- Business Strategy – strategic decision points throughout the process
- : What was the initial business strategy, and why did your team choose that strategy? (1 point)
We have adopted the satisfactory pricing strategy, the price level of its new products is moderate while taking into account the interests of manufacturers, all sides can well accept buyers and intermediaries. The satisfactory price is reasonable and fair to both enterprises and customers. Because the price is relatively stable, the profit target can be achieved on schedule under normal circumstances.
Stock Transfer’s Strategic is a pull strategy
- : How did the strategy evolve during the process of the game? How did the ERP system contribute to the change? (1 point)
Pricing is a critical element of our strategy. If prices are too high, demand will be low, and production will sit as inventory; if prices are too low, they will not make enough money to cover expenses. Optimal pricing depends on many things, such as the size and cost of the product, the type of product and the level of inventory on hand. ERP systems as an enabler of the sustained business process.
- Decision making (3 points)
- How did the operational reports in the ERP SAP system aid in decision making for your team? (1 point)
ERP build based on information management, the main work principle was integrating some vital information and resource systems in enterprise management, which involves explicitly in many aspects of the company’s sales management, inventory management, and supply management. And also bring a lot of help in terms of company operations and decision-making. The ERP system can cover the entire life cycle of the product, and provides real-time production progress tracking, product inventory statistics, and sales. The digital management platform integrates a variety of management resource information, eliminating the complexity of the manual process.
During our team operating the company, we mainly use focus on data which collect by financial management, information control management, and logistics management. These data help us make decisions, and this is also the reason that leads us to achieve better benefits than other groups.
For decision making, precise financial management is particularly important, and it is also an integral part of the entire ERP scheme. Based on analysis accounting data such as costs and benefits, we can do corresponding forecasting, management, and control activities, thereby determine the next investment plan and commodity pricing based on the previous financial analysis. Information management is also the core part of the ERP system. It rationally integrates the entire production process of the company, enabling the enterprise to reduce inventory and improve efficiency effectively. Through the analysis of the change in the sales rate different product orders and the company’s production efficiency, we can know which kind of product has a higher profit margin and which of the product has insufficient inventory and needs to be purchased. It helps the company automatic connection of each initially decentralized process also enables the sales process to be carried out in succession, without production disconnection and delaying production delivery time.
- If your company achieve competitive advantage through the use of operational and informational reports, explain how. If it didn’t, explain why not. In retrospect, how could your company have used this information more effectively? (1 point)
Our team also uses logistics management to help us operation company. Sales management starts from the product sales plan and mainly separates for two parties inventory control and purchasing management. Inventory control was focus on it is used to control the number of goods stored to ensure stable logistics to support average production and cost less. It is a relevant, dynamic, and real inventory control system. It can combine and meet market demand, dynamically adjust inventory over time. Purchasing management determines a reasonable order quantity. It can provide ordering information at any time to ensure the products can arrive on time. And can us current market price information to adjust the cost of inventory. Through analysis, these data, and combined with the information system and production system, we can know the development of the company at any time and make agile responses and rational decisions by the effect of the internal and external environment of the company，to achieve the competitive advantage.
- Did you use the visualization tool provided by the system during the game? If yes, how did this visualization help your team make better decisions? If not, why? (1 point)
During the operating company, there are more and more data was accumulate; to filter information to obtain useful information to become a big problem. But we used visualization tools to help us solve this problem.
Data visualization can enable us to ingest and process data faster. If you can understand the market more quickly, you can also react to the market faster. Further, you can use incoming data to make more predictable decisions.
Visualization improves efficiency, obtains original or rough data sets, and makes them more readable, which helps to improve overall efficiency
Through data visualization, various analysis methods can be accessed and also can be combined according to requirements. Even using the same data set, two different visualization charts can be used in different areas. It allows us to obtain more information and view it in a new way, which is far beyond any traditional way to collect data.
- Business Diagnosis by using Data visualization (10 points)
- Graphically show how your performance measures evolved during the game (g., net income, net sales, profit margin, by round and day). You can include the performance of other teams (all teams, best, or worst) in your graphs to compare your performance measures against other groups and comment on how successful your chosen strategy was. (2 points)
For different material of team E, Milk, Yoghurt, and Butter are the three top percentage of the selling data. Our team realized an increase in the sales of the commodities because of the efficient practices by the sales management team. The marketing team also put strategies on the market so that the group maintain an excellent market to share the commodities. The use of the system to the ERP system automatically records data to enable, which are useful for analysis and generation of reports.
For the net price of all materials of team E, Cheese and cream are the first and second top most significant percentage. Nt prices changed on the process.
- Please identify and briefly analyze at least one business issue, in that your performance would be better if this issue(s) was(were) addressed early (2 points)
From the tables above, Milk, Yoghurt, and Butter are selling at most during the game, however, Cheese and cream has the largest net price. So, if the company want to increase the net income, they need selling more Milk, Yoghurt, and Butter because that three material has a fair net price and can keep the company has a lower cost and larger selling quantities.
- Build two additional meaningful visualizations other than performance measures (e.g., pricing, inventory level, cost level) that could visually support your above analyses of the issues. Please explain your rationale for the visualizations and draw connections to the problems you identified. (2 points)
This graph shows the distribution of our total revenue margin.
This line graph shows the change in our group’s inventories during the last round.
- Based on your analyses and visualizations, please tell me what you would have done differently to improve the performance of your team. (2 points)
According to our display and analysis above, we think that we would have to buy less milk and yogurt in the last round to cut down our inventory cost in order to gain a better performance.
Also, we should have restocked more often through the whole game because our performance could be a lot better if we didn’t experience several times of stock out.
Finally, the distribution of the margin shows that the northern and southern area have better sales, so we should have assigned more inventories to these two markets.
- Build a dashboard with at least two performance indicators that could have helped you to make a better decision if you were going to play the game again. (2 points)
(expected to think how you can improve your business given all the observations you developed from 3.1~3.4.)
To improve the game in future, determining the best strategy requires better prediction of the market requirement to enable purchasing of items that would sell faster. We would ensure that we have enough stock to reduce time wastage during stock-outs. Also, we should identifies area according to requirement and allocate more stock to areas with higher requirement and reduce stocks on areas with the lower requirement.