1. Step by Step Guide to Win MikesBikes Simulations
Mike’s Bikes is basically an online business simulation that’s designed to give students the opportunity to run their own companies.
The simulation exposes students to all aspects of the business world, such as managing all key functional areas in a firm and being able to implement the same business concepts in a real-life context.
Mike’s Bikes simulation allows you to reflect the same experiences at making critical price, operations, marketing, product development, and financial decisions.
You’ll be given a team to take over an already existing Bike Company as marketing managers. Your team will then be given gradual control over the company for the next few years. Eventually, you become executive officers even as you strive to continue growing the company.
As managers of Mikes Bikes Firm, your primary goal will be to enrich the company’s shareholders by providing a return on their investment. This is the Shareholder Value. The success of your company, therefore, depends entirely on the amount of Shareholder Value that you create for the company in comparison to your competitors.
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2. Benefits of Mike’s Bikes simulation
You can tell by now that using Mike’s Bikes simulation comes with many benefits, especially on the student’s part.
Here’s a brief overview of the top advantages that come with using Mike’s Bikes simulation:
Business fundamentals – the simulation allows students to develop a better understanding of business using an interactive-live case study
Cross-functional management – teaches students how all of the functional areas of the business world work together. It helps students know the concepts needed to achieve company goals
Analysis skills – interacting with real-life business decisions and reports help students to develop both with soft and hard skills
Hands-on experience – different studies show that most students prefer to get more hands-on with concepts they’re being taught rather than just “being taught.”
How to start Mike’s Bikes simulation
To start the simulation, you must first sign up on the Smartsims website. The website is relatively easy to access and maneuver around. You’ll also find several PDF guide materials, videos, and manuals on the site.
In Mike’s Bikes simulation homepage, you’ll find two phases. They include:
Single-player
This is the basic version of Mikes Bikes simulation, and it basically allows you to practice. You’ll basically be competing against a controlled computer competitor. In contrast to the multi-player version, your decisions in the single-player version aren’t final.
You can always roll over and back to the next or previous years to test your decisions. It, therefore, you don’t find the decisions you make favorable, rollover. If you find them inappropriate, you can roll back and try to improve your decisions. Remember, your primary objective is to beat your competitor.
On a more important note, this version allows you to familiarize yourself with Mike’s Bikes simulation and maximize your shareholder value.
Ultimately, this simulation equips you with critical ideas on how you can make better-informed decisions.
Multi-player
The multi-player puts you in the real competition. Expect to compete against your student groups and colleagues. Remember, only the shareholder value will determine the winning team. Therefore, the core objective in this situation is to make the best financial decisions that will make your firm stand out from the competition.
However, you don’t have the privilege of rolling over to the next decision period in this phase. This decision remains with your instructor, depending on the scheduled dates too. Your team should, therefore, have all decisions for the incoming year entered into the simulation version before each of the scheduled times.
Importantly, ensure that you input all your decisions before the deadline raptures. Consequently, most learners fail Mike’s Bikes simulation test because they take it too lightly, especially in the single-player version. Undeniably, the multi-player version of the simulation is the most demanding in the whole simulation exercise.
You must, therefore, set high goals in your attempts to make more viable, proficient decisions. You’ll be competing with many competitors who, often, will make better decisions than you in the simulation.
Offline multi-player
The multi-player version of the simulation also has an offline mode that allows you to compare different decision strategies and options before committing yourself. In addition, you can make a copy of your market scenario, make critical decisions for the firm, and roll the game forward and back manually between decision periods.
You must note, however, that the offline mode doesn’t factor in your competitors’ decisions, just their past decisions. Pay attention to your forecasted sales, and all planned productions and decide which options qualify for more suitable decisions for the firm.
You can as well launch the offline multi-player phase in Mike’s Bikes simulation to explore favorable ideas that fit into the online multiplayer version. Generally, the offline multi-player version is the same as the online one. The only difference is that the decisions you enter in the offline version don’t reflect in your final decisions.
Online multi-player
Unlike the online version, you must be careful and keen on the kinds of decisions you make here. Every decision you enter in this mode reflects your final decision on Mike’s Bikes simulation. You must, therefore, double-check every decision you intend to make before you roll over to the next decision period.
Assuming that you already have a better understanding of the critical components of the simulation. Get online and work on making your firm the best in the competition.
The importance of shareholder value in the simulation
Mikes Bikes simulation takes you through four years where you’ll face and make critical business decisions. More importantly, your goal is to enrich the firm’s shareholders by providing them a return on their investments in your company.
