SKILLS ASSESSMENT INFORMATION

In terms of specifics, you will be tested on your:

1. Knowledge of your firm's operations, market, and competition.
2. Integration skills - knowledge of all functions.
3. Ability to use of the tools of management to draw important conclusions.
4. Awareness of your firm's strengths and weaknesses.
5. Ability to anticipate competitor moves and one's own position in the future.

Most of the questions will deal with the major conclusions that you can draw from analyzing the market, distribution, manufacturing, HR, accounting and financial data and applying the tools of management. Several questions will ask for specific information on your current business. Here is a list of the tools of management that you should be using on a normal basis in running your company.

These same tools will help you to prepare for the test.

1) Market feedback
2) Competitor analysis
3) Employee productivity data
4) Manufacturing reports
5) Accounting reports (financial statements)
6) Industry financial benchmarks (industry financial ratios)
7) Profitability analyses
a) Brand
b) Channel
c) Region
8) Strategic management charts
9) Balanced Scorecard, especially the Drill Down capability

The Strategic Management Charts can be found in the simulation under Performance Management or under Strategic Planning. It contains many charts that you will find helpful.

Here is some background on the test if you are interested. Situational Awareness

This test is designed to measure your situational awareness. The concept originated in the aviation industry and has been used in the military with great success. With this test, it has been expanded to business.

To help you think about this concept, imagine that you are training to be a jet pilot. An important part of your training is to enter a flight simulator in order to "fly" a plane under all kinds of conditions, including bad weather, crowded airspace, and busy airports. When you are in the cockpit, you are faced with dozens of dials and indicators telling you about approaching weather, ground and airspeed, proximity of other planes, etc. As your training progresses, you can expect the unexpected. You will have to deal with anything that is thrown at you. For example, your engine(s) might stop working and you might need to land your plane on an expressway, a farmer's field or in a river.

From time to time, your trainers will stop the simulator and have you take an assessment of your situational awareness. Given all of the information available to you and the normal demands of taking off, flying and

landing a plane, what do you know about your current situation? What can you accurately project about your future situation? Good situational awareness is important to safely flying a plane.

As you might imagine, there are space shuttle simulators and combat simulators. All of them use assessment of situational awareness to evaluate the trainee's ability to absorb and successfully use information about their environment. We are doing the same thing with this Marketplace test.

Whether one is flying a plane, a space shuttle, going into battle, or managing a firm, the more that you are aware of your situation, the more likely you will have a successful outcome. What is your situational awareness in the Marketplace? This test will help to answer that question.