Turnaround simulation where students save a failing business

A business turnaround simulation is a timed activity where students take over a failing business and find out how quickly the options disappear. In the Finsimco Business Turnaround Strategy Simulation, each student inherits a manufacturer with nineteen weeks of cash, builds a thirteen-week forecast, negotiates with a bank, a pension trustee and a customer who is half the revenue, and decides whether to sell to a buyer who will not wait past week twelve. Unlike a textbook exercise, the timeline is the student's and so is the outcome.

Undergraduate and postgraduate students on Business Turnaround, Restructuring, Corporate Strategy, Corporate Finance or General Management courses, and MBA programmes. Difficulty is adjustable, so the same business can be set with a single lender and a fixed forecast, or with three stakeholder groups, a disputed forecast, a solvent sale option and an insolvency trigger for Masters and MBA cohorts.

Some. Students should be able to read a cash flow statement. Short-term cash forecasting, stakeholder negotiation, insolvency triggers, directors' duties and turnaround sequencing are explained inside the activity, with worked examples in the tool tips.

Late module, typically from week eight onwards. It also works as a capstone in a general management programme, because it forces prioritisation under a hard constraint rather than analysis at leisure.

The Debt Restructuring simulation is about the balance sheet negotiation. This one starts earlier, where the question is whether the business survives long enough to have that negotiation.

A case study examines a turnaround that worked. Here each student has nineteen weeks, three stakeholders with vetoes and a buyer with a deadline. You get the forecast, the dated actions and the reasoning behind every negotiation, rather than a written summary.

Most turnaround teaching presents a framework of stages. The Finsimco Business Turnaround Strategy Simulation is different because the clock runs. Options close whether or not anything is decided, the first forecast is tested against actuals, and the buyer has a deadline. It suits modules that want recovery taught as sequencing under pressure.

It can sit alongside one or replace it. A case study teaches students to analyse a recovery with hindsight. This makes them order the actions themselves while the cash is running out.

They take the cash, stakeholder and strategy roles in turn, build a thirteen-week cash forecast, take actions to extend a nineteen-week runway, negotiate with a bank, a pension trustee and a major customer, decide whether to accept a buyer with a week-twelve deadline, and report the outcome.

Every student holds all three. Cash wants weeks, stakeholder wants consent and strategy wants a business worth saving. Nothing is submitted until all three are satisfied, so the student has to reconcile them rather than pick a favourite.

No. A solvent sale in week ten and a successful restructuring in week sixteen are both good outcomes. What scores badly is a strategic initiative launched before the cash was stabilised, or a buyer allowed to walk while a better price was being sought.

Single-player. Every student runs the same case independently, so there is no team formation, no minimum cohort size and no group-work marking to untangle. It runs equally well with one student or several hundred.

About three and a half hours with the default timings, and the timings are yours. Every stage can be lengthened or shortened from the professor panel, so the same simulation fits a longer block or a shorter slot.

Yes. It pauses and resumes without losing submitted data. Two configurations work well: two sessions, with Briefing and Stabilise and Negotiate in the first and The Squeeze, The Outcome and the debrief in the second; or three sessions, one per decision stage. Briefing can also be set as pre-reading if you would rather open on the first decision.

Yes to all four. Because students work independently inside the platform, a remote or asynchronous run behaves exactly like an in-room one, which also makes it straightforward to set as homework. Delivery is covered across our simulations for universities.

As much or as little as you like. The simulation is self-running and coaching is optional. You control the timeline, can adjust stage timings, and can monitor student inputs live. See how a Finsimco session runs for the setup, controls and first-delivery support.