Tournament

The first international team in the BTS Business Tournament competition has been born and so far mother Fortuna has been on their side.

This team, GFG, consists of Sandvik employees (SSD/SIT) from both Germany and Sweden. Frank Siebenmorgen is from Germany, Maria Wesslegård and Per Hälsingdal are from Sweden.

The first round of the Tournament which started in September 2008 is already over. Four business years have passed by and Maria, Frank and Per have made it to the semi-final next Autumn!

Something that might seem to be a difficulty is that they live and work in two different countries. They do not see each other in person so often. Instead of physical meetings, they communicate through telephone meetings and video conferences.
- It works very well to communicate by using this technology, Frank says.

Understanding strategy, economics and the drivers for a company are some of the challenges the teams have in the competition. According to the team, other challenges include taking the right deci­sions and trying to predict how the other teams will act in the different rounds. That is not easy, but they learn more and more as time passes by.

- We have learned how important it is to have a plan and to stick to it. Another thing that is essential is to listen to the Market Analysts, Per says.

They all have different roles in the competition, Per modestly says that his role is to make the other ones happy.

- Frank is the financial expert and he makes all the necessary analyses. Maria is the one questioning things and thinking in new directions.
- We all work perfectly well together, de­spite the geographic obstacle. And we all enjoy good discussions and we have a lot of fun as a team; and that is the most important thing, Maria says convincingly.

Per Hälsingdal
Current role: Global Transition Manager, SIT
Team role: We all share the roles, but I am the President.
Contribution to the team: To make everyone happy, to be active in discus­sions, book meetings, send in our result to the tournament arranger and ask silly questions. In other words, to do what is expected of a President!

Frank Siebenmorgen
Current role: Manager SSD & SIT Germany
Team role: We deal with the questions and decisions as a team, but I believe I am the Financial Manager.
Contribution to the team: To be an active part of discussions, do the techni­cal calculation of prices and sales volume estimates.

Maria Wesslegård
Current role: Special Service MES Manager, SSD
Team role: No specific role, a team player.
Contribution to the team: To take an active part of discussions, read all the material concerning the competition and come up with ideas for strategies and operations.

Abertis Championship winners!

The Lynx Team is a truly multinational team of 5 members. Our lynx spans from Bolivia (Eduardo) to France (Françoise) and Spain (Xavi, Jordi and Adria). We like the challenges and we managed to make lively and positive meetings/conference calls where all members added value from their unique angle.

Eduardo has a friendly way to say business is business and stick to the common sense. Spanish Xavi is always looking at the risks and tries to keep the four legs of the lynx on the ground. On the other hand, Jordi likes to think out of the box and stretch us towards bigger objectives, and Françoise always making us think again about the whole picture and the balanced scorecard! Finally, Adria likes Excel spreadsheets and likes to coordinate the meetings while crunching numbers. This melting pot has been capable of having a clear sight for victory! That is the Lynx.

Team Lynx proceeds to the Global BTS Semi-final in September 2009!

From left to right: Jordi Bosom, Françoise Riou, Adria Canals, Eduardo Canelas and Xavi Serra.

Working instructions: How to go to Cannes-from SKF TEAM

Pat Benatar was singing "Love is a Battlefield" - which is of course true, by the way - but now we can sing "Business is a Battlefield" with no doubt. Alfred Hitchcock couldn't have made this World Final more thrilling. We can only describe what was going on here in Austria - but let us assume the very same scenarios were happening at the very same time in some specific places in Poland, Spain, Hungary, Latvia and Sweden.

After you successfully managed to beat a number of other teams out of the tournament in qualification round and semi-finals, you will be one out of six finalists - leftover from 300 teams which entered the BTS Global Tournament. In the world final, do as follows:

Tuesday afternoon...
Schedule a nice little meeting in the afternoon, starting at 3pm. Well, at 19:30 you will have to order some Pizza to keep the systems running. The meeting will be a heavy duty test for your coffee machine. At around 22:00 you will be already more clear about what to do. Finally you send in your decisions for the first round...

Wednesday afternoon...
Same as above. This is the time to realize - there is some serious competition. Refine your strategy and put up an action plan. The Pizza service will come in again at 19:00...

Thursday morning...
Starting at 07:00 you will need some fresh ideas to improve your business and somehow beat those ...aarrghh... competitors. Good sales and production alone won't win the competition, pay enough dividends, motivate your employees.
From round to round you will come closer to the edges of your seats. The coffee machine will at this time be in continuous operation. Lunch is of course only sandwiches while you fight your battle...

Thursday afternoon...
Before you send in your decisions for the last round, you will already know that the final scores won't be far from each other - everything is still possible. Then at around 16:11 you will stare at your screen with eyes wide open - the relief... you will have to look at the results more than once to realize - your team has made it. Finishing in third place (optionally: first, second), you will be going to Cannes.

Friday morning...
Exchange nice mails with the other teams, have a look again at the pictures from previous award ceremonies, check if your dinner jacket still suits you, gear up your cigar depot and wait for BTS to book your flights...

Congratulations to the winners Schenker and second Accenture - be sure we will have a drink together in Cannes...
...and greetings to all from the third, team of SKF (Austria) - Erwin Übleis, Simon Blasl, Jörg Schlager and Klaus Zeppezauer

SEB's team Plastixxx in the BTS Semi Final: going the first step!

SEBs team Plastixxx contains of five enthusiastic members from Norway, who daily work in the credit card business.

- Although telecommunication is a rather different business from ours, I believe we have been able to use some of our experience and business understanding in the BTS Tournament, says Brian Malm, teamleader of Plastixxx. We found the simulation very realistic and exciting, and we had a lot of fun during the four decision making rounds.

- I believe we won our division mainly because we did a thorough job setting up the company strategy, and following it throughout the whole tournament.

- We had a lot of exiting discussions in the decision making, but it really took both time and effort to complete the decision sheets during each of the four rounds. But it paid of, and we are now headed for the semifinal in September 2009.

- Plastixx is a team with great ambitions, and we have strong faith in the forthcoming semifinal in September 2009. We are really looking forward to the next rounds of competition, and we expect nothing less than advancing to the final next year!

Picture: The Plastixxx team is (from the left) Øyvind Christie, Brian Malm, Hilde Fredheim Høgberg, Ole Kristian Duaas and Eivind Løvig.

Tomm-Fredrik Olsen, Head of Marketing, SEB Kort

.

BTS WORLD FINAL 2008!

This year's BTS World Final took place on 27 November 2008. It was a very tight race and everyone's mission was to make it to the very top. There were so many emotions, a lot of excitement, anxiety, and of course analysis and focus... From over 400 teams during the year and about 60 teams competing in the semi-finals, only 6 made it to the very top. This was quite an achievement!

We at BTS are very proud to announce the official ranking of the 2008 BTS Business Tournament World Final:

1. Schenker - Team LOGICART (POLAND)

2. Accenture - Team DTN (SPAIN)

3. SKF - Team SKFonic (AUSTRIA)

4. Nordea Bank-Latvia branch - Team NORDTEL (LATVIA)

5. Ericsson-Business Unit Networks - Team KEY (SWEDEN)

6. Nokia - CREATEAM (HUNGARY)


The Top 3 Teams will be flown in for the Exclusive Awards Ceremony in Cannes on the French Riviera in the Spring. There, they will be get a chance to celebrate their success together and receive their big and well-deserved trophies!
Congratulations to all Teams! You made this an experience to remember!!

Taavi Thiel
Senior Vice President at BTS