America is facing a major college affordability crisis. Data from the Federal Reserve shows that student loan debt totals around $1.5 trillion, greater than any other category in the United States except mortgage debt. Tuition costs at public universities have risen by 344% since 1980, according to Debt.org, while median income has barely budged*.

Purdue University, Indiana, USA, is addressing America’s college affordability crisis by charging students less to attend Purdue in 2019 than in 2012 (based on inflation-adjusted dollars). Not only are students paying less to attend, but the university is also spending more in academic excellence, innovative ideas, and faculty growth, significantly lowering student: professor ratio and increasing the number of tenured positions.

So what is the Purdue Miracle?

Purdue embarked on “Transform Purdue”, a Digital Transformation initiative with SAP S/4HANA and SuccessFactors, to obtain operational efficiencies and keep tuition fees at their 2012 rates. They found and cut waste wherever possible, removed redundancies and duplication of efforts with digitalisation, and standardised processes across departments.

Built on SAP S/4HANA, the organisation now has access to:

  • Clear visibility of end-to-end business process flows spanning multiple organisations.
  • New metric-based development of processes to ensure improved process effectiveness.
  • Process prioritisation based on magnitude and project impact.

This has led to an elimination of:

  • 600k pages of financial paper forms and 400k approvals, replaced with real-time information.
  • 30k+ financial spreadsheets/disparate systems as they now record transactions and budget.

HERUG
The SAP Higher Education and Research User Group (HERUG) is a user group for all education and research institutions that are using SAP software in a productive environment. The HERUG conference, taking place on 15th to 17th May 2019 at the Technische Universität Berlin, provides its members with the opportunity to share experiences and network with other SAP Higher Education and Research customers around the world. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Mastering our Digital Transformation’.

Together with our sister company EPI-USE, G3G is sponsoring the event and hosting the following two sessions:

  • Purdue University S/4HANA migration and transformation project. In this session, we will share the lessons learned from the project, benefits to Purdue and our role.
  • S/4HANA roadmap workshop/panel discussion with G3G, EPI-USE, and SAP. This session will share what our clients are asking, based on our S/4HANA implementation experiences, to help them plan their S/4HANA roadmap.

You can register for the event here. If attending please do come and say hello, we’d be happy to discuss any of your S/4HANA requirements with you.

*Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2018/12/04/purdue-university-takes-giant-leaps-in-democratizing-higher-education/#124d7f242672

**Source: SAP