A Comprehensive Study of Using SAP in a University Environment (Game Bisnis)

A Comprehensive Study of Using SAP in a University Environment

Game Bisnis

Ide dari Game Bisnis berasal dari suatu proyek. Ide dasar dibalik
Game Bisnis adalah untuk mengajarkan SAP ERP di lingkungan dan sistem yang
menyenangkan di Universitas. Tujuan ini dicapai dengan cara kelompok dari
enam siswa mengelola perusahaan virtual dalam SAP ERP selama periode waktu
tertentu. Ini
enam pemain mahasiswa memiliki tugas dan peran yang berbeda dalam perusahaan.
Para pemain bersama-sama dengan dosen akan menentukan durasi permainan.
Saran kami adalah bahwa permainan harus didasarkan pada
IDES. Model perusahaan ini berisi hampir semua fungsionalitas
ERP sistem. Hal yang paling sulit adalah untuk memutuskan apa yang harus
digunakan dalam
IDES, karena sistem yang sangat kaya dan kompleks.

Pemain

Dalam IDES Bisnis Game, kami memilih untuk membagi modul IDES ke
pemain yang berbeda peran. Dengan melakukan ini kami berharap bahwa peran setiap
pemain akan
memiliki karakter sendiri. Dalam IDE, ada tiga belas modul berbeda
modul2 yang akan dipilih buat enam pemain. Ketika mempelajari
ke tiga belas modul tersebut , kami menemukan bahwa tiga
dari modul tersebut kurang sesuai dengan permainan kami. Idenya adalah bahwa
kelompok dari enam pemain harus bekerja sebagai kelompok independen, dan membuat
keputusan secara mandiri dari lain kelompok. Data yang diberikan ke
masing-masing pemain berasal dari
database yang sama dan karenanya keputusan satu pemain akan mempengaruhi
pemain lain, karena akan bekerja sperti disebuah perusahaan nyata. Modul yang
digunakan dalam masing-masing peran dan rincian peran disajikan di bawah ini.

Player One – Controlling and Enterprise Controlling (CO-EC)

In the Business Game, one of the players should control the modules
Controlling (CO) and Enterprise Controlling (EC).
Both these IDES modules strongly involve economics, therefore it would be a
benefit t for the player if he knows the basics in this area. Some knowledge in
marketing and sales would also be good. In the game the player will use the
Controlling Module for planning, managing and monitoring overhead costs. Since
overhead costs cannot be assigned directly to cost objects, they are assigned to
the cost centers at which they occurred, or to the jobs that raised them. Having
these data, which are in the cost centre, the player can, with the provided
tools in IDES, make sure that the data are allocated to the correct source. The
player can for example, at the end of a posting period — which will also be a
posting period in the game — see whether the planned costs (adjusted to the
operating rate) are right compared with the actual costs. Would this not be the
case, the player will have to change the data for the next coming posting
period. The idea with this is that the player will have to analyze any
discrepancies between planned and actual costs that exceed a predefined
threshold. The player will also work with cost controlling, and solve questions
like: Did the company calculate the right price for a product that is
manufactured, or a service that is provided? If the company did not, what price
should be the right in the future? To get this "right" price the player has been
provided with important information for pricing and pricing policies,
controlling the cost of goods manufactured, stock evaluation, and profit
tability analysis. Another major part in the Controller's role is to work with
Profit atability Analysis, which is as the name suggest, analyzing the company's
future profit, what it depends on and what parameters are the main reason behind
it. To be able to do this the player will get help from a range of on-line,
multidimensional reporting tools which gives him key figures and numbers.
Succeeding With this data and with these queries, the player handling the
Controller role will hopefully have an encouraging and educating assignment. How
the player succeeds and on which basis this should be measured is not very easy,
but it will be calculated with the parameters the player changed during the game
session. Hopefully, the player will get the right data from his companions which
will make his job a lot easier.

Player Two – Financial accounting and Investments Management (FI-IM).

