Problem

Compass needed us to spread their “MAP” business model throughout the company. MAP is a way of looking at revenues and costs in 5 buckets, which has become the core of the Compass management process and is used at all levels from restaurant unit to corporate planning.

The Group grew rapidly through acquisition; each business within the group had its own chart of accounts, its own jargon, and grouped items in different ways. This meant that there was no common language for discussing the business, and it was hard to judge performance or replicate best practices. As in many industries, most senior managers had grown up in the business, and were not high on financial literacy.

Solution

The request was not for a financial course, but a business course which would give immediately usable understanding of the drivers of financial success in the very specific context of outsourced catering. We built a simulation-based course for senior managers called Mapping for Value, which:

• Ensures that financial basics are well understood
• Clarifies the differences between growth through: adding contracts, raising like for like sales, and price increases; and their impacts on cash and profit
• Engages managers in deep discussions of best practices in each MAP area, showing how they could apply each one in their personal role
• Shows, in a simulation of the whole Compass business, how decisions in each area contribute to growth, cash flow and profit over time

Impact

Mapping for Value has supported the global application of MAP as the process for continuous improvement of financial performance, as shown by Compass’ results in recent years. After creating a common language across all senior managers, it is now used to bring new acquisitions into the Compass culture and methodologies, as well as to bring all new senior managers up to speed with the company’s methodology for running a very large low-margin business successfully.

Ali Fox, L&D Programmes Manager at Compass Group writes:

“We knew the power of game-based learning having already partnered with PBS on a previous game which taught the basics of finance to our teams in an outsourced catering environment. The subsequent game-based programme based on the MAP framework has been so successful that it has been used worldwide since 2008, giving every senior manager a line of sight to how they affect business performance, and markedly improve both communication and financial results.

The MAP framework remains the foundation of Compass’ performance today and continues to be a key element of our success."