What's new?
Supply chains connect many different departments that don’t always have the same objectives, especially the sales and marketing teams, who are often more focused on revenue than cost. So, this month, we added a few updates to address these issues. Additionally, as the possibilities for customizing the game become more extensive, we improved our Templates feature to make life easier.
Custom templates
A few weeks ago, we added various templates in the app to help you start from different scenarios. Now, you can save your own custom templates to start future sessions easier and faster. These are also shared within your team to make sure all members host identical scenarios.
Access this option from the Templates menu in your Dashboard: https://app.beergameapp.com/dashboard/templates
Create and save custom templates
Calculating revenue
In the classic Beer Game, supply chain performance is evaluated by Stock and Backorder Costs (lower is better). However, some teams may be a little confused by the fact that only Costs are calculated but not Revenue — and isn’t the overall business goal is to sell packs of beer to the end consumer?
Now, you can add a Unit Sales Price for a specific stage. As quantities of product are successfully shipped to customers, revenue will accumulate:
At the end, discussion can be centered around which supply chain managed to "generate more profit", which is sometimes more logical than just talking about "reducing costs", especially for Sales or Marketing teams.
Revenue vs. Cost at Debriefing
Missed Sales instead of Backorders
In the original Beer Distribution Game, when you don't have enough stock to fill an order, missing quantities are logged as a "backorder", which needs to be filled later on. This backorder adds a cost every week, corresponding to "late penalties".
However, a missed sale cannot be recovered in many real-life scenarios. This is usually the case in B2C — if a customer doesn't find your product in-store, he may not wait and will purchase your competitor's product, impacting your reputation and retention.
This setting has been added and now you can decide to not allow backorders at any stage:
If you don't have enough to meet demand, your stock will reach zero. All the quantities you couldn't ship will incur costs ("Missed Sale Cost"), corresponding to reputational damage.
We advise that you set this up at the first stage (Retailer).
Discover these new features in the app now!