The Sixth ERPsim China Competition came to an end recently after a mock competition, preliminary rounds and a grand final. The University of Nottingham Ningbo China team (Yang Ruihan, Luo Zifei, Jiang Feixi, Yang Chunyu and Lin Chenhong), led by Assistant Professor Dimple Thadani and Dr Judy Tang, performed well among many university teams and won second prize nationwide!

While the UNNC team did not perform well in the preliminary round due to a lack of familiarity with the system, they stepped up their game and adjusted their strategy in time by sharing tasks, with each member mainly responsible for each one. This strengthening of teamwork as well as intensive group discussions helped them to eventually make it all the way to the finals where they were awarded second prize in the country.

Organised by the SAP University Alliances and powered by the ERPsim Lab at HEC Montréal, Canada, this event relies on ERPsim, the industry's leading business operations simulation platform. It helps to conduct business operations and competitive simulations based on the most widely used enterprise resource planning systems, in-memory data technologies and enterprise-level data analysis tools used by leading companies across 25 industries worldwide.

The ERPsim platform simulates a changing market environment in which teams take on the role of corporate decision-makers and use the system to simulate the operations of a company. As they need to maximise profitability and compete with other teams in a common market environment, the teams need to make operational decisions based on dynamic competition, trade situations and market data. At the end of the final round, the teams are judged on the basis of the company valuation of their simulated company.

For many university students, they learn a lot about business in the classroom, but don't get many opportunities to practice and apply that knowledge. This is a common problem in business education.

To tackle this issue, Nottingham University Business School China (NUBS China) has been committed to nurturing applied business talents with an international perspective, promoting practical teaching reform, exploring the training model of "new business education" and enhancing students' employability and overall quality in the digital business environment. By actively participating in the competition, NUBS China's students were given a unique opportunity to apply the knowledge they learnt from class to the practical business world.

“We are very glad to have the opportunity to help empower students learning via the simulation game competition. We are dedicated to prepare students to be future-ready in the face of digitalization. The simulation game acts as an effective learning platform via which students could practice real-world skills in a realistic and risk-free setting that creates an interactive and fun learning experience.” Assistant Professor Dimple Thadani and Dr Judy Tang said, and they encouraged students to participate in more competitions like this in the future.