In English - Auf Deutsch - Suomeksi - På svenska - Polski - Česky - По Русски - Español - Български
DataPartner
News & Events
News
Travelogue: Visiting School of Facility Management at Hanzehogeschool Groningen in Netherlands
February 9, 2015
In the first week of January 2015, senior lecturers Kaija Koivusalo and Seppo Luode with principal lecturer Päivi Tossavainen from Laurea Leppävaara campus visited Hanzehogeschool Groningen in Netherlands. The Laurea team was invited by teacher Jan Wiltens to give an intensive course on capital budgeting for the second year international facility management (IFM) program students. The student group, consisting of 29 Dutch and international students, were finishing a 15 credit study block on sustainable buildings, covering different aspects of housing, sustainability and project management. Laurea’s intensive three day course summarized business decisions and the financial planning topics (eg. investment selection criteria such as net present value) which the students had studied during the past weeks. At the end of the week one of the students commented: “Now I understand how these (investment criteria) are used in practice”.
The Laurea intensive course is based on two capital budgeting study units in Leppävaara campus (Capital Investment Analysis and Capital Budgeting) with modification to include strategic business thinking, service logic, and business modeling as a starting point for cash flow planning. The concept of business model is of importance. It helps students to understand important business elements, to facilitate discussion, and to provide description for the organization to function. When the business model is created together it will be a shared model with shared language within an organization.
The case given was to plan hotel business. The main purpose of the investment case (hotel) was to make the hotel business profitable and financially viable. The investment calculations and the justifications of the choices made were presented to the group of investors (this time the Laurea teachers).
As the Hanze group of students were already familiar with the original Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur 2010), the Laurea team introduced the upcoming Service Logic Business Model Canvas (Ojasalo & Ojasalo 2015,) which emphasizes a deeper understanding of the customer needs: both implicit and explicit. The SL BM canvas focuses on both perspectives: the customer as value creator and producer through value capture.
In this course the students learned to use the canvas technique to design a feasible business model for a hotel. The business model was then used in analyzing the investments case. Business modeling is used as a basis for financial modeling in order to highlight the importance of estimating the cash inflows and cash outflows of an investment project. The sensitivity and risk of the project can be analyzed using Invest for Excel software and the students summarized their team results in the form of a written investment proposal, also generated automatically from Invest for Excel.
Kaija and Seppo speed up the learning (Photo by Päivi Tossavainen)
The course is organized in cooperation with a Finnish company DataPartner, who provided the Invest for Excel software for students to use. DataPartner is the number 1 software developer for capital budgeting in Northern and Central Europe. The software is used in over 1500 organizations and 45 countries worldwide. Already 50% of TOP 30 of Finland's biggest companies use Invest for Excel software for investment and valuation calculations and it is also used in the Netherlands.
Furthermore, the Laurea team was invited to give guest lectures on the topic of service development for the 2nd year Dutch Bachelor’s level student group. There were almost 70 students eager to learn about Finland, Laurea, and the service development education case example (nature center HALTIA), which was from fall 2014, course Creating innovations through service design. On Thursday evening, Laurea team also had opportunity to lecture service development and discuss with adult students.
Based on the student experiences and feedback, we are hoping that this new type of intensive course on capital budgeting could be one part of the sustainable building block on a regular basis in the future.
Päivi Tossavainen, Kaija Koivusalo, Seppo Luode