Teaching with Enterprise Systems

With the wide-spread adoption of Enterprise Systems (ES), such as SAP, Oracle, and Peoplesoft, in medium and large-sized organizations, there is increasing demand for students who know how to work with such systems. While the demand for ES developers and integrators has declined, the demand for employees that can help companies achieve benefits from these systems continues to grow. Such employees need skills in decision-making and process design in an integrated, data-rich environment enabled by an ES. This paper provides advice about teaching with enterprise systems at the undergraduate and graduate levels within the IS curriculum and across management and engineering curricula. This advice is provided by five professors from five different schools, California State University at Chico, Louisiana State University, Queensland University of Technology, Bentley College, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute that together have many years of experience in teaching with SAP or with the Oracle e-business suite. This paper includes a summary of the experiences at each of these schools, advice based on questions from the audience at an AMCIS 2005 panel, and references to resources that may be helpful to those considering, or already engaged in, teaching with enterprise systems. I. WHY TEACH WITH ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS Enterprise Systems (ES) have become a critical backbone for most companies’ business processes. An ES package includes the internal back office functions, e.g., financials, order and production management, and human resources, which collectively comprised Enterprise Teaching with Enterprise Systems by D. M. Strong, J. Fedorowicz, J. Sager, G. Stewart, and E. Watson Communications of the Association for Information Systems (Volume 17, 2006), 728-755 729 Resource Planning (ERP) systems, as well as newer extended enterprise modules, such as supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM). Companies using such systems depend upon employees with ES experience to help them install, extend, and achieve benefits from these systems. Despite the critical need of companies for ES-savvy workers, students still rarely encounter an ES during their university education. The challenges universities face in integrating an ES into a curriculum and in achieving educational benefits from such implementations differ from those of business organizations, but are no less difficult. This paper started as a panel at the 2005 Americas Conference on Information Systems in Omaha, NE [Strong, Corbitt, Fedorowicz, Stewart, and Watson, 2005]. A starting point for the panel was a special issue of the Journal of Information Systems Education [Antonucci, Corbitt, Stewart, and Harris, 2004]. The goal of the panel was to contribute to the ability of more universities to provide a stimulating ES-based educational environment for students. The panel presented the experiences of those who had integrated Enterprise Systems into their curricula and provided advice to the audience about teaching with enterprise systems at their schools. This paper represents a report of the panel and a list of additional references and resources. The five panelists represent five different schools – California State University at Chico (CSUC), Louisiana State University (LSU), Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Bentley College (Bentley), and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) – and five different approaches to integrating enterprise systems into a curriculum. The first four schools listed use mySAP ERP and mySAP Business Suite, while WPI uses the Oracle e-business suite. In 1996 CSUC was the first university in the U.S. to receive the SAP R/3 System for use in the classroom. The SAP University Alliance (UA) program in the U.S., leveraging the experiences of the successful program in Germany, was started during the 1996/1997 academic year. In 1997, LSU became a member of the U.S. program, while QUT joined the Australian program. Bentley joined the SAP UA in 1998. WPI joined the Oracle Academic Initiative in 2000. The first purpose of this paper is to present the approaches taken by each of these five schools to illustrate the various options available for integrating enterprise systems into a curriculum. For each school, the paper describes when and why it started with enterprise systems, its initial focus and purpose with any major transitions or changes in focus over the years, the courses with hands-on ES content, what it plans for the future, and major lessons learned. The second purpose of this paper is to provide assistance to schools who are involved in, or are thinking about initiating, the use of enterprise systems in their curricula. The paper presents some of the questions asked by the audience at the AMCIS panel and provides a list of resources in the bibliography. II. FIVE SCHOOLS AND FIVE APPROACHES The panelists used a common format to present their experiences with teaching with enterprise systems and then expanded on each item. A summary is provided in Table 1, followed by a more detailed description for each school. CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY AT CHICO Motivation and Focus In June of 1996, SAP America selected the California State University Chico (CSUC) College of Business as its first North American partner in the company’s University Alliance Program. Prior to joining the UA, a group of business faculty at CSUC had been working to identify an ERP system that could provide adequate support for curriculum integration efforts. Choosing SAP, the world leader in enterprise software for businesses, and becoming a SAP UA partner was seen as a unique opportunity to provide students with a deeper understanding of how businesses actually operate. In addition, UA membership supported the University’s mission to build a state-of-the-art technological learning environment to provide students with high-demand knowledge and skills, and prepare them for success in the new information economy. Providing SAP R/3 access to all Teaching with Enterprise Systems by D. M. Strong, J. Fedorowicz, J. Sager, G. Stewart, and E. Watson Communications of the Association for Information Systems (Volume 17, 2006), 728-755 730 disciplines was expected to pay dividends as faculty members worked together to develop integrated approaches to coursework in the functional areas and as students observed the crossfunctional nature of today’s business processes as embodied in modern enterprise software systems. Table 1. Current Enterprise System Features at each School CSUC LSU QUT Bentley WPI Year Joined 1996 1997 1997 1998 2000 Grad or UG Mostly UG Both Both Both Mostly UG