VMS Game

1. The Game Scenario

Your team runs a business unit of a vertical market software company that sells and supports enterprise software to a portfolio of customers. The company has been operating for several years, and you are taking now!

Your business has four main revenue streams:

Your organisation is structured into five departments, each with its own team and cost base:

How Many Parameters Influence the Game?

The VMS Game is a high-fidelity simulation. Roughly ~280 parameters shape what happens each round — but not all of them are in your hands:

2. Format & Flow

The game is played in rounds, each representing one financial year. A round consists of the following steps:

3. How to Win

Your performance is measured across several dimensions. The team that performs best overall — across the most criteria — wins.

4. The Interface — Tab by Tab

Once logged in, you will see a row of tabs at the top of the screen. Here is what each one does:

📋 Decisions

Your home base. This tab shows a summary of your current round choices and is where you click Submit Decisions. It shows a countdown timer and a red warning if you have not yet submitted.

📈 Revenue

Set your revenue strategy for the coming year. Key inputs here include pricing, billability targets for PS, and Sales & Marketing staffing choices. The tab shows a live forecast of expected revenue broken down by stream.

🧰 Professional Services

Deep-dive into your PS business. Shows the relationship between PS headcount, billability, hourly rate, and projected services revenue. Adjust your billability target slider to balance revenue against customer satisfaction.

🛠️ Maintenance & Support

Monitor your support load — the ratio of incoming customer tickets to MS team capacity. If your team is overwhelmed, NPS drops. If they are underutilised, costs are unnecessarily high. Shows projected ticket volumes and load levels.

🔬 Initiatives

Manage your R&D innovation projects. Create new initiatives, allocate annual R&D budget, and track progress toward completion. Completed initiatives can generate additional revenue streams in future rounds.

👥 Workforce

The most impactful tab. Set headcount (hiring/firing), average base salary, salary increase percentage, training budget, and bonus policy for each of the five departments. The tab shows a live cost forecast and the projected impact on employee eNPS.

📊 eNPS / NPS

A dashboard showing the factors driving your employee satisfaction (eNPS) and customer satisfaction (NPS). Understand which levers are helping or hurting you before you submit.

💼 Working Capital

Manage cash efficiency — invoicing frequency and investment in reducing payment delays. Affects how quickly cash flows into your business.

💳 Financing

If you need additional cash to fund your plans, you can draw down on a loan here. Shows your outstanding loan balance and projected interest costs.

💰 Financials

Your full monthly P&L forecast for the coming year, including all revenue and cost lines down to EBITA. Always review this before submitting — it shows whether your decisions lead to a healthy bottom line.

🏆 Competition

See how all teams compare on key metrics this round. Use this to understand where you are ahead and where you are falling behind.

📉 Forecast vs Actuals

After each round is closed, this tab shows a bridge between your team's submitted forecast and the actual results. You see the impact on Net Revenue (NR), Operating expenses, EBITA, and Net Income (ENI), and which trigger caused the difference (e.g. market distribution, market event, or initiative outcome). Use it to learn why your numbers changed.

5. Your Key Decisions

Each round you will make decisions in several areas. Here is a quick overview of what matters most:

Workforce (most impactful)

• Headcount (FTE): How many people in each department? Hiring grows capability but increases cost. Firing saves money but hurts morale.
• Average base salary: Are you paying competitively relative to the market? Too low risks talent leaving; too high eats into margins.
• Salary increase %: How much do you raise salaries relative to inflation? Falling behind inflation damages employee satisfaction.
• Training budget: As a percentage of the salary base. Training improves employee morale and customer satisfaction — but it is a cost.
• Bonus %: The bonus as a percentage of base salary. A meaningful bonus improves motivation; too low signals lack of appreciation.

Revenue settings

• Price indexation: By what % do you increase maintenance and license prices? Raising prices above inflation can hurt customer satisfaction.
• PS billability target: What percentage of PS consultant hours should be billable? Higher means more revenue but risks overloading the team and frustrating customers.
• SM budget allocation: How much of your S&M spending goes toward retaining existing customers vs. acquiring new ones?

R&D initiatives

• Define and fund innovation projects that can open up new revenue streams in future rounds.
• Each initiative requires sustained investment over multiple rounds before generating returns.

Financing

• Draw on a loan if you need short-term funding. Be mindful of the interest cost — debt is not free.
• Consider repaying loan balances when cash allows, to reduce ongoing interest costs.

6. Revenue & Customers

Maintenance Revenue — your foundation

Maintenance revenue is your most stable and predictable income. It comes from annual contracts with your existing customer base. Protecting this base is critical — losing customers is very expensive to recover from.

