OptiComm team from left to right: Denis Voyat, Juha Ukkola, Niels Schepers, Kevin Smith.
OptiComm team from UPM Raflatac set off to the business game 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 game, which helped the team to weld well together. The game in our division was very tough and we had to increase the level of precision every round to stay ahead of the others. The game 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 game 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 game 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 game as a training for a large commercial project they were to deliver.
SKF Austria proceeded to BGF Semi-Finals!
Finishing in first place, ahead of our eight competitors, it is the first time SKF Austria reaches the semifinals of the Business Game Factory! 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 game 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 game is an excellent team building exercise and we are looking forward to the September semifinals.
