Business Simulations Built 85% Faster Without Draining Executive Calendars—Here's How

Business Simulations Built 85% Faster with 75% Less Executive Time—Here's How

Historically, building a business simulation takes ~four months. Sometimes longer.

It starts innocently enough. Consultants need to "understand your business." So they schedule interviews with senior leaders. Then come the steering committees. The working groups. The review sessions. All in, it becomes a 10+ hour drain on each person’s calendar. 

The invoice says $300,000. But add up all those executive hours, and the real cost doubles. Sometimes triples. For one simulation. That takes four months. That you don't even own the Intellectual Property for when it's done.

When a Fortune 500 manufacturing client approached us, they refused to accept this model. They wanted world-class business acumen training for their Director+ population - but demanded we find a better way.

The Challenge: Break Every Rule

Their requirements were ambitious:

• Minimal time from executives (2-3 hours max per person and a small team of execs)
• Launch in one month, not four
• Same depth and quality as traditional approaches
• Complete ownership of the final product

Under the old model, this list would have been fantasy. But we knew the old model was the problem, not the solution.

Our Approach: AI Meets Intuition

Instead of weeks of interviews and months of effort, we took a radically different path.

We fed their publicly available data—10-Ks, quarterly reports, investor presentations—into our proprietary AI model. Analyzed a handful of internal process documents. Paired that with our simulation expertise & intuition. And within days, we had mapped their entire business: every KPI, every tradeoff, every operational nuance.

No consultant fishing expeditions. No executive calendar drain. Just an intelligent analysis of information that already existed.

The Reality Check: Two Hours That Changed Everything

We scheduled exactly one review meeting. Two hours. Seven leaders.

They expected to spend the session correcting our misunderstandings, filling gaps, explaining complexities we'd missed. Instead, they sat stunned. We'd captured subtleties of their business that typically take months of interviews to uncover.

"How did you know about our supplier constraints in Asia?" "You nailed our pricing dynamics better than most of our own people understand them." "This feels like you've been inside our operations for years."

The AI hadn't just processed data. It had understood their business.

Three Weeks to Launch

With their validation, we built fast. Three weeks later, the simulation was complete and ready to launch.

But here's the key difference: We built this one with them, then handed over the keys. They own it completely, including the IP. They can modify it, scale it, run it whenever and wherever without asking permission or paying fees.

Because at Forge, you always own your simulations.

The Numbers That Matter

The efficiency gains were staggering:

75% Less Executive Time

• Traditional approach: 10-15 hours per leader
• Our approach: 2.5 hours per leader
• Time saved: 70+ executive hours

85% Faster Delivery

• Traditional timeline: 4 months minimum
• Our timeline: 3 weeks
• Speed improvement: 85%

75%+ Lower Total Cost

• Traditional cost (including shadow executive time costs): $300k for build + $300-$400K
• Savings: Hundreds of thousands of dollars

The Multi-Million Dollar Moment

During the pilot with 30 General Managers, one participant had an epiphany.

She connected the simulation's financial scenarios to her real-world ordering patterns. The realization hit hard—she'd been over-ordering components at quarter-end "just to be safe."

Annual cost of that safety buffer? Over $10 million. Direct hit to EPS.

She changed her ordering strategy that day.

But here's what keeps us up at night: Under the traditional timeline, this simulation would have launched three months later. That's another $10+ million gone. Another quarter of waste. Another hit to earnings that could have been prevented.

Speed isn't just efficiency. It's profit.

What This Means for Your Organization

The implications go far beyond one success story:

Your Executives Stay Focused: Instead of losing weeks to simulation development, your leaders give focused input in a couple short hours. They stay where they belong—running the business.

You Launch While Momentum Is High: Four months kills urgency. Three weeks maintains it. Strike while your organization is ready for change, not after they've moved on to the next priority.

You Own Everything: No vendor lock-in. No licensing fees. No begging for updates. Your simulation, your control, your timeline.

You Capture Value Immediately: Every week of delay is a week of missed improvements, overlooked savings, and lost opportunities. Speed equals value.

The Status Quo Is Dead

For decades, we've accepted that business simulations require:

• Months of executive time
• Mega Six-figure consulting fees
• Four-month timelines
• Vendor dependence forever

But what if none of that was necessary anymore? What if it was just protecting outdated business models?

This manufacturing client proved what's possible when you reject the status quo. When you demand better. When you believe your team should own their tools.

Your Next Step

The legacy simulation world wants you to believe complexity requires months and dependence. We've proven that's a lie.

Your business simulation can be:

• Built in weeks, not months
• Created with minimal executive distraction
• Owned completely by your team
• Launched while momentum is high

The question isn't whether this approach works. We've proven it does.

The question is: How much longer will you accept the old way?

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