04.05.2004

Enabling Innovation and Improve Student Services with SAP

The University of Kentucky (UK) will employ student administration, grants management, human resources, financials and procurement solutions from the SAP for Higher Education & Research (SAP for HE&R) portfolio to replace existing legacy systems and drive integration among student services and administrative processes for more than 60,000 students, employees and administrators. UK will leverage SAP Campus Management, the student administration system, and SAP Grants Management, coupled with the SAP NetWeaver integration and application platform to reduce the cost of operations and enable innovation across 15 UK colleges over three years.

UK joins a rapidly growing list of top-tier research universities that have recently selected SAP for its industry-specific solutions, superior integration capabilities and lower total cost of ownership. SAP solutions will support the university’s Integrated Resource Information Systems (IRIS) Project, designed to facilitate changes in growth and the demands of 21st century technology in three critical areas of education, research and service. The current core student and administrative systems are built on obsolete technologies that are costly and cumbersome to maintain, making it difficult to extract data quickly and accurately. The SAP software, allowing real-time access to information required for daily operations, reporting and decision-making, will enhance services to students, faculty, staff and alumni.
“Based on vendor references and site visits, we believe that SAP will form a strong and productive working relationship with the university,” said Phyllis Nash, IRIS project director, University of Kentucky. “SAP values its customers and works diligently to form partnerships and meet customer needs. We want to enter into a partnership with SAP because of its customer focus, as well as its support of our vision of integrating information and processes to better serve students, faculty, staff and administrators.”

Driving innovation into administrative processes

UK will utilize SAP Campus Management, which supports course planning, admission and registration, with functions ranging from application processing to the development of individual study plans and timetables. Additionally, UK will implement SAP Grants Management to manage the entire grants process from planning and application to reimbursement for programs and utilize tools that facilitate effort reporting and better address the requirements of grantee organizations with both pre-award and post-award functions.
As the general infrastructure platform for SAP solutions, SAP NetWeaver supports industry standards and interoperability, allowing for ease of integration with SAP and non-SAP systems, such as student financial aid programs. By leveraging SAP NetWeaver, UK will have access to a flexible infrastructure that supports continuous business process evolution by driving innovation into administrative processes across the campus. The key components of SAP NetWeaver include business intelligence and enterprise portal solutions, which will enable UK stakeholders to access and share information in an optimized manner, particularly to meet government reporting requirements.
“SAP is deeply committed to the higher education market and possesses the experience and solution depth to provide an end-to-end solution for colleges, universities and research institutions,” said Steve Peck, president of SAP Public Services, Inc. “The tightly integrated system deployed at the University of Kentucky will give this fine institution the ability to extract information quickly and accurately from any part of the system and thus create new efficiencies in delivering student services. This new relationship with UK is further evidence of SAP’s continued market share growth in the important higher education marketplace. SAP is pleased and excited to have the University of Kentucky joining the global SAP higher education and research community.”

Source: SAP AG

• Comment
• Recommend
• Print