Best Practices of Business Simulation with SAP R/3

Journal of Information Systems Education, Fall 2004 by Draijer, Casper, Schenk, Dirk-Jan

ABSTRACT

The HES Amsterdam School of Business, Netherlands, is teaching ERP software, SAP R/3, for almost ten years for educational purposes. Eight years ago they developed the first simulation company. Now students can choose to work in one of four ongoing business simulation companies. The content of the paper reflects how the school operates the business simulation companies. The use of SAP R/3 supports the business processes and therefore it is a great educational tool. The course integrates processes, ERP knowledge, best practices and other skills. From a didactical point of view R/3 enables problem based learning, in practicing the business simulation, questions are raised and create a need for theoretic backgrounds and solution strategies. Finally, the other uses of the mySAP Business Suite at the business school are described. They are currently developing a course using BW (Business Warehouse) and SEM (Strategic Enterprise Management) but do not provide discussion on this in this paper.

Keywords: Business simulation, enterprise resource planning, SAP R/3, best practice, business process integration

1. INRODUCTION

Honoring a tradition in business studies that goes back to 1867, the HES Amsterdam School of Business is one of the largest single-faculty institutions of professional business education in the Netherlands. The HES Amsterdam School of Business is a school of Higher Professional Business Education (in Dutch abbreviated to 'HEAO'). It offers a wide range of business-related programs preparing students for Bachelor and Master Degrees. Currently, the school has a staff of 300 and some 5,500 registered students. The programs and specializations are:

* Accountancy (AC)

* Financial Services Management (FSM)

* Business Economics (BE)

* specialization: International Financial Management (IFM); Business Consultancy (BC)

* Business Informatics (BI)

* specialization: Business Intelligence Management (BIM)

* Commercial Economics /marketing (CE)

* specialization: Sport management and Marketing (SMM); International Management (IM)

* International Business and Languages (IBL)

* specialization: Event Management (EM)

* International Business and Management Studies (IBMS)

* specialization: Latin American Business Studies (LABS)

* Management and Law Studies (MER)

* Logistics and Economics (LE)

* specialization: Leisure & Logistics (L&L)

* Communication (CO)

* Fiscal Economics (FE)

* Trade management (TMA)

The programs that are involved with the Business simulation using SAP are: Accountancy (AC), Financial Services Management (FSM), Business Economics (BE), Business Informatics (BI), Commercial Economics /Marketing (CE), International Business and Languages (IBL), Logistics and Economics (LE).

2. BUSINESS SIMULATION WITH SAP R/3

2.1 History

In 1994 SAP R/3 was introduced at the HES Amsterdam School of Business. The first attraction for us to get in touch with SAP was not the quality of an ERP system, but the availability of a complete and complex database for teaching purposes (Live AG developed by the University of Würzburg for Siemens). The software to read and maintain the data happened to be an ERP package. The HES was the first business school in the Netherlands interested in integrating ERP into the curriculum using the SAP R/3 release 2.1. The development of the curriculum started with writing a syllabus for hands-on exercises as an introduction within Live AG (later we switched to IDES, client 800). From the first development of our courses we focused on the integration between logistics (SD, PP, and MM) and fmancials (FI and CO) in a production environment. We thought that financial accounting for trading companies can be done with any accounting software, like Exact or Business One. ERP should be explained in a production company, integrating fmancials, logistics and human resources. Later we developed a working environment that met our expectations about the use of R/3 as a tool for simulating business companies.

Now, in 2004, the students are running four ongoing companies in SAP R/3 4.7:

* Phonee HES BV. producing and selling cellular phones

* Sjemee HES BV: producing and selling engineering plastics

* Bank Fehrmann & Polak: banking & insurance

* 3PH : packaging, printing, physical distribution and handling

2.2 Ongoing companies

The first two weeks, before the students start to work in a department and project, they get an introduction into some basics of SAP's R/3 by executing the exercises of the study book 'Hands-on with mySAP and IDES'. The exercises cover a complete ERP-process.

For the Business simulations we choose ongoing companies, where mixed groups of students (75 max) of the different programs/specializations work 50% of the time together in departments (see figure 1) and 50% in project teams. The departments represent routine based workflows. The project teams develop new functionality and implement this in the companies. The students have to develop a project plan. Examples of projects are: supply chain management, product liabilities and quality management, inventory valuation, enterprise intelligence, fleet management, fiscal audit and report, product costing with SAP, marketing plan, etc.