As companies throughout the world continue to adopt on-demand technologies, universities and higher education institutions are finding it necessary to restructure their curriculum. In order to provide practical experience for students of business administration, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) announced the start of a pilot project that incorporates the SAP® Business ByDesign™ solution into the curriculum for universities taking part in the SAP® University Alliances program. This global initiative is offering selected university faculties access to SAP software and educational resources, and helping students gain practical skills in applying state-of-the-art enterprise software to real-world business scenarios. Instructors at 18 pilot universities in Germany, France, India, the United Kingdom and the United States now can supplement their curricula with innovative teaching methods and hands-on practice with business process modeling using the on-demand solution specifically developed for small businesses and midsize companies who want to work with an integrated, complete business application without the need to invest in IT infrastructure.
On-demand concepts such as software as a service (SaaS) continue to gain greater significance for businesses. In particular, the delivery of standardized on-demand solutions for small businesses and midsize companies is a growth market that is increasingly important for knowledge transfer in IT and IT-related fields of study.
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For the recent pilot project, pre-configured and country-specific versions of feature pack 2.5 for SAP Business ByDesign are provided to all participating universities. These universities run a self-enablement check based on the online learning content available within SAP Business ByDesign as well as additional material provided SAP University Alliances. This pilot is based on an internal reference company. A supplemental goal of the program is to collect international academic feedback on the latest feature pack in cooperation with SAP Chief Operating Officer Gerhard Oswald, who is responsible for SAP Global Service and Support.
“Business graduates at the beginning of their careers typically lack practical experience and therefore have difficulty with business processes,” said Helmut Krcmar, professor of Information Systems at the Technische Universität München (TUM). “By incorporating SAP Business ByDesign into their studies, our students can create their own company and design its business processes in a short time through the system’s self–learning capabilities, enabling them to quickly see for themselves the inter-organizational relationships. This opens up entirely new teaching methods for us as, in the future, we can impart practical business knowledge by first using SAP Business ByDesign before we look closer at the theory.”
During a “Go-Live Experience Week” at SAP headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, in March of this year, SAP University Alliances successfully performed a proof of concept for the pilot project. Students and professors at four German institutions of higher education – including the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, the Otto-von-Guericke Universitaet in Magdeburg, RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, and Hochschule Heilbronn – with assistance from SAP experts, installed a realistic and complex data set of a model enterprise into feature pack 2.0 for SAP Business ByDesign. The team designed and demonstrated how a fictitious bicycle manufacturer would operate using SAP Business ByDesign in standard business situations. The success of the “Go-Live Experience Week” in cooperation with SAP University Alliances helps ensure the continuation of new ways of teaching with SAP Business ByDesign in business administration.
“The on-demand solution from SAP simplifies the modeling of a business from the very beginning with a friendly user interface,” said Daniel Pittel, business administration student at RheinMain University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden. “Even without technical skills and knowledge, you are led step by step through the business relationships. Right from the beginning of your studies you merge practice and theory, which clearly boosts successful learning and your motivation.”
SAP Business ByDesign is fully integrated business software that places minimal requirements on a company’s IT landscape, as the solution is installed, maintained and regularly updated by experts at an SAP data center. Universal business processes, such as customer relations; costs, finance, time and project management; automated order-to-cash billing; resource or personnel administration; or procurement, can be easily modeled. SAP assumes the software installation, maintenance and updates so that companies can focus on their core business.
“Over 1000 colleges and schools use SAP software for education and research,” said Oswald. “By including SAP Business ByDesign into our SAP University Alliances program with initially selected universities, we provide today’s youth with the best foundation for a career in business administration. By transferring knowledge between technology and industry, we get feedback from different areas of expertise, which allows us to continue to optimize our offerings to the advantage of our customers.”