This role focuses at the usage of the modules Financial Accounting and
Investments Management. The system of Financial Accounting allows you
to collect all the data in your company relevant to accounting,
providing complete documentation and comprehensive information. This
is a big assignment to handle and, as mentioned before, it requires
perhaps more experience than other roles in the game. The module
Investment Management offers integrated management and
processing of investment measures and projects from planning to
settlement. The student or employee assigned to this role will need
adequate experience in the accounting area, since this part is the
most crucial in this player's role. He or she will have an enormous
amount of data and statistics available and needs to be able to point
out the most important issues and areas.
Since the role also deals with investment management the player should
have some experience in analyzing investments and markets, in order to
be effective in the game.
This role is also crucial for the evaluation of the game, since the
evaluation is based on the closure over a given playing time. It is
the responsibility of this player to generate a period closure and
obtain the relevant information for doing so.

Player Three – Human Resources (HR)

This player "works" at the personnel department and handles for
example the recruitment, personnel development, documents and
information about personnel, company benefits and vacations. The
role is primarily made for the students studying Personnel
Administration and is based on the Human Resource module.

Example of things the player needs to know before the game is started
• How many employees?
• What does the hierarchical structure in the company look like?
• Which departments do they have?
• How much does each department cost?
• Which company policies for example we want our personnel to be
well educated.
• What does the benefit and salary agreement look like?
• What do they base the wages on?
Many events in the game are related to the human resource department.
Examples of actions that the player can do without any external
messages are: planning the summer vacation, personnel dialogue and
competence development.
Other events such as: an employee asks for leave of absence, planning
shift work if needed and interviewing, selecting and hiring a new
employee (for example an
incoming order of 300 elevators which requires the player to employ
10–20 people) are made by the game constructors or by the other
players (external messages).
Succeeding It is really hard to decide which player has won in this
kind of contest. One way to look at it is that the game constructor
has made an ideal employee and gives the student a good grade if she
hires the right one.
Another way is to let the student change the salary according to what
the union and the company agreed. Unsatisfied employees might leave
the company if the student forgets to adjust the salary. The
consequence of many employees leaving the company will be bad
performance of the company.
Some of the events that the player handles will be detected in a financial way.
For example, if the costs for new recruitments are low,
the player has succeeded well to educate the already existing
employees in the company.

Player Four – Sales and Distribution Manager (SD)

This role will be of great importance in the Business Game. The
student acting will supply the other colleagues with market analyses,
keep an eye on competitors and make sure that the company will live up
to its promises by ensuring timely deliveries and good customer
service. Educational profile This role fits a student with
marketing and customer service as his or her main
interest. A typical employee in a real company would be a senior
marketing manager, but could also be a business developer or a
customer service manager.
Depending on the implementation of the game, this role could also
suite a student interested in sales management; a typical
real world employee could be a key account manager.
Game activities and decisions The activities concern the main four P's
in marketing — Product, Price, Promotion and Place (distribution).

Market analyses will have to be performed to gain knowledge of what
type of products the customers demand. Important factors to take into
account will be product configuration, style and support packages.
Extra game features could include pre-sales consulting and services
development.
The Sales Information System will be used extensively to perform these
analyses.
Pricing will be an important issue in the game. The student playing
this role has to respond quickly to changes of the price expectations
of the customer, and continuously perform competitor analyses to make
sure the prices of the products that the company offers remain
competitive.
Direct mailing campaigns are needed to promote the product. These
could be advertising campaigns as well as invitations to information
seminars.
Inclusion of appropriate enclosures such as brochures, documentation,
and product samples are important, as is finding sales prospects
using the tools in Sales Support.
Extra game features could be other types of sales activities such as
phone calls and preparing for trade fairs.
Availability checks and delivery scheduling will have to be carried
out to ensure quality of distribution. All distribution channels need
to be supplied appropriately; sometimes there will even be
order-driven production requests to be discussed with the production
manager.
Succeeding To "win" in this role, the student has to understand
what type of product the market demands, and make appropriate changes
to the existing products. Cooperation with the student managing
development projects will be important. A "perfect" product will be
defined in the rules of the game as the objective of these
activities. If this perfect product is produced,
the maximum amount of units will be ordered by the customers.
Any differences from this perfect product will result in a loss of
demand.
Price will affect customer demand as a function containing competitor
prices and their product similarities as variables. Too high prices
will result in a loss of demand; too low prices will of course affect
profitability, but will also have a certain negative effect on
demand. Promotion will affect the rate of incoming new customers as
well as the demand from existing customers. It should be fairly easy
to achieve the maximum result in these activities. Grading will be
done more on a passed/fail basis, because it is quite hard to depict
rules in the games for this part.
Distribution will be of great importance to retaining customers, and
increasing their demand. It should also have a certain effect on
gaining new customers. Pricing will have to be correlated to the
ability of delivering in a timely and fast manner. To succeed in these
activities, extensive cooperation with the production manager will be
required.

