| Picture This: You're attending what was supposed to be just another company training session excerpt fro a few small differences. You and your team have been taken to a hotel ballroom and immersed into a space age simulation design to fine tune your business skills and put your team's performance into orbit. Your task is to save the earth by guiding your starship through a galaxy filled with raging celestial storms and enemy cruisers. After a Starfleet training program and an intense team strategy meeting your six person team, and the other 19 starships in the room, you are ready to begin your journey. Light year number one begins and immediately the room erupts in a confusing burst of energy as people begin running to Vision Command to gather crucial information, transport themselves to other starships to build alliances, and rush to make their decisions about the direction of their ship. If it sounds like flights of fancy, it really is a lot more down to earth than that. Don Jones, President of Ottawa-based Business Simulation International Inc. and the designer of The Journey Home simulation discussed above says, "Our work can be very creative, but our philosophy is based on our experience designing and developing adult educational programs and on research into how adults learn best." Training and Development Journal has stated that people remember about 10% of what they hear, and about 75% of what they see, hear and do. "We ensure that participants in our programs are challenged by learning process itself, and that they are allowed to actually experience the learning objectives in an environment without the real world penalties for failure. We know the long term retention of the information is considerably enhanced, and the probability of transfer to real world application is also going to increase. It's the thousands of little things within a simulation that can turn a learning experience into a memorable and dramatic event. It can take us six to twelve months to develop a simulation and to get it right." It's that kind of attention to detail and world leading creative application which has BSI opening eyes and minds all around the world. "We haven't been able to keep up with the demands. We have concentrated on custom designed work for very large clients with results way beyond our expectations fro this time frame." says Jones. BSI will continue this niche in the marketplace and leverage it with a number of already designed and proven simulations packages. As a result of clients' requests for a packaged simulation, they have now launched The Journey Home with another simulation due out in weeks. "We have sold them even before we have been able to put proper promotions material together. It's been overwhelming," says Jones. "We concentrated on making our simulations very leading edge from Day 1, and for it to explode like this is very gratifying, but we've been very fortunate as well. BSI was the subject of a feature story on successes in the service sector in a recent issue of OCEDCO's marketing magazine, INSIGHT Ottawa. This story, which attracted international attention, resulted in a front-page cover story in the Financial Times. "The exposure from this article really helped in landing a significant US contracts," says Jones. "One thing just led to another." As a result, BSI will be developing a custom designed sumulation for Arizona Public Service, one of the largest nuclear electrical generating stations in the world. This contract is expected to lead to significant additional revenues as a result of after sale royalties on the product. BSI has custom designed simulations for over 6,000 Royal Bank managers in Canada and England; all of Canada Post Corporation's Directors across the country, many of the managers of the Arizona Public Service Company, and every employee of the newly merged pharmaceutical company Ortho-McNeil Inc. Onew year after a sales training simulation fro Molson, called 'Planet X' Molson was till talking about the experience and BSI was recently hired to work with another of their sales groups. The Vice President of Sales training simulation for Molson, called 'Planet X' "one of the best training experiences in the twenty years he was with the company." Robert Hocking, the Director of Sales and Marketing for BSI says, "We are a small company, but our reach is now across Canada, into the United States and in England. The University of Western Ontario M.B.A. program now used the Royal Bank's simulation on 'Quality'. We're getting inquiries from people fro distribution rights to our packaged simulations and we have just signed a deal for Canada and US rights to one package." BSI wants to establish worldwide distribution and is seeking distributors particularly in Europe and Australia. When asked about whether BSI could keep up the pace they have set for themselves, Jones replied, "We are beginning the research on what I believe will be the best simulation we have ever developed. The potential of this project is truly incredible. Because of its scope, we may want to seek financing to properly market this project and to let it explode out of the blocks; but if we can't find the right fit and solid partnership, then we're prepared to bankroll a slower start on the project ourselves. We have more demand than we have the current resources to meet, and we're currently developing a better product than any our most successful simulations. I feel great about our chances to exceed our future goals. We've done if before." It seems Ottawa based Business Simulation International Inc. is poised to do it again! | |
