May 30, 2023, by aczjb1
Digital Centre of Excellence: Harnessing the power of data with E-Sports
This blog is written by Stephen Lofthouse, SAP Lead for the Digital Centre of Excellence at Nottingham University Business School.
Recently, Professor Natalie Moore and I had the exciting opportunity to accompany a group of Nottingham University Business School students, ranging from undergraduates to MBAs, to the electrifying E-Sports, League of Legends World Series in London.
As a long-in-the-tooth academic, it was an eye-opening experience. The crowd displayed a level of passion and commitment akin to the most ardent football supporter. And our students were slap-bang in the middle of it, shouting, whooping, and supporting the teams, all the while gaining context and understanding for the task ahead.
You might be wondering, what does this have to do with the Business School? The answer is simple: Data. It’s all about harnessing the power of data.
The League of Legends tournament platform grabs 160 data points, every second. A tournament match may last a couple of hours, and there are numerous matches in a series. That all adds up to gigabytes of data.
MBA and Undergraduate students talk to Broxah, captain of Team Liquid
SAP proudly sponsors one of the leading e-Sports teams, Team Liquid. And working together, we’ve crafted an MBA project designed to enrich and contextualise our students’ learning experience.
The students get access to the game data from all of the teams from 2023, They will be using SAP Analytics Cloud to analyse the data and answer three questions about the use of resources that will inform Team Liquids’ strategy going forwards. The students then use game theory to identify trends and insights to develop new strategies for different scenarios that Team Liquid may face.
This may be e-Sports, but the parallels to the business world are clear. Analysis of a large volume of complex and unfamiliar data to identify trends found in resource usage and allocation. Analysis of competitor strategies, and development of competing strategies to drive business growth. All wrapped up in e-Sports – a multimillion-dollar global sport – that students understand!
The project is set to run for eight weeks – at the end of which the students must present their findings back to Team Liquid and SAP. After that, they have the opportunity to sit their SAP Analytics Cloud certifications thereby gaining an additional qualification, enhancing their CV with in-demand data analysis and visualisation skills and making themselves more employable.
“Opportunities like this are invaluable for students.” said Dr Natalie Moore, Director of Undergraduate Programmes. “They not only provide a platform for contextualised learning but also allow students to develop new skills and apply their existing knowledge to real-world scenarios. This hands-on experience, directly paralleled with the business world, enhances their knowledge and transferable skills making them more attractive to future businesses and employers.”
Find out more about the Digital Centre of Excellence.
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