Fusing the fields of educational technology, game design, business development, and human resources (HR) within complex computer systems, the SBS platform is based on a complex business simulation developed by the international Lithuanian-based team named "Marilana".

Simformer corporate users include UniCredit Group’s Tiriac Bank, which gets its senior executives and "rising managerial talent" to test their strategic business skills via the SBS. The platform has a number of users in the academic sector around the world as well.

In June this year, in Bucharest, Romania, members of the Tiriac Bank’s senior management teams used an SBS-enabled virtual environment to engage in the business game "Corporation in Distress". The game, moderated by a team of Simformer specialists, involved 24 managers making quick, efficient, and effective decisions after being given a mere six hours to bring their fictitious companies back to profitability. 

"The game provided a challenging scenario for both the teams and individual players," said Simformer Key Account Manager, Adelina Nalivaikaite-Karelidze. "The simulation also provided opportunities for testing essential business skills, including decision making, prioritizing, strategic thinking, teambuilding, and leadership – and, thankfully, both teams succeeded in making their firms profitable again by the end of the game."

After the event, UniCredit’s HR specialists received comprehensive player-performance reports so they could identify both employees’ existing skills and areas for further improvement.

Developed in collaboration with Vilnius University, the multi-dimensional SBS provides a systematic approach to corporate education. Combined with a learning-management system (LMS), it enables organizations to amass corporate knowledge, reinforce it via customized game situations, and automatically monitor employee performance.

"Students who use the Simformer platform always report a great deal of additional learning – relating to such things as data analysis, business decisions, levers that make businesses successful, and quality management," said Dr Andrei Fedorov, Simformer’s Education Program Director. "In many ways – some of which we’re only beginning to explore – Simformer represents a major breakthrough in learning technology."

"SBS is continuing to arouse the interest of course developers and academics in further and higher education, as well as those involved with corporate education centers, along with venture capitalists," said the company’s CEO, Sergey Menshchikov. "Simformer makes serious business games, simulations, eLearning courses, and training programs possible for both businesses and educational institutions.

"The platform’s features and functions enable practical, skill-oriented training in business-management disciplines. So course developers, business trainers, and teachers who want to create unique educational products aimed at skills development are turning to Simformer to help them.

"Learning becomes more engaging via gamification," Sergey added. "Practical orientation, the elements of competitiveness, and the real-world unpredictability that gamification brings, along with objective and automatic assessment, positively impact the effectiveness of educational programs.

"With Simformer, companies can significantly reduce training budgets, as well as provide access to content 24/7, regardless of the geographical location of their employees. Moreover, Simformer offers flexible solutions to suit both small companies and large multinational corporations."

Minvydas Latauskas, Head of Product Development at Simformer, commented, "Importantly, while learning platforms such as MOOCs only provide theoretical knowledge, the Simformer platform provides the theory together with the practical skills development that the learners need."

In the light of this interest from the academic as well as the learning-and-development worlds, Simformer is now expanding its range of ready-made simulations based on the SBS. Encompassing group and individual courses, this growing range of simulations covers both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) applications.