14. Measuring the Impact of Business Simulations
Eliza Helweg-Larsen
Published Date
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Choosing the Best Business Acumen Simulation: Part 14 – Measuring Impact
Choosing the Best Business Acumen Simulation is our comprehensive 17-part guide to evaluating, selecting, and achieving meaningful results with business simulations. In this installment, we explore Measuring Impact — why quantifying the results of your simulation solution helps secure buy-in and demonstrate value.
Measuring the ROI of Business Acumen Training
A well-chosen business acumen simulation does more than create an enjoyable workshop. It influences decisions, improves conversations, and changes the way people think about the business. To prove its value—and earn future investment—you need evidence that those changes are happening.
What’s at Stake
Business acumen training isn’t just a feel-good investment. It should create measurable business outcomes. But to show ROI, you need to measure the right things—the things that actually change behavior and drive better decisions.
In a successful simulation, learning translates into action. That action may be small and hard to quantify at first—but over time, it accumulates. Better conversations. Smarter trade-offs. Decisions that align with company goals and improve business outcomes.
Case in Point: Beam Suntory
When Beam Suntory rolled out a Finance & Strategy workshop, they trained over 500 employees, most of them outside finance. Their goal? Not just to improve cost control—but to strengthen long-term commercial acumen.
Six weeks after the training, Percept Research found measurable improvement in participants’ confidence and alignment with company strategy. One participant made a single change in sourcing that improved profits by saved $700,000 annually. But more important were the incremental gains—the culture shift toward financial clarity and long-term thinking.
Key Metrics to Track
You don’t need dozens of dashboards. Focus on what matters:
- Knowledge Retention & Application
Pre/post surveys can show whether people understand the business better. It’s not ROI, but it’s the foundation. - Participant Engagement
Highly engaged learners tend to reflect more, ask more questions, and share what they’ve learned. That translates into cultural change. - Behavior Change
Are managers seeing different decision patterns? Are teams asking smarter questions, challenging assumptions, and acting more like owners? - Learning Transfer
Are participants using the language and concepts back on the job? Follow-up interviews can surface real-world examples. - Impact on Business KPIs
You may not see a direct line from training to profit, but look for improvements in things like inventory levels, DPO, time-to-decision, or reduced firefighting. These are real outcomes, even if they’re soft metrics.
Start Simple, Stay Focused
The easiest thing to measure is retention. The most meaningful thing is behavior change. Use one to spark the other. And make sure you’re collecting the kinds of results that will matter to stakeholders who fund your learning programs.
It’s not just learning—it’s return on learning.
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Avoid: Tracking Only What’s Easy to Measure Because… retention alone doesn’t equal results. |
Look For: Behavior Change That Affects Real Decisions Because… that’s where return on learning begins. |
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