SAP partner with Nottingham University to launch 'Next Gen Lab'

SAP SE has announced the launch of the SAP Next Gen Lab within Nottingham University Business School’s Digital Centre of Excellence. The new Lab will provide a physical teaching space for modules with digital or SAP content, and assist in Nottingham and SAP’s joint objective to “digitally future-proof” students and enhance their career prospects.

Seventy-five per cent of companies have reported a hiring shortage in digital skills, with a particular deficiency in SAP early talent SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business ByDesign channels.

The Lab and new software courses will help to address that talent shortage, and open up new doors of opportunity in the SAP partner pipeline to new graduates. SAP is looking to place 40 students into the SAP ecosystem in 2023, with an outlook of reaching over 750 students in the next year.

Martin Gollogly, director, university alliances at SAP EMEA North, said: “The Next-Gen Lab at Nottingham University Business School will connect students, partners and customers within one world-class facility. This facility will give students the opportunity to gain a deep, high quality understanding of SAP and how it is used to help the world’s most successful organisations run better.

“Customers and partners will gain access to a pool of talented, motivated and skilled SAP-ready students that will be able to hit the ground running.”

Dr Andrew Callaghan, professor of strategy and digital transformation at the University of Nottingham, said: “We are increasingly seeing the expectation from employers that graduates should be able to arrive on their first day with the digital capabilities necessary to work in a modern, often hybrid or remote working environment.

“The Digital Centre of Excellence is designed to help digitally futureproof our students and enhance their career prospects. We pair functional business skills from our degree programmes with digital skills that are in high demand to make sure our students stand out in the job market.”

As part of this launch, SAP aid with the integration of technology into existing courses at Nottingham University, as well as new ones, and creating elective ‘digital’ professional certificates. Following the successful rollout of SAP ERP Sim and SAP Business ByDesign modules to 1000 students at the University of Nottingham in September 2021, the Next Gen Lab builds on that by providing better education in the tools of the future.

SAP software components that the university is facilitating include SAP S/4HANA, ERP SIM, SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), and SAP Business ByDesign. With its own dedicated digital website highlighting the 10 SAP courses available to students of the Nottingham University Business School, the lab’s launch is set to widen the graduate exit pipeline.

The launch day of the Next Gen Lab saw partner attendance from organisations including Birchman, Boots, Marshall’s Group, Hillarys (Hunter Douglas Group), Tarmac, Innospec, and more. SAP also successfully launched a new MSc in Accounting Information systems in February 2023, which is based on SAP S/4HANA. For its ‘first teach’, this course attracted 65 pupils.

By Mark Adair – Correspondent, Bdaily

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