Nordmark Trainees - Top of the list!
Want to slip into the role of the management and make business decisions? We have the chance to do so!
In November 2021, Playbizz started the 37th nationwide business simulation competition, in which trainees from one company compete against other companies. In the regional preliminary round, we competed against trainees from Schleswig-Holstein.
However, who or what is "we"? Perhaps we had better introduce ourselves briefly first. We are Robin and Lukas and are trainees at Nordmark since the 1st of August. Robin apprentices as an IT specialist for system integration and Lukas apprentices as an industrial clerk. Already in advance of the competition, we met regularly for lunch and exchanged experiences of our apprenticeship. This created the perfect foundation for an ideal team.
However, what was our task in the business game "playbizz"? We stepped into the shoes of the management of a medium-sized company that produces and sells dusting and mopping robots. Our task was to make business decisions in four simulated fiscal years. Reports from previous years and forecasts for the coming fiscal year served as the basis for this. For example, we had to adjust production and sales volumes to suit the situation and set appropriate marketing budgets.
The first business year was the most difficult for our team, because we had to forecast what our competitors would spend on advertising and quality without any experience and only with the forecast for the next year. We decided to go for the simple mass production in order to reduce production costs. At the same time, we invested large sums in promotion. As it unfortunately turned out at the end of the game period - a little too much.
Thus, at the start of the second period we were "only" in third place, but first place was still in sight. With the experience we had gained in the first round, we were able to better estimate our competition's spending this year and thus spend money more realistically.
Lo and behold - by the start of the third round of competition, we had already worked our way up to second place. In this period, the domestic market was extended to the foreign market. That is why we decided to double the production volume, as the market conditions had changed accordingly and we naturally wanted to conquer the foreign market with our vacuuming and mopping robots.
Now the final fiscal year began and our decisions from the third period catapulted us to first place by a massive margin. Wow! Of course, this made us extremely proud and at the same time motivated us to finish the last round at least as victoriously.
No sooner said than done - we remained with our previous strategy and increased our lead even further. We won the preliminary round and are now allowed to participate in the state round on May 18th and 19th in Tannenfelde.
Keep your fingers crossed for us!
Robin & Lukas