Customer attrition (churn) is driven by your customer NPS score. Happy customers renew; dissatisfied customers leave. Once a customer leaves, winning them back is much harder than keeping them in the first place.

Professional Services Revenue

PS revenue depends on three things: how many PS consultants you have, how many hours they bill (billability), and the hourly rate. The Financials and Professional Services tabs give you a live forecast.

Third Party Professionals (PS): You can also spend on external consultants (Third Party Professionals) in the PS bucket. That cost is turned into revenue using a margin set by the Game Master (e.g. 10% margin means revenue = cost × 1.10). So €150,000 spend might become €165,000 services revenue. It is a way to boost services revenue without adding FTE when you are capacity-constrained. The exact margin is shown in your PS tab.

There is a sweet spot for billability:

• Too low — consultants sit idle; revenue is lost and costs are high.
• In the right range — good revenue, satisfied customers, healthy team.
• Too high — consultants are overloaded, quality drops, and customer satisfaction suffers.

Pricing

You can raise prices each round as a percentage (price indexation). Customers accept modest price increases in line with inflation, but significantly above-inflation increases will push NPS down.

7. Workforce & People

People are both your biggest cost and your most important asset. Workforce decisions have a delayed effect — choices you make this round will shape your results for several rounds to come.

Department sizes and revenue capacity

Salaries and the market benchmark

There is an implicit market benchmark salary. If your average pay is below the benchmark, employees become dissatisfied and may leave. If you are well above, morale improves but margins shrink. Aim to stay competitive without overpaying.

Natural attrition (staff leaving voluntarily) happens every round regardless. Salary, bonus, training, and the health of the business all affect how much attrition you experience.

Training

Setting a training budget (as a % of salary) is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve both employee satisfaction and customer service quality. The effect is visible in both eNPS and NPS over time.

Hiring and firing

Hiring is positive for morale (growth signals) but new hires take time to become fully productive. Firing reduces costs but is highly damaging to eNPS — and the knock-on effects on customer satisfaction can be significant. Only let people go when genuinely necessary.

Hiring is not guaranteed — market difficulty

Each department operates in its own talent market. Some roles are harder to fill than others (for example, R&D engineers are in high demand). When you submit your decision, each hiring slot is resolved independently with a success chance (so the same plan in a later round can land a different number of FTE — it is not a fixed outcome). The per-slot chance depends on two factors:

• Salary vs. benchmark — offering at or above the market benchmark significantly increases your chances. Offering below it means candidates choose competitors.
• Market difficulty — set by the Game Master to reflect real-world conditions (e.g. a tech talent shortage).

If the Game Master triggers a Tech Talent Shortage market event, FTE loss is applied as a fraction of successful hires that round (not your raw hiring plan), so it does not stack unfairly on top of the normal hiring success model.

After the Game Master advances the round, each team sees a summary popup (workforce plan vs. realized headcount, and any market correction to PS/maintenance revenue). It is sent to every open team screen at once (same team code). If you log in later in the same browser session, the same summary is loaded from the server so you do not miss it.

The workforce tab shows a live hiring success estimate below each hiring input as soon as you enter a number. Use it to judge whether your salary offer is competitive enough.

Failed hire attempts still incur some recruitment cost (agency fees, interviews), so planning to hire 10 but only getting 6 still costs more than planning to hire 6.

8. eNPS & NPS — Why They Matter

eNPS — Employee Net Promoter Score

eNPS measures how engaged and loyal your employees are. A high eNPS means people are proud to work there, recommend the company as an employer, and are less likely to leave.

eNPS is influenced by many factors, including:

• How your average salary compares to the market benchmark
• Salary increases relative to inflation
• Bonus level and fairness
• Training investment (signals you care about development)
• Whether the company is growing and profitable
• Hiring versus firing activity

Low eNPS leads to higher voluntary attrition — people leave, taking knowledge and productivity with them, and forcing you to hire replacements at a cost.

NPS — Customer Net Promoter Score

NPS measures how satisfied your customers are and how likely they are to recommend you. High NPS drives:

• Lower customer churn (your maintenance base stays intact)
• Better upsell and cross-sell opportunities
• Competitive advantage in the market

Customer NPS is influenced by:

• Support load — if your MS team is overwhelmed and response times suffer, NPS drops quickly.
• PS billability — overloaded PS consultants deliver worse outcomes, hurting satisfaction.
• Training — a better-trained team delivers a better service.
• Pricing — sharp price increases above inflation are not appreciated.
• R&D investment — a lack of product development signals no future for the platform.
• Innovation progress — completing initiatives shows customers you are invested in the product.
• Employee satisfaction (eNPS) — happy employees tend to deliver better customer service.

