For ages, human beings have learned, understood and appreciated new concepts and tools using three primary methods, largely depending on the context and our stage in life.
As children, one of the ways we learned was by listening to sound. For most of us, listening and repetition played a key role in our early childhood education. As we grew older, we began to prefer visual learning. But when it comes to discovering new things, understanding relevance and appreciating the intrinsic value of a given topic of interest, nothing beats an interactive, hands-on experience – at any age.
We’re seeing a greater need for these immersive experiences, especially in business, as a means for convincing a potential buyer or customer about the business value of a solution. Product demonstrations, presentations and proofs of concept have become very pedagogic and often bore the customer. But more importantly, they fail to provide the meaningful experience the customer needs to truly assess their needs and solution fitment.
At Bristlecone, we go beyond the conventional methods of learning and enable customers to see the benefits themselves – through an interplay between what the situation demands and what the proposed solution offers. We suggest supply chain gamification as the way forward. Experiential learning from an interactive experience, where we integrate a sophisticated planning tool like SAP IBP, is way beyond any standard approaches to learning.
We engage supply chain business process owners in a hands-on gaming experience to showcase the nuances of their business problems and help them appreciate the difference that we can bring with our solution. This helps in validating the need, relevance and expected value of the technology.
We do this by simulating a supply chain and enabling key business process owners and stakeholders to participate as supply chain nodes. They face real-life situations and problems they regularly encounter, like lack of collaboration, manual tasks, poor visibility, and the absence of scientific procedures.
The gameplay simulates two scenarios. The first involves the use of all manual and legacy applications, and the second introduces SAP IBP as a solution. Then, we measure the most popular supply chain performance matrices like the cost of inventory and cost of non-delivery for both scenarios. The results from each scenario are then compared and discussed. When we put the results from all the scenarios side by side, it helps the customer genuinely appreciate the difference that IBP brings to the table.
The grounded learning experience offered by gamification enables ease of comparison between operational and financial KPIs from multiple scenarios. It helps the customer arrive at a convincing business value.
The value of this concept is not just limited to the sales process. It is also an excellent and effective method of driving organizational change management initiatives surrounding supply chain planning projects. Enforcing change is much easier when we immerse the stakeholders in the experience and give them the opportunity to realize the benefits themselves. It can drive rapid adoption without too much effort.
We offer this immersive experience to our customers, prospects and all supply chain enthusiasts, both as a virtual game and via a physical on-premise event.
KUNAL WAGHMARE
Practice Director, SAP Planning
Bristlecone
