Business Development Model

The objective was to develop a model for a sales and support services organization where sales prospecting lead to a proof of concept and then to a phase I and phase II deployment. Because of the investment required to develop resources to support the pre-sales, proof of concept and deployment efforts the intent was to project the resource requirements based on some assumptions about the sales efforts. Resources to be used were a combination of in house and contract resources, each of which required a substantial investment in training.
Figure 1 depicts the generalized relationship model that was developed as a foundation for creating the simulation model.
Figure 1 - Business Development Relationships [Vensim PLE v5.4b - bmodel.mdl] The model in Figure 1 was translated into a multi-stage ithink model and evaluated with various sets of initial assumptions in an attempt to get a handle on the resources that were likely to be required over a period of two years.
Figure 2 - Resources, Cash Flow and Utilization [ithink model bmodel.itm, 924k] Figure 2 presents one of the outputs from a set of initial assumptions. I'm not sure we utilized the model to the extent we could have though it is offered here as an example. There are extensive comments embedded in the model that should provide a sufficient understanding of the assumptions that were made.