9. Support Load

The Maintenance & Support tab shows a support load indicator — the ratio between incoming customer tickets and your MS team's capacity to handle them. Watch this closely every round.

What drives ticket volume?

• Number of customers — more customers means more tickets, regardless of anything else.
• R&D underinvestment — falling below the R&D maintenance threshold increases bugs, which generate extra support tickets.
• Initiative launches — new features create a spike of support questions in the first year or two after launch.
• MS training — improving your MS team's training reduces tickets handled per FTE, improving effective capacity.

Third Party Professionals (MS)

You can buy extra support capacity without hiring more FTE by spending on Third Party Professionals in the Maintenance & Support tab. The Game Master sets how much each extra ticket of capacity costs (e.g. €5,000 per ticket per round). So for example €100,000 spend might give you 20 extra tickets of capacity that round — useful when you are at 110% load and cannot hire fast enough. The exact rate (€ per ticket) is shown in your MS/Support tab.

How to manage the load

• Right-size your MS headcount — check the load indicator before submitting each round.
• If you are planning to launch a new initiative, factor in the support spike and consider hiring MS FTE in advance.
• Use Third Party Professionals (MS) to add temporary capacity when load is high and hiring is not enough.
• Maintain R&D spend above the threshold to keep bug rates low.
• Invest in MS training — it is one of the most efficient ways to expand effective capacity without adding headcount.

10. R&D Initiatives

Initiatives are your strategic innovation projects. They are multi-year investments in new product features or entirely new capabilities that can generate additional revenue once completed.

How an initiative works

R&D spend and product health

Even if you have no active initiatives, R&D investment matters. Spending enough on R&D (relative to your total revenue) maintains product quality, which:

• Reduces bug rates and support ticket volumes
• Keeps customer NPS healthy
• Signals to employees that the company is investing in the future (positive eNPS)

Customer co-funding

Some initiatives can include one-time co-funding revenue (booked as secured PS in the revenue breakdown). The simulation applies anti-abuse rules set by the Game Master:

• Minimum innovation points this round — Each initiative must receive at least the configured number of innovation points allocated in the current round for its co-funding to count.
• Cap on new initiatives per round — Only the top initiatives (by points this round; tie-break by initiative id) up to the configured maximum, among initiatives started in this round, can have their co-funding included. Others show €0 in the secured one-time total even if you entered a higher amount in the initiative model.

These rules apply to the co-funding percentage used in the employee eNPS driver and to one-time PS revenue in the forecast breakdown.

Delayed co-funded delivery (customer NPS): If your initiative includes co-funding and is still not finished at least two full rounds after the round it started in (and the Game Master has left this rule enabled), you may receive a one-time customer NPS penalty for that initiative. The GM sets the penalty amount, a per-round total cap, and whether flopped initiatives also receive this hit (by default they do not, to avoid a double penalty). When it applies, you will see it in the customer NPS breakdown under Drivers.

SIG participation

Initiatives benefit from Special Interest Group (SIG) involvement. Assigning a SIG to your initiative earns bonus innovation points each round, helping you reach the completion threshold faster. The stronger the SIG engagement, the bigger the bonus.

Initiative outcomes: Success, Delay, Flop (if enabled by the Game Master)

In some games, the Game Master turns on Initiative Success & Failure. When an initiative would complete in a given round (you have allocated enough innovation points to reach the threshold), the game rolls a random outcome at the end of that round:

• Completed — The initiative finishes as planned. From the next round onward it contributes to revenue and adoption as usual.
• Delayed — Extra innovation points are required (the amount is random, within a range set by the GM). You will see the new total required (base + extra) in the Initiatives tab. Allocate more R&D in following rounds until that higher threshold is met.
• Flop — The initiative stops permanently. It is marked as ✗ Flop in the list and in the selector. No further points can be allocated and it no longer generates revenue. Use this as a signal to focus R&D on other initiatives.

Your initiative’s success chance (shown in the R&D tab) influences the probability of each outcome. Lower success chance means higher risk of delay or flop when the initiative would otherwise complete.

11. Financials & Working Capital

Reading the Financials tab

The Financials tab shows a monthly P&L forecast for the current round, including:

• Revenue lines: Maintenance, License, Services (PS), Hardware
• Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): Direct delivery costs
• Gross Profit
• Operating expenses: Employee costs for each department, other costs
• EBITA — your bottom line

Use this tab to sense-check your decisions before submitting. If EBITA looks unexpectedly low, work backwards through the numbers to find the cause.

Working Capital

Working capital is the cash tied up in your business operations — primarily in outstanding customer invoices. The invoicing frequency affects how quickly cash comes in:

• Monthly invoicing — steady cash flow throughout the year.
• Annual invoicing — large lump sum; can create cash constraints early in the year.

