SAP University of Nebraska

8/3/2019 SAP University of Nebraska

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SAP Customer Success Story Higher Education & Research

UNIVERSITY OFNEBRASKA CREATING A UNIFIED BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT WITHmySAP™ BUSINESS SUITE

The University of Nebrask a understood that managing a multi-

campus university is just as challenging asmanaging a global

enterprise. Systems to handle f inance, human resources,

purchasing, and inventory were spread throughout its f our cam

puses and administrative off ices in isolated departmental silos. A

heterogeneous IT system landscape evolved over time, producin

ineff icie

nt, r

epet

it

ive pr

ocesses. In

f orm

at

ion

was incon

sistent

,with little integration and a reliance on paper-based reporting.

times when academic budgets were tight and resources stretche

the university saw that business optimization was a must.

With a clear mission to improve its business environment and

streamline its operations, the University of Nebrask a began the

considerable eff ort to evaluate business solutions to replace exis

ing systems. This included several campus and central adminis-

trative f inancial systems, as well as a human resources and pay-

roll system. Af ter a thorough assessment of 10 vendors, the uni

versity selected SAP as its business solution provider. It based itschoice on three primary criteria: a solid vendor reputation, a

strong technical f oundation, and an overwhelming pref erence

university end users. With a team of dedicated prof essionals f ro

the university and SAP® Consulting, the University of Nebrask a

completed the implementation not only on time but also unde

budget.

As resources for higher

educationcontinued toshrink, streamlining and

optimizing business pro-

cesses became more im-

portant than ever for the

University of Nebraska.

It needed improved

solutions to replace in-

efficient and decentral-

ized finance, humanresources, purchasing,

and payroll systems.

After a thorough evalua-

tion, the university select-

ed mySAP™ Business

Suite. Completed on time

and under budget, the

implementation delivered

an integrated solutionthat helps the university

consolidate resources,

save money, and improve

a variety of business

processes.



CLEAR FOCUS, CLEAR OBJECTIVES

Key decision mak ers were excited about the benef its that SAP

would deliver. “Implementing an enterprise-wide sof tware sys-

tem transf ormed the business inf rastructure of the University

of Nebrask a,” says Walter Weir, CIO at the university. “For the

f irst time, we had a f ully integrated system supporting f inancial

management, human resources, payroll, and related business

activities.”

The university wanted to create a single business environment

across f our diverse campuses, which presented a signif icant

challenge: Each campus had its own business processes and

administrative off ices supported by legacy systems that did not

communicate with each other. Each department had its own

f inance, procurement, and human resources specialists. More-

over, with a paper-based environment f or data entry, report

generation, purchasing, and more, processes were slow and

inf lexible, with resulting resource and process ineff iciencies –

specif ically a lack of access to critical inf ormation necessary to

properly run the university.

“Higher education has such a diverse IT landscape,” says Loren

Blinde, implementation f inance team lead and director of the

administrative systems group. “There are so many diff erent k inds

of ERP solutions out there, and you’ll f ind a lot of them are

homegrown solutions – things that have evolved within an insti-

tution over a period of time. A lot more are probably ’80s tech-

nology that they’re still struggling with. In f act, that’s where we

were bef ore we implemented SAP.”

SMOOTH DEPLOYMENT AND A NEW APPROACH

The university’s f irst SAP implementation was f or procuremen

and f inance, which took 20months. It next implemented hum

resources and payroll, which took 24months. The response at

the university to the new system was extremely positive. In the

f irst year, the number of users across the campuses grew f rom 3

to 1,000, with more than 1,600 users today.

Throughout the implementation, SAP Consulting helped sup-

port the university’s “one organization” f ocus – which created

enhanced atmosphere f or collaboration and inf ormation sharin

among the individual campuses. Decentralization and depart-

mental isolation were replaced by centralization and integratio

Departm

ent

st

ook owner

sh

ip an

d r

espon

sibilit

y f or

their

act

ivi-ties and operating results. By examining business processes, they

launched a new strategy to streamline operations. For example,

business centers were created in which several departments con

solidated their administrative activities by pooling resources and

giving individual staff members specif ic operational responsibili

ties. Consequently, the university eliminated duplicate systems

“Implementing an enterprise-wide soft-

ware system transformed the business

infrastructure of the University of

Nebraska. For the first time, we had a

fully integrated system supporting finan-

cial management, human resources, pay-

roll, and related business activities.”

Walter We ir, CIO , University of Nebraska

“SAP allowed us to give users effective

tools for entering data and the flexibility

to extract information in ways that make

sense for their operation . . . With the

right ERP system implemented the right

way, you can do more with less. You can

do business better; you can do it with

fewer people.”

Loren B linde , Implementation F inance Team Lead and D irector of

the Administrative Systems Group, University of Nebraska





Documents

SAP University of Nebraska