UT Graduate Students Take Third In International SAP Simulation Competition

A team of four University of Tampa graduate students was awarded third place in the sixth annual International ERPsim Competition 2014, which replicates a high-stress business environment, organized by HEC Montreal.

The students had to demonstrate their ability of managing their virtual company with ERPsim, a real-life ERP (enterprise resource planning) system using SAP ECC 6.0 and HANA. Students had to use SAP Lumira to develop their own dashboards and use them in real-time to make their decisions and gain insight on the market they are facing. SAP is the world’s leading business enterprise software.

The UT student team consisted of Jonathan Early, Lokesh Napa, Michael Pappas and Matteo Piazza. All are pursuing MBA degrees.

The teams went through a qualifying round first before joining the final round in the international competition. Ten teams from schools around the world competed in the final round. HEC Lausanne (Switzerland) received first place, University of Cincinnati took second and UT placed third. Other schools that participated in the final round included: National Technical University of Athens; Missouri University of Science and Technology; Islamic University of Indonesia; University of Michigan; Brawijaya University (Indonesia); Texas A&M University and the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Farouq Alhourani, associate professor of information and technology management and SAP coordinator at UT’s Sykes College of Business who also coached the team during the competition, said the simulation draws on every aspect of the students’ education and their business intelligence was key to success.

The event was sponsored by the ERPsim Lab at HEC Montreal and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee University Competence Center.