Today, business simulations are used in making business decisions. Faced with a decision on where to build natural gas storage containers, and how big to build these containers, one oil company used Powersim to build a simulation of the wells, the pipelines, and the markets. Once the simulation was built, decision-makers at the oil company could try different storage container scenarios. The consequences of the different scenarios could be understood in a risk-free environment before any investments in construction of storage containers were made. Business simulations are also used in explaining business decisions to others in the organizations. For example, a major telecommunications company saw many of their competitors making risky forays into interactive television, adventures that were garnering much publicity. It was not enough to just focus on their core business; they also had to explain to the employees why investing in interactive TV and similar ventures were bad business decisions. This telecommunications company built an interactive simulation of how they perceived their business. Over 1200 employees used this simulation in a series of management training workshops, where employees had an opportunity to run the simulated business and make investment decisions. The employees gained new appreciation for the corporate strategy, and a better understanding of how the thought
leaders in their organization saw the dynamics of the next few years unfolding. Both of these simulation success stories were achieved using Powersim software. In each case a team of modelers and thought leaders from the business collaborated to build a custom model of the business problem. The models contained enough of the important details and complexities of the real world situation to be useful and believable.