Edward Bernroider, WU Wien
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems education, especially offered at higher education institutions, is crucial in our today’s business world. Organizations worldwide continue to implement or upgrade their ERP systems in order to maintain their competitiveness. Accordingly, as universities it is our obligation to bring related concepts and issues as well as current practices of these organizations into the classroom.
Exposing students to ERP education should include a hands-on experience which in turn requires access to ERP systems. For this purpose, WU can look back at a long and successful history of collaboration with SAP AG, the world’s market leader for ERP solutions. This arrangement was tremendously important to equip graduates with the most sought-after skills needed to effectively analyze, manage and optimize a potentially wide range of cross-functional business processes enabled by SAP ERP solutions within or even across organizational boundaries.
Silvia Rathgeb, SAP University Alliances
SAP University Alliances is a global program enabling educational institutions to integrate SAP solutions and technologies into teaching.
SAP and WU Vienna have been partnering since 1994 to educate students with SAP knowledge. The importance of building skills for the digital future and connecting academia with companies becomes even more important as we face skill shortages. Inspiring the talents of the future and educating next generation talents with SAP skills qualifies students for great career opportunities within the SAP ecosystem and beyond.
Alfred Taudes, WU Wien
Employing SAP in teaching Business and Management is important for a number of reasons. The most obvious reason is that many companies use this ERP system and knowing its logic is a prerequisite for implementing business processes and decision rules in practice. Another less obvious but equally important reason is that in traditional business curricula the different functions of a firm are tought separately, leaving it to the student to figure out the interconnections and interfaces. By employing SAP this integrative and process driven knowledge can be obtained by using the software and implementing case studies, yielding a much deeper understanding of these issues. Finally, often the information used as basis of decision support systems is generated in an SAP systen, and understanding the ERP foundation is a prerequisite for correctly interpreting the semantics of the data.
Edith Brietzke, BITBW
In our connected world entreprise resource planing is not just necessary for businesses, but also for public administration. To get in touch with SAP before starting a Job is a real benefit for every entrant.
Christoph Kränkl, Managing Director SAP Austria
SAP has been the market leader in business software for more than 40 years and helps companies of all sizes achieve their business goals. 77% of global transaction revenue is generated through SAP systems. For us, innovation has always meant more than just developing new software - it has meant developing breakthrough technologies that set new standards in the IT and business world, such as our groundbreaking ERP software and the SAP HANA in-memory computing platform.
That's why it's so important to us to familiarize students with SAP’s next-generation ERP ‘S/4HANA’ and provide state-of-the-art expertise on machine learning technologies, the Internet of Things, and advanced business analytics to help a company prepare for and manage the demands of the digital world.
With our global SAP University Alliances Program - in collaboration with leading universities - students gain important skills for the working world of the 21st century.
Alexander Prosser, WU Wien
Since 1994 technologies and the business environment have changed considerably – however, our goal has not. Then, as now, we want to equip students with the best knowledge and skills for the workplace possible. Studying the implementation of business processes with SAP is an integral part of this effort.
András Nemeslaki, NUPS
Presently the really issue with digital transformation goes beyond, in my opinion, of how technology changes processes and functions in business. The real challenge is that a new generation has reached the entrance of workplaces for whom this problem is obvious and who basically see the whole world through technology. Information Communication Technologies are an inseparabel part of their life and almost to their biological existance. In order to work with these ambitious young individuals, and in order to understand their perspective on the future of business and beyond, we need the educational experience what WU Wien has with SAP, where they basically have pioneered bringing the technology into to habitat of learning mindsets and understanding the new appraoch the technology management.
Klaus Niedl, Global HR Director NOVOMATIC AG
Through the integrative function of ERP –as a crossdepartmental and crossfunctional task – ERP-education at a university level can be seen as a strategic need. In terms of optimization it should be mandatory for all business related disciplines to provide ERP trainings as a basic skill.
Andrea Radner
If you want to make a difference within companies today, you need to understand the big picture of ERP Systems - and therefore you have to draw this picture by yourself.
Tamás Csermely, Lauder Business School
ERP systems enable informed, efficient and effective decision-making. Therefore, they are crucial for every organization that has a long-term strategic vision. SAP is the largest and most renowned service provider in this market, which is also reflected by the fact that there are currently 2,202 open positions in the near vicinity of Vienna where knowledge in SAP is a pre-requisite. Thus, it is simply a must have for every business school that envisions providing practical and state-of-the-art education to its students.
Timeline 25 Years of SAP-based Education at WU
In 1994 the Institute of Production Management rolled out its first SAP-based lecture – at that time with SAP R/3 Version 2.1. The World Wide Web had been released for general free usage by CERN the year before, "client-server computing" was the mainstay of the time and 2G mobile phone networks (GSM) were being introduced.
Today the technological and economic environment has changed vastly – yet the challenge in education has not; that is the challenge to give students a theoretically grounded and practically applicable preparation for the workplace. Since 1994 SAP systems have been part of this educational package.
Here the milestones in SAP-based education at WU:
Autumn semester 1994
First lectures at Institute of Production Management with R/3 2.1; used in specialization programme ("SBWL" Production Management).
1995
First SAP-related textbook published at WU.
1995 – 1999
Use of R/3 in basic first-semester IT education at WU.
1999
Migration to R/3 4.0, homepage erp.wu.ac.at initiated.
2000 – 2003
Cooperation with the University of Technology Sydney, where a complete SAP-based programme was initiated.
2001
Introduction of SAP BW and APO for lectures on Business Intelligence and Supply Chain Coordination.
2002 – 2005
Teaching cooperation with University of Applied Sciences Salzburg and Joanneum Kapfenberg.
2008
Migration to ECC 6 and BW 7.
2011 – 2014
Lighthouse Partner für SAP Business by Design.
2012
Start of ongoing cooperation with University of Public Administration and Finance, Ludwigsburg.
2012/13
Design of a SAP-based public sector education programme for the Danube Region.
2014
Start of ongoing teaching cooperation with Lauder Business School.
2016
Ongoing project to build public sector-oriented education using SAP systems in the Danube Region, cooperation partners:
University of Public Administration and Finance, Ludwigsburg
National University of Public Service, Budapest
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Academy for Public Administration, Chisinau
2019
Migration to SAP HANA.
Partners
