I have been using Pharos since 2002 in regular mode. It is simple, easy to use, but powerful. Pharos is a valuable software for teaching business strategy and control concepts. Students need a few hours to learn how to use it, although they ask a lot of questions. I teach Business Strategy, Industrial Engineering and Investment Analysis and use Pharos for business strategy. Business games are used frequently for strategy lessons, like BSG or BPG, but I prefer to use Pharos instead of a business game. Why? Because a business game is complex, it requires more time to prepare and it is only a game, it is necessary to give an award motivating undergraduate students to be more engaged, however after the game is over, students don't fully understand what happened and why. With Pharos I present the problem as follows: “This is real software for business strategy control and this is a real data set of a small enterprise. Please prepare a report for the enterprise's owner and propose a new strategy.” In this case, I don't need prizes because students are not playing a game; they are “real business managers”. Who were my students in strategy in Pharos Class? They were undergraduates in Industrial Engineering, mid-level manager of big enterprises, small enterprises owners and micro enterprises owners. With Pharos strategy concepts make much more sense to them. Since 1991 I have been working with micro, small, medium and big enterprises, with different business management topics. When I was introduced to Pharos in 2000, I thought it was good software for Micro enterprises. In 2002 I tried to teach Pharos to 18 micro enterprise owners. In general, the experience was very good, however, not all entrepreneurs used computers and they were lack of knowledge on business management. One entrepreneur said "We need to solve other problems first, Pharos’ software is fantastic but it does not help us, we don't have time to prepare data for Pharos, we don't have yearly budget prepared and Pharos thus is of no help for us". At the end of 2002 I used Fit and Pharos to prepare a report on business analysis for a small enterprise. When I shared my results to the owners, they were delighted with Fit and Pharos, but distressed with their business performance. One manager used my Pharos generated report to request a bank loan and it was awarded! This year when I used Fit to prepare a report on business value for a medium-size enterprise, the owners were delighted too. Fit is a very good tool and I suggest three improvements: Import data from Excel, export graphics and indicators for business reports and include EVA as indicator (Economic Value Added). Pharos is very useful software for small enterprises, because they are concerned how to hold profitability and business growth. We are now implementing pilot Pharos installations in some enterprises and I hope that owners will purchase licenses after developing best practices and getting the results. I have taught business strategies to small entrepreneurs with very good outcomes, after the lecture, all enterprises implemented some Pharos' ideas in their business. Last autumn (2005), I had 31 students in my course, 29 of them were mid-level managers of big corporations (energy and telecommunications companies) and two small enterprise's owners. One entrepreneur said “this course and Pharos taught me very useful concepts. Last year my business was near bankruptcy, now I know how to make better decisions." This semester I have 45 students working with Pharos' newest version and hope to have an interesting report. Additional relevant link: Pharos survey, November 2002 Prof. Galo Paiva Cravero contact 
Prof. G.Cravero describes options in defining business targets in Pharos. 
Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco, Chile Where is Temuco? Use Google Earth to make impressive journey | 
