As you begin the simulation, you will need to revisit the effectiveness of your business strategy relative to the six basic strategies. As a team, you need to discuss these results and decide which strategy you will choose for the competition that begins the end of this week. Each member of the team should review the strategy for his or her role, and then a team decision needs to be made on the overall strategy for the next round.

Task Assignment Part 1: Team Participation to Begin the 1st Practice Round

• Go to the CAPSIM home page (www.capsim.com).
• Click “Log in” near the top right and enter your ID & password.
• On the next screen, click on the “C#####” number to get into the course.
• Left hand side, click on “Decisions” and then “Launch the web spreadsheet”.

You are now in the spreadsheet where you can make your decisions for round one.

Other notes:

• In general, you need to start from the top with R&D and work your way down to finance to make well informed decisions.
• You save your decisions to the website by going to “File” and then “Update Official Decisions”. You can save your decisions as often as needed before the deadline.
• The “Reports” tab contains vital information to aid in your decision making. Be sure to review last year’s newspaper, called the Capstone Courier report and the Industry Conditions Report.
• The “Proformas” are like if-then statements. If your decisions come true then this is what your results would look like.
• Note: Make a note of your Practice Round product decisions. The simulation will reset to the Competition Round 1 after the Practice Round processes. To start the Competition, you will make new decisions for the first year of business based on what you learned from the Practice Round results.

Task Assignment Part 2: Yearly Summary Report

Use your textbook(s), course materials, and Internet sources to, as a team, prepare a PowerPoint presentation of 15-20 slides that justifies your strategic decisions for Practice Round 1. Your team will need to provide a brief executive summary “state of the business” slide, a synopsis of the key decisions for each product, the reasoning leading to the decisions, and an assessment of the results of those decisions.

Please submit your assignment.