September - University of Nebraska

TO: The Board of Regents Addendum IX-D-14
Business Affairs
MEETING DATE: September 5, 2008
SUBJECT Report on SAP Prioritization
RECMMENDED ACTION: Report
PREVIOUS ACTION: None
EXPLANATION: The strategic framework (Item 6.a.ii) entails an annual report to
the Board on deployment of SAP. SAP is the software utilized
in the business enterprise on a University-wide basis. The plan
for continued implementation and deployment of this asset is as
follows.
One to two year plan. Detailed planning has a one to two year
horizon. As such, the undertakings of that time frame are fairly
concrete.
The next six to twelve months of SAP implementation will be
focused on bringing the State College system onto the SAP
platform. This strategic combination was undertaken by
President Milliken and Chancellor Stan Carpenter of the
Nebraska State College System as part of the SIS information
initiative. The effort of the University’s SAP personnel entails
not only programming, but training of state college personnel.
This process is underway and the cooperation and partnership on
both sides to-date in this undertaking has been tremendous.
Concurrent with the state college migration, University
personnel are bringing SAP’s budget module on line. When
completed, this will put budget and expenditure data on the same
system versus the current system which relies on dated
technology for budget that resides on a separate system.
An unknown call on resources will be the interface of the new
SIS system to the necessary SAP components.
The balance of the time available to SAP resources will be
utilized in day-to-day upkeep of the system, including patches
and other system modifications, training, and help desk duties.
Three to five year plan. The three to five year plan has a number
of potential components available, subject to the consensus
among users to implement a particular component. Certainly
within this time frame, another system upgrade will be
undertaken.