Marketing of membership to students and faculty

[Former Member]

Greetings members,

How does a university make best use of its membership of the UA Program to boost its visibility within the student and research communities? Quite a few members have webpages that refer to the UA program and actively promote the program but by no means all and yet from my own experience those that heavily promote the program can see a doubling or even tripling in student applications and even an increase in the quality of those applications.

But are there techniques that go beyond traditional marketing? A couple of UKI schools offer bursaries - University of Lancaster offers a £3,000 'SAP Scholarship and Surrey University offers ten £5,000 SAP Bursaries - these are reductions in the degree cost so it represents a real loss and therefore a real investment for the university. But the result is a dramatic student application increase and perhaps doubling or tripling of student numbers (say 20 to 60) counterbalances the resulting reduction in revenues from 10 students.

This is one creative technique but I wonder if any other schools from the US, Australia, Canada, anywhere has done something unique - something creative and entrepreneurial beyond mentioning the program on websites and so forth.

Martin

Martin Gollogly

Director, University Alliances

United Kingdom and Ireland

[Former Member]

Hi

We have found the best marketing to be the success of graduates. We are fortunate that we offer a range of course built around the Master of Business in ERP Systems. we have offered this course for nearly 10 years and as such it markets itself. Industry are aware of it and even send employees along to enrol. This means that there is high graduate outcomes. Also our early graduates are now project managers and functional leads on large SAP projects. If we are doing any marketing it is indirect through collaboration with industry partners through SAP Australian User Group. However we continually look for opportunities to build these links.

It would be much harder for newer universities to the UAP as they must look for a differentiator. Whether this is scholarships, internships or innovative curriculum.

Good Luck

Paul Hawking

SAP Academic Program Director

Victoria University

Australia

[Former Member]

Hello Paul,

Many thanks for the response. You're right of course - in our case there are half a dozen key marketers of their membership in the program and each are able to point to not only successful students but have been enthusiastic supporters of photos and PR of the students, events, staff teaching and so on. We don't have quite your longevity - our national program is only 5 years old, though Sheffield Hallam and City Universities have been teaching SAP since 1998. Cap Gemini and a few others are aware of the courses partly because there has been such a dearth in advanced students having both SAP and a functional knowledge in a business or IS topic - Cap Gemini even sponsors students at SHU to attract them to work for the company afterwards.

We don't do too much with the UKSUG but we do with partners - but as a rule partners have proven to be rather variable as it depends upon whether they have a recruitment shortage rather than havinga long term development plan. Would this be your experience?

Martin

[CRVMANISH]

Hello Martin,

                     I am looking for Msc in SAP computer science specially in Ireland , UK and Canada.

                      Could you recommend few universities in these locations which provide SAP courses.

Regards

Manish

[RichBlumberg]

Manish,

Hi! Yes, there are a number of universities that teach Masters in Computer Science and include SAP-related courses and hands on software in the classroom. Visit - UA Around the World.

In the UK there are several SAP Corporate Masters Programs.

Best of luck in your assessment!

Regards,

Richard

[CRVMANISH]

Richard,

                 Appreciate your reply, i have already gone through UA List, but i did not found MSC in SAP  Computer science in Cananda , Ireland and UK , these are my preferred options , as i am from technical background i want to go with technical course.

Please Suggest

Regards

Manish

[RichBlumberg]

Manish,

Hi! The SAP Corporate Masters Program is available in the UK. Did you assess these programs?

All the best!

Regards,

Richard

[CRVMANISH]

Richard,

These are courses which i am looking for in Canada, UK or ireland or any other country other than U.S and Germany

Using Solution Manager	English	SAP Solution Manager, SAP ERP	N/A
SAP NetWeaver Introduction Course	German	SAP Enterprise Portal, SAP NetWeaver Process Integration, SAP ERP	IDES
SAP NetWeaver BI Analytics (Visual Composer)	English	Enterprise Portal 7.0, Business Intelligence 7.0, ** PDK.NET 2.5 on PC **	N/A
SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment	English	SAP NetWeaver	N/A
SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal	English	SAP NetWeaver Portal	IDES
SAP NetWeaver PDK.NET (Microsoft)	English	SAP NetWeaver, PDK.Net plug-in, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005	IDES
SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer	English	SAP Netweaver, SAP Visual Composer	IDES
SAP NetWeaver Web Dynpro for Java	English	Enterprise Portal 7.0, ECC 6.0, ** Developer Studio 7.0.09 on PC **	IDES
BI1 & BI2: SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse and SAP Business Explorer	English	SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse, SAP Business Explorer, SAP NetWeaver Portal	IDES BW + BW Transports; Microsoft Excel spreadsheets
ABAP Course - Programming SAP	English	N/A	N/A
SaaS, PaaS, Cloud Computing - The Next Generation of Enterprise Software (2010, 2011, 2012)	English	SAP Business ByDesign	N/A
Project Management Using SAP Project Systems	English	SAP ERP	IDES and GBI 2.0 - You will need to request both clients from your UCC