Player Five – Project planning and Service management (PS-SM)

This player is responsible for the planning of the projects and the
service management. He or she must have experience in project
development and be able to break down a large project into smaller
entities. The co-operation with the customer is important to be able
to make a correct specification of the project. The service
management is included to show that a project is not over only because
the product is finished. This role is intended for computer science
students. Engineering project The player should
define a sales order according to the customer requirements. The
sales order must be well defined; otherwise the customer will not be
satisfied.
When the sales order is saved, a work breakdown structure (WBS) and
network is automatically generated. A graphical display shows the
project structure generated by the system. Now the design is sketched
and the player presents it for the customer. If the customer
is not satisfied, design changes must be made. The customer confirms
the design/activities and that releases subsequent activities for
processing. The confirmations are sent to the HR organization unit.
The resources are planned automatically when the sales order is entered.
It provides data on the activities, materials, capacities and
production resources for the elevator variants. With the resource
plan, the player estimates the capacity requirements; the persons
and/or machines required for this project. The player should also
determine the components and raw materials to be reserved or ordered
by assigning them. If the player orders wrong it would lead to
insufficient components and the project could be late.
This is linked to the MRP and Purchasing.
Software project The player should use structural planning to create
and edit projects. The project is automatically divided into smaller
entities, work break down structures, the player uses relationships to
decide in which order they should be carried out. The player should
also plan the duration of the entities and the individual activities.
It is important that the estimated time is right, otherwise the
customer will get the software later than promised and the development
costs increase. The order which the entities are carried out, is also
very important. The player must consider the dependabilities between
the entities and whether there are any critical entities to start with.
The player should decide whether there is enough knowledge among the
employees to make the project successful. Otherwise taking courses or
hiring consults must be considered.
The player must estimate the project costs. It is based on the
estimated project duration. To plan deadlines the project planning
board is used.

Service management The player should sign a service contract with the
customer. Here they agree upon which services which should be provided.
It could be telephone support, consulting hours, a certain amount of
repairs or other guarantees. This is followed up by the call management.

Player Six – Production Planning and Materials Management (PP-MM)

• This player is responsible for production planning and material
management,
• getting input from sales and distribution, creating the requested
product,
• and must also setup a product cycle from materials to finished product.

Product Planning To make the requested product, the player has to
configure the product, that is, the product must be specified in
detail in the sales order, such as colour, special models, or specific
accessories. To produce the product, you need to estimate the amount
of material required, request it, and order missing parts.
Materials Management In the process of deciding what materials to use,
you must control warehouse and suppliers, to decide if enough material
is available.
Otherwise you need to purchase more. Run the inventory tools to check
the warehouse.
You must keep control of warehouse, order so material is there when
needed but at the same time keep down the warehouse size. Problems at
warehouse could also be at purchasing, do want the cheep material with
fast and reliable delivery or the material that is a bit more
expensive with excellence quality but not 100 percent reliable
delivery in time? To increase difficulty in game A way to increase the
difficulty level during the game is to increase input. You must get a
faster overview and maybe compromize to hold the company
running. Problems that could occur are deliveries that fail to come or
a supplier is out of products. Suppliers are our out of
products/material, you need to purchase new in a hurry.
New problems occur, Do you want the material with less good quality
but with fast deliver or can you afford waiting for a new deliver?
Another problem is to keep the warehouse down, but still keep
materials for production.

Sumber:
A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF USING
SAP IN A UNIVERSITY ENVIRONMENT