BGF Business Tournament - New semifinalists from the January tournament

(On the picture from left to right Markus Alitalo, Akira Kameda, Tomi Kuparinen, Akira Nakano and Takeshi Oyama from Nokia Japan)

- Atlas Copco Spain, Team OLÉ
- Skanska Foundation Projects Sweden, Team Grund AB
- Pöyry Forest Industry Consulting Oy Finland, Team RockRock
- Fortum Power and Heat Oy Finland, Team Chaleur
- OJSC VimpelCom Russia, Team Advanced
- Nokia Corp Japan, Team 5samurai

BGF Business Tournament is the biggest web based business tournament in the world. The tournament structure includes preliminary heats, semifinals and the BGF World Final. The three best teams of the year will be invited to the BGF Awards, organized in Cannes, on the French Riviera.

BGF Business Tournament builds strategic excellence, management board dynamics, ability for financial analysis and fact based decision making and precise follow up.

(On the picture from left to right Carlos Moreno, Eva Hernández, Emilio Diez, Marina Romero and Roberto Pascual from Atlas Copco Spain)

The participants will be acting as the management board of a global company with the task of running the business successfully for 5 fiscal years. The winning criterion is total company shareholder value.

96% of all participants would like to play again and recommend participation to other colleagues

(On the picture from left to right Matti Savolainen, Oskari Lehto, Petteri Kuusela, Sakari Imeläinen and Fred Nykänen from Fortum Power and Heat Oy)

(On the picture from left to right Kimo Mikkonen, Petri Jokinen, Tuomas Salo, Juha-Erkki Nieminen from Pöyry.

Suvi Anttila, CEO and President of Pöyry Forest Industry Consulting Ltd. said: "We found the BGF Business Tournament very enjoyable and useful. It is great for team building and improves internal networking while at the same time challenging strategic thinking and analytical skills. We feel that the game nicely combines a big picture approach with sufficient room to maneuver and implement oneʹs strategies and tactics. The program is also very well organized and due to the conceptʹs flexibility, teams with tight schedules can also find the time to participate."

On the picture Mats Tidlund and Anneth Aglo from Skanska Foundation Projects. Missing are Joakim Berg, Frida Lindmark and Christelle Södergren. Mats Tidlund said: "The participation in the BGF Business Game has been an encouraging and enjoyable experience for everyone in our team. On a fundamental level, it has increased our ability to see the overall picture of business and how different business functions and the interrelations of these influence the performance of a company in a dynamic environment. The most important benefits for us were the development of our analytical and strategic skills and the improvement of the group decision-making process by taking advantage of the different knowledge and experience in the group. The competition atmosphere gave an exciting touch to the game and we will gladly recommend the BGF Business Game to other business units in Skanska."

Jan Luukkonen
Business Game Factory Ltd.
jan.luukkonen@bgfactory.com

Business Game Factory and ACE Group announce a strategic partnership

Business Game Factory Ltd. and ACE Group announce a strategic partnership to extend deeper into Bulgarian market. BGF is the number one choice when it comes to deciding on web based business tournaments mainly due to our expertise in carrying out global projects in different time zones, and very little impact to job constraints caused by a shortage of time.

Taavi Thiel, Managing Director of Business Game Factory Ltd. says: "We look forward to bring the world biggest and most exciting business tournament to the Bulgarian market. Our strategic partner locally is ACE based on a major client recommendation. Business tournaments and simulations are a growing trend in the management training business and more and more innovative companies from different countries are choosing BGF Tournaments as their training tool to stimulate growth in both revenue and profit.

"The main benefit from the BGF business simulation game is the learning that occurs during the training" says Borislav Ignatov, Managing Partner of ACE Group. "It proved to be very effective to work with a model close to the reality. The game shows how various decisions made in production, marketing, finance, personnel and other areas affect each other, and most important, how they affect to the bottom line. It demonstrates how difficult is to manage a company in a constantly changing market."

Learning takes place online, facilitated by ACE group training support. From start to finish, the training typically takes 15-20 hours, usually spread over 10 weeks of calendar time, including a practice round and four game rounds. Several teams compete against each other in a game division, each team consisting of 3-5 participants. The more diversity in participant backgrounds, perspectives and personalities, the better decisions the team is likely to make.

More information:

Jan Luukkonen
Business Game Factory Ltd.
jan.luukkonen@bgfactory.com

BGF Business Tournament - Semifinalists 2007

(On the picture "Ape team" from Fujitsu Manufaturing Spain, from left to right José Sierra, Luis José de la Jara, Fernando Pérez Arrebola, Alvaro Temboury and Aarti Parwani)

The fall starts of the most exciting business tournament worldwide have already been played. After a fierce competition and a powerful learning experience for the participants, Business Game Factory releases today the first 20 semifinalists of the BGF Business Tournament 2007. The division winners represent 18 companies and come from 11 different countries.

