Teams assume various roles in a virtual fresh juice company and have to align the needs of their individual roles to the ultimate strategy - increasing the company's return on investment (ROI) at the end of each round. To succeed, each "department" has to maintain cross-functional communication with the rest of the team and decide which trade-offs best enhance the overall strategy.
The team entered by business consultants EY Africa emerged as the overall national winner and represented SA at the global final in Istanbul in September, where they were placed sixth. In the Automotive division, the Nissan team proved victorious - and the value they took away from the challenge means they're more than keen to improve on their performance in 2014.
"When we were invited to enter the Fresh Connection Challenge 2013, we had an internal review within Nissan South Africa, to see if it would be of value to us," said Nissan's Patryk Michalowski, manager: strategic development admin and reporting.
"The key item to emerge from that review was the need to start looking at the organisation as whole, rather than from the individual departments' perspectives; pillar by pillar, as it were. A cross-functional approach is one of our foundations at Nissan, thus we wanted to use the game to begin changing our mindsets as to how each area affects another; how does purchasing affect sales, etc. As we ran through the various stages of the competition, it quickly became clear that, as a company, you need to look very carefully at how all the pillars affect each other. We realised how decisions in sales affect decisions in every other department: purchasing, production, supply chain management (SCM) ... "
Michalowski is also impressed by the way the game helps teams identify weaknesses within the business. "One of the major learnings was how important forecasting is to the business; how poor forecasting can impact it negatively. In the second round, we didn't forecast very well and we saw a big decrease in our return on investment [ROI]."
The key to success in the Fresh Connection Challenge is the interaction within each team. "After that mistake, it was clear to us that forecasting needs to be cross-functional, too," said Michalowski. "Internally, we had to look at our forecasting to see how to make production run smoothly, and purchasing, and then sales - that aspect of the game correlated directly to our business.
"Because it's a game, you can also try out new ideas without the real-world consequences if they fail. Unfortunately, I think our team were a bit too conservative in the second round; we ended the first round with a positive ROI, so we went into a "comfort zone" as such, instead of continuing to improve and change the organisation. That may have held us back. Teams need to remember that improvement is the point of the game; so you can afford to test different strategies.
"It was definitely worthwhile entering," Michalowski concluded, "in terms of the value-add and the learning experience. We're keen to roll out more teams for the 2014 Challenge. This year, it was mainly employees from purchasing involved, with a few from SCM - we're in discussions with our HR department to identify if more departments would be interested to be involved in this kind of learning annually. It's a fantastic learning tool."
So we'll see more Nissan teams in the Fresh Connection Challenge 2014, in which the global finalists will score an all-expenses-paid trip to Dubai. This time, Nissan will be gunning for the top slot nationally; no matter how much more competition arises in the automotive division. "During the first round, we were a bit sceptical; almost, 'Okay, this is just a game; let's just play and hope we end up with a good result'," Michalowski added. "But by the end of that round, we realised that this could be something fantastic, rather than just a gimmick. We'll definitely be getting more sections of Nissan involved next year, to spread that learning throughout the company."
For more information, or to enter a team, register at www.thefreshconnection.biz/af-za before 1 March, 2014.
