PepsiCo Simba

A snack empire that spans all across Africa, Simba, is an important part of the global snack and

beverages sector. Over the years, the company has changed and evolved to reflect what the

changing face of South Africa. The company is committed to bringing new and exciting flavors

and products that adapt to new tastes and demands of its consumers.

The challenge

Simba—South Africa’s largest snacks and beverages company and a subsidiary of Pepsi Co.—

required a fun, engaging, and hands-on training program. The training was primarily aimed at

branch managers with a secondary audience of newly hired managers. Simba wanted the

trainees to gain a keen understanding of business realities and drivers, while equipping them with

the essential skills needed to perform their daily duties.

The training needs included:

• Enhancing business acumen and leadership skills

• Enabling holistic thinking and actions that focused on both operational and long-term

business goals

• Fostering collaboration

• Aligning better to the organization’s business strategy

• Improving data analysis skills related to the company, market, and competitors

The solution

TOPSIM® is part of Tata Interactive Systems (TIS), the reputed and award-winning developers of

e-learning, training and education solutions. TIS collaborated with Simba’s DC Academy to

develop a four-day workshop featuring a Business Acumen simulation centered on TOPSIM® –

General Management simulation and various workshop activities.

Business Acumen Simulation

The Business Acumen workshop featured the TOPSIM® – General Management simulation. The

business acumen simulation is a competitive game-based solution that helps participants with

insights into commercial awareness, decision-making, and innovative best practices.

The participants are divided into teams and are required to manage a company for up to eight

business cycles, where one cycle equals one virtual business year.

TOPSIM® — General Management has the following characteristics:

Collaborating in teams, participants learn about financial performance and drivers by

analyzing financial reports and making informed decisions.

Teams compete for customers, market-

share, and the best share price. As the

simulation progresses, participants are required

to make increasingly complex decisions, deal

with more information, and handle time

pressures.

The team decision-making process teaches

participants to use and apply their business skills

in a practical environment where realistic

business challenges must be resolved.

Theoretical sessions in combination with

decision cycles ensure knowledge application

to practical learning experiences.

The strong link established between

management theory and business practice has lasting knowledge impact.

Workshop activities

The simulation game play was interspersed with workshop activities that imparted finer points of

leadership and business practices. Activities included:

Figure 1: Screenshot of TOPSIM – General Management: Graphic Analysis

Project management: Encourages participants to understand the skills required in

managing projects and distributing roles within a project

MIT beer game: Fosters understanding of the distribution-side dynamics of a multi-

echelon supply chain used to distribute a single item, in this case, cases of beer.

To break up the brainwork, activities like an advertisement campaign, a “cooperation

squares” game, a pizza-making challenge, expert teams, and brain switch to keep

participants engaged and offer valuable insights into collaboration, teamwork,

innovation, and change management.

The result

After completion of the in-classroom

training, the groups were given the

opportunity to take part in a business

transformation project. The teams identified

short-term wins as well as long-term

implementation plans in current issues within

the business.

This exercise created the following drivers:

• Pre-paid electricity saving on the total cost line, a reduction of 2% of cost from

Net Revenue

• Containers placed in new areas helped market penetration into small-volume

customer base with mass distribution resulting in an increase in Net Sales by 5%.

“The simulator training is and think

will be in future the best training I

have ever come across. The

impact this has made in our

business as well as the people

cannot be returned in money.”

Antoinette Roberts

Director – Commercial Optimization &

Capability, Simba Pepsi Co

• Route engineering and introduction of a Go-to-Market Model in a small format,

which drove up productivity by 15% and sales by 25%.

Awards and recognition

The solution won a Bronze award in the Best Program for Sales Training and Performance

category at the Brandon Hall Excellence Awards 2013.