Kaplan Business Challenge (Banking Industry)

About the client:
Our client is one of the world’s largest banking and financial service providers. It spans across 65 countries with almost 4000 offices worldwide with specialized services in wealth management, global finance, retail, and corporate banking solutions.

They serve more than 40 million customers through their global businesses: Wealth and Personal Banking, Commercial Banking, and Global Banking & Markets. Our network covers 64 countries and territories in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, North America, and Latin America.

What business challenge were they experiencing?
The client wanted its employees to have a notion of how to run a business starting from scratch. The company’s employees, being brilliant in their respective fields wanted to try their hands at business acumen. They wanted to have an idea about the integration of all business processes starting from manufacturing to selling, cost control, raising of loans, etc.

What did Kaplan Professional ME offer the client?
Kaplan Professional ME introduced the organisation to a business board game called Kaplan Business Challenge (KBC). The main objectives of the board game:

• Learning to apply effective cost control strategies
• Practice the key components of effective decision-making under pressure
• Gain insight into the commercial impact of decisions
• Experience leadership and teamwork in a complex environment
• Think strategically about a business and how to manage risk
• Hone influencing and negotiating skills
• Manage stakeholders and their expectations

How was the training delivered?
• The Training was delivered over a span of 5 days. The delegates were divided into teams, each team comprising of 3 to 6 members

• Each team was appointed as the new team for a failing yacht manufacturing business and the objective was to turn around the business by effective cost management in competition with other teams

• Each team ran a 2-year simulation on the KBC Board, by winning auctions from clients, manufacturing the yacht as per contracts, planning the production, planning the short and long-term finance.

• Our trainers acted as bankers, shareholders, suppliers, and other roles as required.

• To win, the teams were based on the criteria of:
1. Cost control, which exceeds that of the other teams
2. Securely financed business with strong financials.
3. Customer focus
4. Sustainable long-term value creation