erp4students - A Success Story

About the Program

With the digitization of society, today hardly any business process is conceivable without IT support. It is therefore important to understand that business application systems are information systems for people and not programs for computers. Solutions must be found that orchestrate the interaction of processes, organizations, and end users. For this reason, we attach great importance in our erp4students courses to imparting the appropriate skills that enable the practical solution of business processes with today's complex IT solutions. In addition to a well-founded theoretical understanding, we attach great importance to practical transfer in our course design - through intensive direct work on real IT systems, as they occur everywhere in everyday business. Theory and practice thus support each other and build up lasting knowledge and competence, which enable successful learning and facilitate a career entry later on.

erp4students is a study program that is designed and developed to be carried out alongside studies and apprenticeship and has been offered exclusively to students and apprentices since 2006. erp4students offers students and apprentices the opportunity to deal intensively with the topic of Enterprise Resource Planning and other SAP areas next to their studies or apprenticeships and to build up corresponding skills. This gives the course participants a clear competitive advantage on the job market over other graduates. In order to practically deepen the learned, theoretical basics of a course, participants work online on a living SAP system while participating in the course. The erp4students program includes a variety of courses, each of which focuses on different aspects of SAP SE products. The base of our course offering is the course "Enterprise Resource Planning with SAP S/4HANA (TS410)". Seven further sub-areas build up on this course:

History

The Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences (THB) is one of the first universities to use SAP software in teaching. Prof. Franz worked for several years at SAP as a development manager (focusing on training, development, and sales) before moving to the THB in 2004. At the THB he is a professor for Business Applications in Computer Science in the economics department. Prof. Franz's chair has implemented several innovative projects in the SAP environment in recent years, such as:

• for 18 years the Berlin-Brandenburg SAP-Forum,
• SAP Next-Gen project with the grid company Berlin-Brandenburg (NBB),
• student teams at InnoJams at TechEd in Berlin, Madrid and CeBIT in Hanover, and
• global train-the-trainer courses in Greece, Turkey, VAE, Saudi-Arabia, Spain, and Hungary.

In the spring semester of 2006, the "trial run" of the first SAP course by erp4students took place - and with great success! erp4students has been successively expanded by now. Currently, students from all over the world can take part in the courses. The range of courses has grown to 14 courses and is offered in German and English language. To date, tens of thousands of students have been able to obtain an SAP certification thanks to erp4students.

The aim of the Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences (THB) is to bundle the competencies of the erp4students team and the THB, and to achieve synergy effects that bring both sides even further forward and from which students - and you as a prospect course participant - ultimately benefit.

Cooperation with SAP University Alliances and SAP Next-Gen

The Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences (THB) has been working in close partnership with the SAP University Alliances (SAP UA) and SAP Next-Gen for more than 20 years. Immediately after the initiation of the erp4students project, SAP UA was enthusiastic about the idea of ​​developing an e-learning offer regarding SAP topics and which is specifically for students. When the necessary agreements were made and erp4students was launched, SAP UA soon declared it as a pilot project in order to emphasize the exclusive status of the project. In the meantime, SAP UA has made erp4students its strategic online partner for academic teaching, from which a wide variety of parties benefit.

The clear focus that the program management sets is to offer students and apprentices the best possible SAP training that they can get alongside their studies or apprenticeship. The aim must be to make it easier for the participants to start their careers by providing them with certificates in SAP topics, thereby significantly increasing their career opportunities. And all of this - due to the cooperation with SAP UA and SAP Next-Gen - at particularly favorable and student- and apprentice-friendly conditions that can't be found anywhere else for non-students and non-apprentices.