Generally, the success of any big company is usually measured in terms of its shareholder value in comparison to its competitors in the simulation game. As such, your primary objective is to answer the question, what can you do to increase your firm’s shareholder value?
Below are some basic tips you must have in mind when playing the simulation game:
Always minimize shareholder investment
Remember to pay your dividends
Work on improving your profitability
Keep your debts as low as possible
As a competitor, you’ll only chance of winning over your competitors is by being profitable. First, try to maximize your profits by increasing your revenues through sales. At the same time, you want to minimize your overall costs as much as possible. For instance, some of the best ways of increasing your revenues include:
Increasing production of the company
Optimizing your retail prices attracting new customers by using competitive marketing strategies that align with the marketing for each product
Introducing new products into the market
Generally, you should be good if you can come up with effective strategies that reduce your production costs. Often, students end up with poor shareholder value due to the misappropriation of resources. Therefore, to win over your competitors, you must strategize properly on how you will reduce your overall costs. You can do this by minimizing wastages, decreasing inventory, concentrating on more profitable products as well as lowering the prime costs of other products.
Avoid spending too many resources on less desirable products. Rather, venture more into desired products that will profit your firm using fewer resources.
Strategic plan to increase shareholder value
If you’re struggling to improve your shareholder value, you can opt for different buy more effective strategies to help you push the value higher. This isn’t the time to despair. Rather, use Mikes bikes strategic plan to achieve more promising results.
1. Define your firm’s organizational mission
All organizations’ missions often state what customers it serves, the type of products it offers, and the needs it satisfies. The company’s mission statement outlines its fundamental purposes, such as why it exists.
2. Set your firm’s organizational objectives
This is simply your desired outcome for your firm. Your firm must have a set of objectives that, when combined, should enable your firm to fulfill its mission. One of Mikes bikes objectives is to help you to plan a set of objectives that will help you carry out plans effectively.
To be worthwhile and workable, your objectives must be:
Clear and specific
Ambitious but realistic
Able to be measures
Stated in writing
Ties to a particular time period
A weak objective would, for instance, be to increase your product quality rating. But increasing your product quality within a short timeframe would qualify for a better, workable version.
3. Perform a situational analysis
The situational analysis allows you to understand the trends in your shareholder value. Why it’s dropping, for instance. Here’s where you learn to assess the degree at which other competitors’ decisions can affect your results too. You’ll also learn why customer preference isn’t favoring your decisions in Mikes bikes advanced simulation.
Assess the market information, market summary, and industry benchmark reports to have a better understanding of the current market trends. This way, you will be better positioned to make informed decisions in the simulation game.
4. Set your firm’s tactics and strategies to achieve desired objectives
A strategy is generally a broad plan of action in business. Every organization is always striving to meet its objectives and fulfill its mission. On the other hand, a tactic is the means used to implement a strategy. You should come up with definite strategies to help you meet your objectives.
Identify tactics for each fundamental areas of your organization to implement the said strategies. Each functional needs a series of tactics to implement and steer you closer to your objectives.
5. Focus on efficiency
Here’s where you reap what you sow. Your returns will speak for itself. Each functional decision you made will either yield profit or loss to your company. Note that your overall costs shouldn’t exceed 30% of the firm’s wholesale revenues.
By that, you must ensure that your spending is sensible during product development, production, and distribution.
6. Seek a cash injection
You probably already know that business is all about taking risks. Therefore, don’t be afraid to borrow money when faced with tough situations in your organization in the Mike’s Bikes simulation game. Nonetheless, take care not to find yourself in the insolvent stage. In some instances, you may also need your instructor’s guidance when it comes to borrowing.
Mike's Bikes Simulation
7. Go for other goals
In the business world, no situation is impossible. If, therefore, you find yourself in a difficult situation where you aren’t able to improve your shareholder value, devise a different way to achieve your objectives. More importantly, you must work on raising your profitability, which, in turn, will reflect in your firm’s shareholder value.
Decision periods
During the first two years of mikes bikes simulation Reddit, learners’ abilities are tested to make critical marketing decisions. The last two years introduce you to the business’s operational and financial decisions.
Here’s a comprehensive analysis of what you should expect in each learning period:
Year 1: Sales and marketing
Essentially, this is the first step you’ll take in Mike’s Bikes simulation. Here, your primary objective will be to market your bicycles in the simulation. After setting reasonable prices for all products, you need to proceed to create product awareness. You can do this through advertising and public relations.
Occasionally, you will need to refer back to your marketing summary, market information, and product summary before making any marketing decisions. Also, ensure you study all available reports carefully to understand how your products react to various marketing decisions.
The trick here is to understand how individual products react to marketing. Only then will you be good to roll over to the decision period.