You can also invest in reducing the Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) — the average time it takes customers to pay. Reducing DSO improves cash flow and frees up working capital.

Loans and financing

If you need additional funds (for example, to hire aggressively or fund a large R&D investment), you can draw on a loan. Key points:

• There is an interest rate on the outstanding balance, charged monthly.
• If your bank raises rates (a possible market event), your interest cost increases automatically.
• Repay the loan when you have surplus cash to reduce ongoing interest costs.
• Avoid relying on debt to fund day-to-day operations — it signals a structurally unprofitable business.

Bonus and vacation accruals

Bonuses and vacation allowances are accrued throughout the year but paid out in specific months (typically April and May). This creates a cash outflow spike early in the year — make sure your cash position can absorb it.

12. Competition & Market

The Competition tab shows a ranking of all teams on the key metrics. Use it every round to understand where you stand.

Customer market competition (if enabled)

If the Game Master has enabled Customer Market Competition, two things happen:

• Customer flows: Your NPS score relative to competitors affects how many customers you gain or lose. Teams with higher NPS attract more from the shared market pool; teams with lower NPS lose share to rivals.
• Revenue correction at end of round: Total maintenance and PS (services) revenue in the market are capped: they cannot exceed last round’s market total × (1 + max growth % per round, often around 4%). PS is split across teams by attraction (NPS, S&M spend, competitive pricing) against that full cap — so a very ambitious PS forecast can still be cut if your attraction share is low. Maintenance uses the same line breakdown as your Maintenance bridge (stored as maintenanceRevLines): a sticky part (opening + price + attrition) and a contest part (new logos via S&M + additional modules from initiatives). Only the contest part is capped using your prior contest actual plus your share of the market growth pool; the sticky part follows your forecast (within your total forecast cap). Old games without line data use a simpler fallback.

If the max growth is set to 0%, the maintenance growth pool is zero, so your contest slice cannot grow from the pool (you stay at prior contest + sticky per forecast). PS can still shift between teams by attraction because the total PS pie is unchanged but re-shared. Customer satisfaction and commercial effort remain levers for PS share and for contest maintenance growth.

Talent competition (if enabled)

If talent competition is enabled, employees can move between teams. Teams paying significantly below the market benchmark, or with very low eNPS, will see people leave to competitors who offer better conditions. You cannot see this happening in real time, but you will notice it in your FTE numbers at the start of the next round.

Market disruption events (if enabled)

From time to time, the Game Master may trigger or schedule market disruption events that affect all teams or individual teams. These simulate the unpredictable nature of business and reward resilient strategies. Examples of what can happen:

• A sudden increase in market salaries, requiring you to match the benchmark or face eNPS drops
• Interest rate changes affecting loan costs
• Regulatory costs imposed on all teams
• Competitor activity affecting customer flows

The best defence against disruption is a healthy balance sheet, satisfied employees, and loyal customers — these give you the resilience to absorb shocks that would hurt less-prepared competitors more severely.

Forecast vs Actuals tab

After each round is closed, the Forecast vs Actuals tab shows how your team's submitted forecast compared to the actuals that the game engine calculated. Use it to understand why your numbers changed.

• Per round: You see your forecast and actual values for Net Revenue (NR), Operating expenses, EBITA, and Net Income (ENI), plus the impact (Δ) — the difference between actual and forecast.
• Triggers: The tab lists what caused the difference: e.g. Customer market distribution (attraction) (PS split on the full cap; maintenance uses your line split — open How is this calculated? for the exact formula), Market event: [name] (a disruption event fired by the GM), or Initiative outcome (R&D initiative success or failure).

This bridge helps you learn from each round: if your actual revenue was below forecast, check whether it was due to market share (attraction) or an event, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

13. Practical Tips

Before round 1

• Read through all the tabs carefully. Understand the starting numbers in the binder (Year 1 and Year 2 actuals).
• Identify your biggest weaknesses — is customer NPS low? Is the support team understaffed? Is eNPS trending down?
• Agree on a strategy as a team: are you going for margin, growth, or a balanced approach?

Each round

• Start with the Financials tab to understand last round's actual results.
• Check the eNPS/NPS tab to see which factors moved your scores up or down.
• Check the Competition tab to see how your position changed relative to other teams.
• Check the Forecast vs Actuals tab to see why your actual results differed from your forecast (market distribution, events, initiative outcomes).
• Make changes in Workforce, Revenue, and Initiatives, then review the Financials forecast before submitting.
• Always check the Maintenance & Support tab for the support load indicator.

Common mistakes to avoid

Good luck — and good management.