Glo-Bus: Contrôle de caméra numérique

Welcome to GLO-BUS. You and your co-managers are taking over the operation of a digital camera

company that is in a neck-and-neck race for global market leadership, competing against rival digital

camera companies run by other class members. All digital camera-makers presently have the same

worldwide market share, although shares vary by company across the four market regions—Europe-Africa,

Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and North America. Currently, your company is selling close to 800,000

entry-level cameras and 200,000 multi-featured cameras annually. Prior-year revenues were $206 million

and net earnings were $20 million, equal to $2.00 per share of common stock. The company is in sound

financial condition, is performing well, and its products are well-regarded by digital camera users. Your

company’s board of directors has charged you and your co-managers with developing a winning

competitive strategy—one that capitalizes on growing consumer interest in digital cameras, keeps the

company in the ranks of the industry leaders, and boosts the company’s earnings year-after-year.

Your first priority as a GLO-BUS participant should be to absorb the contents of this Participant’s Guide

and get a firm grip on the procedures for participating in the exercise, the character of the digital camera

market, and the cause-effect relationships that govern your company’s business. Then you will be ready to

explore the software and start managing your assigned company.

How the GLO-BUS Exercise Works

GLO-BUS is a computer-based exercise modeled to reflect the real-world character of the globally

competitive digital camera industry in which you run a company in head-to-head competition against

companies run by other class members. Company operations are patterned after those of actual digital

camera enterprises. Cause-effect relationships and revenue-cost-profit relationships are based on sound

business and economic principles. GLO-BUS puts you in a situation where you and your co-managers can

apply what you have learned in business school and where you can be businesslike and logical in deciding

what to do. Everything about your company and the industry environment you will operate in has been

made as realistic as possible in order to provide you with a close-to-real-life managerial experience.

Each decision period in GLO-BUS represents a year. The first set of decisions you and your co-mangers

will make is for Year 6. As soon as you get to the screens, you should view/print a copy of the Year 5

Company Operations Reports and review your company’s operating results. You and your co-managers

will make decisions each period relating to the design and performance of the camera line (10 decisions),

production operations and worker compensation (15 decisions), pricing and marketing (16 decisions),

corporate social responsibility and citizenship (up to 6 decisions), and the financing of company operations

(4 decisions). In addition, there is accounting and cost data to examine, import duties and exchange rate

fluctuations to consider, and shareholder expectations to satisfy. Video Tutorials for each decision screen will

help you get started.

Complete results of each decision period, including a detailed assortment of industry and company statistics

and competitive intelligence reports on the market activities of rival companies, become available online

about 20 minutes after the deadline for each decision round. Information in the latest Company Operating

Reports and two reports containing industry-wide statistics serve as the basis for meeting with your comanagers

to agree upon any strategy changes and make a revised set of decisions for the upcoming period.

The decision schedule developed by your instructor indicates the number of decision periods that you and

your co-managers will be running the company. You should use the practice decision(s) to become

familiar with the software, digest all the information provided on the screens and in the reports, and get a

glimpse of what to expect before your management team’s decisions start to count. All of the decision

screens and the report screens have Help buttons linked to detailed explanations of what the various

numbers mean, descriptions of cause-effect relationships in some detail, and advice and guidance on what

to think about—the Help sections and Video Tutorials will answer most every question you have.

Anytime-Anywhere Access. You and your co-managers can access all aspects of GLO-BUS at any time

from any computer connected to the Internet, provided the computer has a Web browser (such as Chrome

or Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari) and Flash 10.3 (or later)—in the event your computer does not

have the needed version of Flash already installed, you will be automatically directed to the Flash site

where the latest version can be downloaded and installed free of charge in a few minutes. When you go to

your “Corporate Lobby” page at www.glo-bus.com and click on the Decisions and Reports link, GLO-BUS

automatically links

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