SAP NetWeaver Enterprise SOA and Business Processes	English	SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure	IDES
SAP NetWeaver Process Integratoin (SOA Middleware)	German	SAP NetWeaver Process Integration	N/A
Workflow Exercises	English	SAP ERP	IDES

[RichBlumberg]

Manish,

Hi! I'll make a note to review these "Computer Science & IT" courses with colleagues after the New Year (early January). I'll post a response at this time.

Best regards,

Richard

[CRVMANISH]

Hello Richard,

                      Any update on this , need 1 year course in Canada  , Ireland or UK  for SAP Computer Science

Regards

Manish

[Former Member]

Hi Manish,

I hope you goit my reply offline and found it useful. As I suggested the degree of SAP content dpth is really the killer in selecting a course as some want to head down the road towards consultancy and others towards other careers. My suggestions for in depth initially in the UK are Sheffield Hallam, Brunel and Birmingham City Universities. In Ireland the National University of Ireland, Galway is a good prospect. There are plenty of others - but those are the institutions that are most heavily engaged with us and that do MScs that have a very substantial SAP content.

All the best

Martin

[CRVMANISH]

Hello Martin,

                      Thanks for the reply , Do you know anything in Canada , i did not receive your offline reply.

Regards

Manish

[RichBlumberg]

Manish,

Hi! I did some research with a colleagues and received the following response...

"In Canada, our members currently focus on integrating SAP content in business curriculum. However, one member, Dalhousie University, is beginning to integrate SAP HANA into the Computer Science curriculum. The faculty contact at Dalhousie is Michael Bliemel m.bliemel@dal.ca."

Best regards,

Richard

[Former Member]

Martin,

this is a very good question for which unfortunately I don't have a good answer. As director of the Lancaster University programme that offers the SAP scholarship I can testify that we do receive a good number inquiries - if this is down to SAP or the scholarship amount is hard to say however. We have an extensive description of our link to SAP on our website and in our printed materials and many students are drawn in by the chance to learn SAP skills as part of the academic curriclum. However, very few of our students have a good understanding of the SAP world when they enter our programme and even fewer have concrete expectations.

The best way to market the SAP connection would be to highlight the carrer prospects that SAP skills give you. This is an area we need to work on and I am happy to receive suggestions of how to do that.

Gerd Kortuem

Director MSc in E-Business and Innovation

Lancaster University

http://www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/masters/MScEbusiness/

[Former Member]

Many thanks Gerd,

Yes I suspectede as such - that's another reason for the existence of the UAC. A lot of applying 18/19 year old U/G students in the UK&I at least are only vaguely aware of who SAP are - and the UA program itself serves as a mechanism to generate awareness. So I'm guessing, but I could be wrong, that MScs and MBAs that may have already had some experience of SAP will have a different set of expectations and are more likely to be attracted to a course as a result of advertising SAP UA membership? An MBA in fact may even be a user of SAP and be keen to develop a greater understanding of it both on its own and in the greater context of their degree.

So intuitively I suppose there are two classifications of marketing effort that are needed - one to those students, mainly undergraduate, who will have had no prior knowledge of and so have to be educated in the value of SAP from a position of almost no knowledge; and those who are postgraduate who may even be deliberately looking for a means to incorporate SAP into their course. So one is an educational marketing stream - perhaps requiring some degree of interactivity whereas the second is more to explain the opportunity. Would that be a fair assumption?

I'm actually working on promoting the career prospects myself by proposing to some SAP customers and partners that they a) provide some case studies that can be used as tangible proof that SAP is important and b) that they get involved in this forum as a means to interact with faculty and explore this issue.

I'll let you know how I get on but hopefully we should start to see some cases and activitiy in the next month or so.

Martin

Martin Gollogly

Director, University Alliances

United Kingdom and Ireland