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Beefeater Restaurants Microworld
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General information
Versions available
Key Learning points
Download a demo or a personal licence for the Beefeater Restaurants Microworld
General information
Experience the special strategic challenges of a multiple consumer retailing
business. In the process, you will gain valuable insight into important issues
common to other business situations, such as:
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building and maintaining a positive reputation with customers, based on several
product and service components,
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driving growth through expansion of multiple outlets, when opportunities to
trade profitably become increasingly hard to find,
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coping with the conflicts between the pressure to spend money on
customer-service factors, whilst still managing to provide investors with the
financial returns they expect.
The 'dynamic resource-system view' helps you to understand and manage the way
in which a firm’s strategic resources build and decay, and combine together to
determine its long-term performance. Managed well, this strategic architecture
can grow and thrive. Managed badly, it will lurch from crisis to crisis, and
ultimately into failure.
The Beefeater Microworld allows users to tackle these issues from several
different starting situations, such as rapid growth, turn-round and maturity.
Users can choose to pursue a variety of performance goals, such as building the
firm’s sales or profitability, growing and maintaining ‘shareholder value’ (a
particularly tricky goal, since it depends not just on profitability but growth
as well), or simply pursuing personal rewards in the form of profit-related
bonuses.
This is a medium scale simulation, supported by extensive case material.
Authors: Kim Warren, Paul Langley, Erik Larsen, Ann van Ackere and
Christina Spencer
Beefeater is a registered trademark of Whitbread
plc
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Beefeater Restaurants Microworld - Versions available
The Beefeater Microworld is a PC based simulation, running on Windows 95 and
above. It requires less than 5 Mb disk space and will run on PCs with 32Mb RAM
although performance is enhanced on higher specification machines. The software
is downloaded as a self-executing zip file (8Mb). Please extract this to an
empty temporary folder and then run Setup.exe. We have a range of licensing
options - for more information see our licence
information. In summary there are three types of licence:
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| Demo Version |
The demo version consists of a link to the software for download and an
introductory user guide.
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| Single User Licence
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The single user version is licensed for personal use only and may not be used
in training or consultancy. Purchase may be made online. The software is the
same as the demo version so there is no additional download to be made. You
will be provided with the link to the software, an unlock code and a learning
guide which includes case studies and management challenges.
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| Site Licence |
The software for the site pack is the same as for the single user version. Site
packs contain additional materials (slides, slide handouts, and annotations) to
enable front-of-class delivery. The cost of site packs includes copy
permissions for the materials as well as software usage fees. If you would like
further information on site packs and prices please contact
our sales department stating which product(s) you have an interest in,
the type of organisation that the product would be licensed to (academic,
corporate, executive education) and the size of group with which it might be
used.
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Download a demo or a personal licence for the Beefeater Restaurants Microworld
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Beefeater Restaurants Microworld - Key Learning points
Business performance over time (sales and earnings) depends on the resources we
have.
Resources are won and lost over time (customers = sum of all customers ever
won, minus all ever lost).
Resources bring with them a characteristic contribution to the rest of the
system (increasing restaurant numbers brings a diminishing incremental market
opportunity)
Growth depends on existing resources, including intangible factors (customers
are won if service, menu, and environment are acceptable vs. the price charged)
… and …
Business growth depends on winning investor support (i.e. headquarters
allocation of capital expenditure).
Maximising value in a mature market - difficult because market exploitation
inevitably imposes limits on further opportunities to grow.
Shareholder value reflects earnings growth, not merely earnings levels
(and hence is hard to sustain).
Context:
Building a retail consumer service (e.g. a chain of mid-market restaurants) by
expanding the business whilst maintaining expected product and service
provision.
Contexts where similar generic issues arise – diminishing returns arise as
business builds, and investor expectations reflect recent performance, but can
be managed by cautious management.
Contexts where similar specific structures arise – any multiple-outlet service
operation, such as hotels, holiday centres, business-to-business services,
geographically dispersed public services.
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Beefeater Restaurant Microworld Features
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| Decision inputs: |
Meal price
Labour spend budget
Marketing expenditures
Maintenance spend
Menu development
Capital expenditure requests to head office
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| Competitor Option |
This Microworld includes the option to operate against a major competitor who
attempts to capture good sites. This rival can be switched to start up at any
time. Their effectiveness at achieving growth can also be set. Lastly, the
simulation can be started with the competitor already present. In this case,
their initial size can also be set.
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| Run Option |
This Microworld includes a resource map – a simplified view of the business
structure. An option is available to run the simulation either with or without
this visible to the players, the game defaults to resource map not available on
start-up. This option is valuable in demonstrating the greater ease of control
where a systems view is in place.
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| Reports include |
Earnings
Sales revenue and volume
Return on sales and capital employed
Shareholder value
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| Challenges offered include: |
Sustaining a sound, growing business.
Turning round a business that has been managed into difficulty through
over-aggressive pursuit of profits and margins.
Managing for shareholder value a large, mature business with limited growth
opportunities. |
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