The erp4school program is an integrated and process-oriented learning environment specially designed for students to illustrate business processes. Since the launch of erp4school has been a great success within Germany it has a great reputation. This reputation has initiated a demand for a global positioning of erp4school.
The market development of certain African countries shows the increasing activitiy and engagement of major enterprises. Due to this development more qualified employees are needed. These employees must be educated timely as education is fundamental to achieve prosperitiy.
The erp4school model offers the possibility to acquire SAP business know-how already in the learning curve and is a great chance to incorporate for future use of SAP Software and to be conducive to reach more wealth and education in Africa.
Background
Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) have become an integral part and key enabler of today’s development agenda and many African governments are becoming more aware of the important role of ICTs in transforming economies in an increasingly knowledge-based society. Consequently African countries have developed comprehensive national policies and strategies to transform their nations into knowledge-based economies and societies.
The expansion of human capacity, especially in ICT, is critical in these national policies and strategies. Today skills shortages remain one of the biggest challenges facing the African continent today. The demand for technical skills, and especially ICT skills, is increasingly exceeding supply and Africa faces the ongoing challenge of growing and training its workforce to sustain and develop the national economy and to be globally more competitive. In order to address the skills shortage and enhance human capacity in ICT in Africa, SAP has introduced its University Alliances program and is now planning to introduce the erp4school program.
The SAP University Alliances Program
SAP in Africa promotes real-life, future oriented training through the SAP University Alliances program by making the latest SAP technologies available to educators and students in Africa. The program is aimed at universities and vocational schools that want to actively integrate SAP software into their teaching.
Educators receive professional guidance on how to deploy the software in their work. University Competence Center organizations take care of all aspects of operating and maintaining the SAP software.
This enables educators to concentrate on teaching and their core competencies. SAP also supports educators by providing them with a range of tailored training courses and teaching materials. In addition, the program encourages collaboration on the use of SAP software in education between education institutes, industry partners, and other interested parties.
SAP actively supports the formation of cooperative networks by promoting research projects, organizing user group events, and providing an information and communication portal.
Initially launched in Germany, SAP University Alliances now benefits over 150,000 students at 700 universities and schools around the world. In Africa we have more than thirteen institutions of learning that have joined the University Alliances.
The erp4school content and capability
The erp4school has been in existence for a period of over 8 years and is a time-tested and stable program. The program is developed by teachers for teachers only, without SAP involvement and the students run the technical help desk.
The Oberstufenzentrum für Bürowirtschaft und Dienstleistungen in Berlin, Germany, has developed the erp4school program for students to learn to consider a company and its processes as a whole. Some of the curriculum is taught using SAP software.
This was enabled by the SAP University Alliances program of SAP AG. erp4school is a scenario for schools and designed to implement and learn a process-oriented way of working using enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Using the concept of self-organized learning, students learn how companies use SAP and other software to run their processes. The erp4school scenario is implemented using the SAP ERP application. Integrating software from market leaders ensures the program teaches global standards and is based on the latest applications and runs on a platform provided by the University Competence Center organization at the Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg,Germany.
Many schools in Germany have joined the erp4school program, but SAP together with its partners is keen to introduce this program to other countries and regions. Especially in Africa a number of countries have shown great interest in this program and SAP is now planning to introduce the program in parts of Africa.
