In the LINKS Services Management Simulation, you’ll join a team that assumes management responsibility for a services organization.  LINKS firms market and deliver “support services” (e.g., computing/IT support, financial management, health care, repair, or maintenance services) to household (consumer) and major accounts (business) customers through a direct sales channel in multiple market regions.  You’ll be facing explicit competitors in your efforts to succeed in the support service marketplace.  Working with your management team, your goal is to improve your firm's overall financial, operating, and market performance.

LINKS engages participants in all aspects and challenges of services management:

• Marketing Management (segmentation, market selection, differential advantage, marketing mix decisions, and service design and portfolio management).

• Human Resources Management (hiring/firing, managing, and retaining service personnel).

• Service Operations Management (technology, productivity, capacity, and service quality management).

Research resources are available to LINKS firms, including service quality metrics, employee and customer satisfaction surveys, and internal cross-divisional benchmarking studies.

The interrelationships between marketing activities, organizational capabilities and service operations (human resources and technology) are highlighted throughout the LINKS Services Management Simulation.  Management, analysis, planning, and strategy skills will be important during the LINKS exercise.  Since participants are grouped into teams, issues, problems, and opportunities that arise in organizational and group settings will be encountered.  These management considerations will be as important as analysis and decision making skills in achieving success in LINKS.

The key to success in LINKS is a carefully developed long‑run strategy, with appropriate expertise being applied to sales forecasting, market monitoring, financial analysis of alternative strategies, planning, and marketing and operations decision making.  Large doses of common sense and managerial acumen will be needed throughout the LINKS exercise.