The eLearning Center for Gatlin Education Services

‘TFG’ is aimed at enhancing traditional training around finance for non-finance people. It uses the latest version of our LearningBeans simulation platform to put learners into the role of running a business with a focus on the finance-related decisions and financial performance.

The Finance Game from PIXELearning is a web browser-based (online) immersive learning simulation that focuses on business finance-related decisions, indicators and performance. It was designed primarily to act as a powerful way to rapidly expose non-finance people to key financial terms, metrics and concepts.

Learners are ‘dropped’ into a fictitious scenario involving a medium-sized manufacturing company (which makes and sells mountain bikes) which is underperforming and in desperate need of help. The learners can see the previous two years historical trading figures (sales figures, profit & loss, cashflow and balance sheet). They are also then given performance targets to achieve over the next three years.

The learner has a range of decisions that they can make and is challenged to find and employ the best strategy in order to achieve their targets. Monthly performance is compared to the forecast performance so that the learners know whether they are on track or not.

The game''s underlying equations have been based on a sophisticated model. This gives the game-play an 'intelligent' responsiveness to the marketing decisions made by the user. Because the results are logical, the game is surprisingly easy to use, yet there's enough complexity to keep people interested; there are no simple solutions.

Key Benefits:

Learners make a range of business decisions within a dynamic changing market with a focus on financial management and performance. By enabling decision-making the simulation focuses on transferable skills-building rather than information recollection.

The game features a very detailed profit and loss, cashflow and balance sheet model. Management accounts are generated each month and then annual accounts are ‘filed’ at the end of each completed year. Key financial ratios and performance indicators illustrate relative performance measures. This exposes learners to financial terminology and concept sin a realistic and meaningful way.

All decisions cause realistic, logical business outcomes, e.g. falls in market share when prices are increased sharply allowing learners to understand the interdependencies of various business concepts.

The game forces students to think about the connections between marketing, finance and production, and the role of uncertainty in business.

The simulation is engaging and fun to use in small teams, individually, or as a group activity on an interactive whiteboard or data projector.

Being an online product, the game is constantly kept up-to-date and will never date.

Gameplay - What Does The User Actually Do?

1. Review historical business performance and future forecasts from the context of their job role.

2. Decide which distribution channel to use. As this could be difficult first-time through, hints are provided as to the best bet, given the product selected.

3. Make decisions about where to position the product in the marketplace. Should the strategy be high-feature/high product quality but high price, or cheap and cheerful? All competitor information is provided, plus the unit costs of production.

4. Production decisions are needed based on an initial sales forecast provided by the computer. The user can decide to upgrade production capacity or increase output gradually by, for example, paying staff overtime.

5. All the time, the learner is being encouraged to remember that they have targets to achieve and thus focuses their mindset on performance.

What will the learner achieve?

At a simple level, learners will be exposed to key finance terms and concepts (e.g. ‘P&L’, ‘management accounts’ and ‘cashflow’). They will also be exposed to a selection of financial KPIs such as ‘ROCE’ and understand the purpose and benefits of tracking such measures.

As they practice and strive to achieve the in-game targets that they have been set, they will quickly begin to grasp the sensitivities of each factor (e.g. the importance of working capital) and be able to understand the interdependence of the different aspects of the business from a financial standpoint.

Will I Struggle To Master It?

All of our products have been designed to create effective learning solutions. Whilst we aim to create genuinely engaging and satisfying learner experiences we recognize that our audience are invariably not ‘hard core gamers’ and as such the interfaces and game structures are designed with this in mind. Our design methodologies focus on creating strong opportunities for measurable learner performance and reduced time to competency.