1. Computer Simulation with Concert Tour Entrepreneur
Managing with Data – Level 2

2. What You’ll Learn… Stuff You’ll Need…
How businesses collect and analyze data to help make better decisions
How to use spreadsheets to analyze business information
How to maximize profitability in a simulated concert tour business
Advanced gaming techniques for the Concert Tour Entrepreneur business simulation
Stuff You’ll Need…
Concert Tour Entrepreneur software (CTE)
Microsoft Excel

3. What You Should Know…
Before beginning the activities in this Learning Launcher, you should have completed the Level 1 – Becoming a Music Mogul Learning Launcher or have prior experience using Concert Tour Entrepreneur (CTE). You should have a good understanding of how to run your concert tour business using the software simulation. You should be familiar enough with the program to have identified several strategies for business success.
You should also know basic business terminology such as sales, expenses and profit and understand what each means in the context of running your concert tour business.
If you are not already familiar with any of these concepts, you should consider beginning with the Level 1 Learning Launcher.
You’ll find this Learning Launcher a lot easier to do if you have experience creating basic spreadsheets in a program like Excel.

4. What You Should Know… Managing a business with data…
There’s a saying in business that goes:
You can’t manage what you don’t measure!
In real businesses, there are many factors that determine success. Lots of people perform different tasks everyday. Sales go up and down. The costs of operations and materials can change. Customer needs shift. And competition is always trying to stay one step ahead of you!
There’s a lot of information to track. In fact, for most businesses it’s too much!

5. What You Should Know… Managing a business with data…
So what does a business do?
Successful businesses put a great deal of thought into determining which factors are most important to their business performance. Then they focus on tracking, analyzing, reporting and communicating that critical information to everyone in the organization.
There is almost always more than one important factor to track and these factors can be very different from one business to another. Business managers must strike a careful balance between tracking enough information to make smart decisions and tracking too much to handle thoughtfully.

6. What You Should Know… Managing a business with data…
Deciding what to measure
In your earlier experiences with Concert Tour Entrepreneur, you probably kept a careful watch on your profits. While it’s true that profitability is one indication of a business’ success, it is much more important to understand why a business is (or is not) profitable.
That’s because profit is rarely something a business professional can directly manage. Think about it as a matter of cause and effect. Profits are the effect. Successful business managers understand the type of information they need to evaluate the cause.

7. What You Should Know… Managing a business with data…
Deciding what to measure
As you learned in your earlier CTE experience, revenue is important. But what if you spent too much on advertising or booked concert venues that were too large for your attendance? You certainly wouldn’t have been as profitable as you might have been.
So businesses must track factors that impact both revenue and expenses. Often, it is the relationship between revenue and expenses that determine the success of your business.

8. What You Should Know… Managing a business with data…
Deciding what to measure
To better understand this concept, let’s use clothing stores as an example.
Clothing sales determine how much revenue they have, so it’s important to track that information. The cost to produce the clothing is one of the most important factors of cost. So one key element they measure is margin, the difference (in percentage) between the cost and the selling price of the clothes.
Other big costs of running a clothing store are rent and staffing. Since the size of a store makes a big difference in how much rent they pay and how many employees it takes to run the store, sales per square foot is another key piece of information managers use to make decisions.

9. Research Managing a business with data…
If you completed the Level 1 – Becoming a Music Mogul Learning Launcher, you made a number of business decisions in running your concert tour business. Some were successful and, most likely, some were not. What kinds of things did you manage to put on each concert? What did you learn?
Before going any further in this PowerPoint, take a moment to create a list of business factors that affected the profitability of your business.
Write down at least six factors. How important were each? Give each one a rating of 1-3, with 1 being very important, 2 being somewhat important and 3 being not too important. Be sure to include this list in your Word document!

10. Concert Costs and Sales Merchandise Costs and Sales
What You Should Know…
Business Data in Concert Tour Entrepreneur
Fortunately, CTE can provide you with lots of helpful information you can use to run your music business.
Much of this information can be accessed through the Info I Need pull-down menu at the top of your screen or by clicking on the spreadsheet on your main screen.
Spreadsheets give you access to important business information including:
Concert Costs and Sales
Merchandise Costs and Sales
Band Earnings
Your Earnings
Misc. Costs and Income
Main Screen
“Info I Need” Menu

11. Click here to access other automatic spreadsheets.
What You Should Know…
Business Data in Concert Tour Entrepreneur
Let’s take a closer look at the software spreadsheet functions. As your band performs concerts, CTE automatically records cost and revenue information for each show. You can access this information by clicking on Concerts – Costs and Sales under the Info I Need menu.
At the bottom of the spreadsheet, there’s another pull-down menu that allows you to bring up spreadsheets with other important information. Note that this list includes 5 custom spreadsheets too. More on this feature later…
Click here to access other automatic spreadsheets.

12. Click here to access spreadsheet editing functions
What You Should Know…
Business Data in Concert Tour Entrepreneur
The spreadsheet functions in CTE are similar to other spreadsheet programs you may have used, like Microsoft Excel. Many of the spreadsheet editing functions are accessed under the Spreadsheet pull-down menu at the top of the page.
Click here to access spreadsheet editing functions

13. Double-click on the graph to add labels and customize
What You Should Know…
Business Data in Concert Tour Entrepreneur
You can use CTE’s custom spreadsheets to analyze your business data. If you prefer, you can also copy the information into an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis. Feel free to use whichever method you want.
To create graphs using the CTE spreadsheets, copy the information into one of the custom spreadsheet pages. Then highlight the financial data you want to graph and click one of the graph icons at the top. Double-clicking on the graph brings up a dialog box you can use to add labels and customize your graph.
Double-click on the graph to add labels and customize

14. What You Should Know… Business Data in Concert Tour Entrepreneur
You can also add formulas to your custom spreadsheets. Let’s say you wanted to analyze the percentage of seats sold for each concert. Copy the Concerts: Seating data into a custom spreadsheet. In a new column, just enter the formula you want. In the example below, you would enter =F3/E3 (F3 is the total number of seats sold and E3 is the capacity of the venue).
Hmmm, do you think it might be interesting to see how advertising affects the percentage of seats sold?
Use these buttons to format the highlighted cell(s). Clicking this button will show your number as a percentage.
Here is the formula that will be used to calculate the amount in the highlighted cell (G3)

15. Do It! Concert Tour Entrepreneur
Are you ready to take your gaming experience to the next level?
In this challenge you will track, analyze and graph business data from your concert tour business. You can either start a new game or continue an old game if you have one available.
To begin play at least four concerts. Then take a close look at your spreadsheets and think about the type of information that is available to help you run your business.

16. Do It & Research Concert Tour Entrepreneur
Using the available information, create at least two custom spreadsheets that you can use to help you make business decisions. Refer back to the list you made earlier about factors that you thought would affect your profitability (see slide 10). Do you have information you can analyze to help you track your performance?
As you continue to play each concert, refer back to this information and think about how you can use the information to make better business decisions.
Collect data from at least three months of concert engagements.

17. Do It & Research Concert Tour Entrepreneur
Did the information you collected and analyzed help you run your concert tour business more effectively? Why or why not?
What did you learn about how to run your business?
Create at least three graphs to show how your business performed. Include these in your ePortfolio and explain what the graphs show about your business. Is there anything you would do differently in your next game as a result of your business analysis?