Year 2: distributing and branding
As is with the real business world, you’ll be allowed a platform that helps you to distribute and brand products to reach more customers. The distribution process itself will depend on the products you’re selling. If, for example, you’re selling mountain bikes, you will need to distribute the bikes to a nearby sports shop. If, however, you opt to invest in road bikes, remember to distribute them in bike shops.
Studying your customers’ shopping habits puts you in a better position to sell your products since you’ll know which products sell more where and which ones don’t.
Branding will also help you to increase your company’s awareness. This will work in the company’s favor, especially when planning to launch a new product. This section is precisely meant to exhaust all issues dealing with market analysis and implementation. It’s one of the ultimate Mikes bikes hacks in the simulation.
Year 3: operations and finance
In the third year, you’ll be making financial decisions for the firm based on control factory capacity, quality, and efficiency. You will also be tested on your abilities to make financial decisions that involve controlling long-term debt.
One of Smartsims Mike’s bikes cheats is to refer back to the market summary and industry benchmark reports. Ensure, therefore, that you stay guided throughout this decision period. Many learners tend to make simple mistakes that end up hurting their firms in the long run. You will also be required to improve your products this same year.
Improving your sales will help the firm to record more sales. Thus, assuring the company of more profits reflected in shareholder value. Increase capacity when you expect product demand to go up or when launching new products in Mike’s Bikes simulation.
Otherwise, sell capacity in an effort to boost revenues even though it may lower your shareholder value. Remember to avoid wastages and increase efficiency at this stage too. You can do this by ensuring you always have your facts right before you navigate the capacity planner.
Ultimately, you will be working to pay back or raise more funds to help facilitate your firm’s production and operational activities. Often, borrowing in Mike’s Bikes simulation facilitates large expenditures, such as product development or increasing factory capacity. However, even borrowing is only viable when you expect impressive returns. Otherwise, strive to repay your debts to raise your shareholder value.
Remember, every simulation starts with a $1,000,000 debt. Therefore, it wouldn’t be wise to ignore this step. Check your financial health before you pay your debts. Afterward, you can rollover to the fourth and last decision year Mike’s Bikes simulation.
Year 4: product development and finance
Like the third year, this year also required you to make critical financial decisions. Only that here, you’ll be introduced to product development, dividends, and equity.
The product development stage requires you to perform product modifications. You will be required to choose from the four product options provided in Mike’s Bikes simulation.
The options are:
No change
Improve product spec – 1m
Reduce cost – 1m
Reduce cost and improve spec 2m
An important tip: Only improve a product if you strongly believe it will get you high returns. Otherwise, it probably best to skip the process.
The equity area is where you issue and repurchase shares. Issuing shares to the public is one of the fastest ways of raising more cash for the firm in Mike’s Bikes simulation. However, it also negatively impacts your current shareholder value. But then, here’s where repurchasing comes into play.
Repurchasing sold shares may be expensive, but it positively impacts the firm’s shareholder value because of the increase in earnings per share.
Similarly, you will be required to share dividends with your shareholders. But you can only issue dividends if you are sure you’ll have enough cash and profit to cover for all of the company’s day-to-day and capital expenses. Like when you repurchase shares, issuing dividends has a positive impact on the company’s shareholder value in Mike’s Bikes simulation.
Evaluation overview
As aforementioned, the firm’s management process consists of formulating an effective strategic plan, implementing it, and then evaluating its performance.
In other words, the evaluation process measures hoe far your decisions have led the company towards meeting its strategic objectives. Here, you can determine which decisions and strategies worked well and which ones didn’t do as good.
Evaluating your current position allows you to enter the planning stage better informed about the next best steps to take.
This particular chapter primarily aims to guide you through different types of reports and other information available in the simulation game. It should aid you in evaluating your firm’s performance and deciding the next best moves to consider.
Major reports available
Mike’s Bikes simulation has several major report menu items to help you evaluate the whole firm’s performance.
Below is a list of some of the sub-reports that are available to you in the simulation game. These are the main summary reports that you will use to view your key performance indicators (KPIs) after each rollover:
The year ahead report
The market research report
The industry benchmark report
The financial management overview report
The overview of firm marketing reports
The factory reports
Forecast results reports overview
In a typical year, you’ll be required to view all of the previous year’s industry and firm results reports to assess your performance. Remember, all key decisions of the firm will be made based on strategy and evaluation of that strategy using the reports mentioned above.
These reports are critical in all decision-making processes that touch on the company. They produce accurate estimates of the firm’s performance in the next period. Also, it helps to ensure you don’t spend more than your finances allow.
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