These are the successful teams:

- Atlas Copco (Canada)
- The Walt Disney Company (Spain)
- Pan American Energy llc (Argentina)
- Ericsson (Sweden)
- ABB (Spain)
- Tecpetrol (Argentina)
- VTT (Finland)
- Fujitsu Manufacturing (Spain)
- SEB (Germany)
- Stora Enso (Sweden)
- SKF (Italia)
- Consolis (Finland)
- SEB (Latvia)
- Swedbank (Sweden)
- Orion (Finland)
- Nokia (China)
- Statoil (Norway)
- Ericsson (Croacia)

In the business game each team assumes the responsibility of running a multinational company on a world market competition against other teams. The winning criteria is the total share holder value.

On behalf of BGF team we want to congratulate to the semifinalists for their victory and wish them great success in the semifinals that will be played in September.

Petteri Salokangas

petteri.salokangas@bgfactory.com

Business Game Factory Ltd.

BGF Business Game Seminar for Kekkilä

Strategic excellence, management board dynamics, team work skills, financial understanding, analyzing skills and fact based decision making were the learning objectives of The Kekkilä Management Development Seminar organized by BGF.

The Seminar was targeted for the 20 key people in Kekkilä management. The participants came from Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Denmank and Spain.

The five participating teams were formed from the actual real-life management teams. The practice round was played and facilitated remotely before the seminar. This was the way to ensure that participants were well prepared for the actual seminar.

The seminar started with kick-off including the analysis of the practice round. In the first day there were two game rounds with two hours interval. Between the rounds Ilkka Koskinen (People Focus) was running a know-how session about the management team work; pitfalls, tips for high-performance teamwork, decision making in teams, etc. Vesa Kurikka (BGF) was debriefing the game results round after round.

In the second day the decision making time was cut down to 1,5 hours in order to make the team work even more challenging and to increase the pressure.

By the end of the seminar Vesa and Ilkka held a wrap up session going through the lessons learnt and how to transfer the learning into the daily real life challenges. Also each participant made a personal action plan which was reported to Petri Alava CEO of Kekkilä. Last but not least the final result of the Business Game was released. The Champions got a cool looking trophy, a bottle of champagne and place in the semifinals!!

More information regarding the Seminars:

Petteri Salokangas

petteri.salokangas@bgfactory.com

Business Game Factory Ltd.

www.bgfactory.com

Merry Christmas and Successful Year 2007!

On behalf of the BGF team thank you for your support and co-operation. We wish you Merry Christmas and Successful Year 2007!!

On the picture from the left Petteri Salokangas, Juan Llaneza, Jan Luukkonen and Taavi Thiel.

Biography of Stefan Widomski

This Excellent biography of Mr. Stefan Widomski tells his story of becoming the legendary Export Director of Nokia and BGF board member. The book also includes the story of Business Game Factory! Currently the book is available only in Finnish, unfortunately.

In the picture from the left Mihail Gorbatshov and Stefan Widomski.

BGF Business Game Tournament 2007

After knowing the champion and the results of last year tournament. The BGF business game tournament is starting again.

We are running our business simulation together with most of the world leading companies (in the link you can see some of our references). These teams have been part of the world’s largest web based business game tournament, with more than 500 teams participating from 65 countries. Business Game Factory Ltd. focuses on providing premium-quality business game training in the spirit of the company motto “Get the big picture!”

The idea in brief is to gather up team/teams (3-5 persons) from your organization's key people to participate in the event. The focus with this tournament is to develop your organizations overall business skills, team work skills, team spirit, decision-making skills as well as profit orientation. The team itself will be motivated by the fierce competition.

The task is to run a company on a world market in competition with other teams. The typical team is 3-5 Managers or future Managers who need training in understanding the big picture, how everything in a company is financially connected and eventually leads to the profit and loss statement. The team will also see how effective processes affect quality and profitability. It is also great teamwork training!

Learning objective

The objective is to improve participants’ business understanding and related skills

Skill improvement areas

- Big picture: “See how different aspects of business relate to each other!”
- Strategy: “Understand your business and position yourself effectively!”
- Analysis: “Know the numbers and analyze the market and competitors!”
- Decision-making: “Make decisions that move you towards the right direction!”
- Teamwork: “Get the full benefit of the different points of view in your team!”
- Processes: “Improve your processes for increased profitability!”

Starting options:

- 9th of January
- 7th of March
- 3rd of April

Interested?

Please contact me and I would be more than happy to give you more information.

Petteri Salokangas
petteri.salokangas@bgfactory.com
Business Game Factory Ltd