Reflection Report 3: Analyzing ERPsim Game for Business Development

This reflection report analyzes the ERPsim game, a business simulation software used for learning and business training. The report details the game's mechanics, focusing on the sale of various clothing items made from different materials and for different genders. The author describes their team's experience, highlighting roles, marketing strategies, and challenges faced, such as managing stock and adapting to market trends. The report also discusses the author's key learnings, including analytical skills and the importance of teamwork. The author identifies areas for improvement, such as online marketing training, and provides visualizations of sales data using SAP HANA and Lumira. The report concludes with a discussion of customer relationship building and references to relevant literature.

Running Head: REFLECTION REPORT 3
Reflection Report 3
Name
Course
Date
Instructor

REFLECTION REPORT 3
Describing Game and Related Business Process
The ERPSIM game is a software game that helps run business related activities both
in a learning context and also for business people. The game guides the learners and those
business personnel that want to maximize their profits through carefully running different
business activities concurrently. The game is known for equipping both the student and the
business personnel with enough knowledge on all facets of business operations delivery that
include planning, production, procurement, sales orders, stock management, billing and lastly
distribution of the commodities. The ERPsim software has the capability to allow more than
one member to run different business activities at the same time while managing profit and
loss levels after every game round or phase. The groups formed during the simulation are
involved in planning and in between the game strategizing thus enabling them to ensure they
capture better profits when compared to previous rounds.
In this EPRsim report, we focused on sale of clothes that were procured in different designs,
of different materials and for different genders. Our group was involved in selling of 18 cloth
types that ranged from cotton, wool and polyester materials for both men and women. The
design came in different formats thus making the customers to make their choices based on
designs and materials for the clothes. In our game set up, wool clothes were most preferred
while polyester clothes were the least preferred. This means that different cloth designs and
materials as well as gender of interest attracted different prices in the market. For better profit
margins in our game, we restricted our customers to buying only two wool made clothes and
as many polyester clothes as they could to balance the market preference degrees. Our clothes
were made by both Italian and Turkish cloth makers meaning that we dwelt on importing of
the goods from those two countries. Delivery of the clothes to our stores was made after 10
weeks thus making the game be controlled in such a manner that we could not run out of
stock before the other luggage was dropped to our stores for further distribution to our
customers.

REFLECTION REPORT 3
Describing Team Experience Segregation of Duties
Amongst the four team members, I was involved with keeping check of sales price
changing and procurement of the business stock when the stock started diminishing, while the
other three team members were involved with forecasting and purchase, planning of client
orders, logistics and MRP running. We employed different business marketing strategies to
ensure we worked towards making maximum profits. We had the greatest experience
working as a team to deliver a core goal that was profit making after running a number of
business activities. Regardless of the slow start into the game due to lack of enough
knowledge, it was a great experience to recollect ourselves and deliver our core duties as a
group.
Failing in the first steps was never our end as we worked tireless to recollect ourselves
thus improving for better results in different game rounds. We came to understand that,
marketing, forecasting and price changing were very key when it came to business that
intended to realize profits after successfully running it business activities. Working as a team,
we managed to change roles that enabled us learn each other’s roles thus making the last few
rounds report higher sales when compared to initial roles indicating that teamwork delivers.
What I Liked Most about Game Experience
The ERP simulation game was a very educating platform as I managed to learn
different aspects of business that I could employ to ensure I deliver better results in my future
business endeavors as well as during employment in different companies after school. I
managed to learn analytical skills as I was involved in managing the business stock. This thus
called me to analyze the sales reports and sales orders for the goods we offer informing our
group on which cloth designs, materials or gender clothes were running out of stock thus
prompting me to place orders with our suppliers from Italy and Turkey. The analysis also
helped me with my role as I could change prices for different products to ensure that different

REFLECTION REPORT 3
products were equally moving into the market instead of one or two products capturing more
sales compared to others.
What I liked least about Game Experience
In this game, I disliked the introduction of other costs such as employee charges and other
business costs that were not in the initial plan thus affecting our profit schedules. I did also
like the way the market trends happened as different seasons of the business meant different
types of clothes were bought thus making it tedious to plan for the seasons something that
was not incorporated in the business. This made profit margins differ in different phases of
simulation.
With your knowledge of the game what could have been done differently? Please
download the data from SAP HANA and analysis using SAP Lumira. You might
like to include visualizations of your analysis
Together with my team members, we could have done an online marketing and sales
training course before getting involved in the simulation game. This could have helped us to
market our products more easily thus enabling us make more sales meaning better profits
margins compared to the current profit levels.

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Fig 1: The figure above shows that after a number of rounds and phases, the company
valuation realized a drop in the first round and started recording simultaneous positive and
negative results in the from the second round.
Fig 2: The above figure indicates the quantity of clothes sold with AA-M33 that is the men’s
polyester single breasted suited capturing the best sales of 3.16k units while AA-W11 that is
women’s wool dress suit recording the lowest sales at 242 units.

REFLECTION REPORT 3
Fig 3: In the above figure, it shows a representation of our group’s results from the ERPsim
game. We were in group B that managed to be ranked second but we reported a loss of $
79,021.44.
Helpful Additional Knowledge or Skills
Our team could have been involved in building customer relationships that could have
assisted us in ensuring customer loyalty even after our stock levels were low. This means that
they could have waited for their orders to be completed after the goods were delivered in our
stores from Italy and Turkey.
References
Caya, O., Léger, P-M., Grebot, T. and Brunelle, E. (2014). Integrating, sharing, and
sourcing knowledge in an ERP usage context, Knowledge Management Research &
Practice, doi: 10.1057/kmrp.2012.54
Léger, P.-M., Charland, P., Feldstein, H.D., Robert, J., Babin, G. et Lyle, D. (2011).
“Business Simulation Training: Guidelines for New Approaches in IT Training”,
Journal of Information Technology Education, Vol 10, pp. 3751