Post on 07-Apr-2018
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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.
8/3/2019 SAP University of Nebraska
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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
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