EPI-USE & SAP^® Present: A Digital Journey for Higher Education

Thursday, December 1, 2022 
10:00 AM – 10:45 AM PST

A Digital Journey for Higher Education

Universities continue to play an important role in educating future innovators and leaders and sharing discoveries that shape our future and in turn, continue to invest in student engagement, collaborative platforms and transforming staff to knowledge workers to support this mission. Today’s traditional business models struggle to meet student, faculty, researcher, and employee needs, and contain costs. In addition, Universities face increased competition and rising costs, thus Higher Education industry is under pressure to innovate, cut costs and transform as well as attract and retain the best academic talent, improve operations and improve data insights while delivering an exceptional experience for the student, faculty, researcher and employees.

To address these challenges selecting the best and most cost-effective cloud application is critical when embarking on a new ERP and Data Management initiative. The industry experts at EPI-USE and SAP® discuss top-of-mind priorities Universities face today, the value Cloud applications offer and how institutional peers have propelled their transformation and operational excellence goals with EPI-USE and SAP’s Intelligent Enterprise for Higher Education.

Vice President, Higher Education & Research, Keith Harmon, will be joined by Nancy Varghese, SAP Global Director of Higher Education and Research, Industries and Customer Advisory and a special panel of experts to explore these factors and steps you can take for a data-driven approach for your ERP initiatives and business case.

About the Speakers

As Global Director of Higher Education & Research for SAP, Nancy has over ten years of experience guiding educational institutions towards financial sustainability. Prior to joining SAP America, Nancy had the honor of serving on various educational committees such as the White House Initiate for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and functioned as a grant reviewer for the National Science Foundation (NSF). In her current role, she brings together IT and business administrators to consider how technology can enable them to focus on their most critical business needs and empower their users. These insights support the development of SAP’s Industry Cloud strategy for higher education.

Keith has 30+ years in Higher Education experience and over the last 20 years, he worked exclusively with university clients to successfully evaluate, plan, and deploy ERP solutions. Prior to joining EPI-USE, Keith worked in Product Development at SAP working with leading Education Institutions and developing applications to address and support their operational challenges and ensure successful outcomes. Keith has been instrumental in driving EPI-USE’s ongoing client relations, delivery and support global practice for the Higher Education and Research sector.

Who Should Attend

Industries: Higher Education, K-12 Public Schools and Public Sector organizations considering an ERP modernization project can benefit from this session.

Roles: C Level and Senior Leaders representing Finance and Financial Planning and Analysis, Human Resources, Procurement Information Technology, Office of Student Affairs and Engagement, and Office of Sponsored Research.

This session will provide attendees with these key takeaways:

• Gain a greater understanding of the true impact and benefits of a cloud strategy.
• Learn how peer Higher Education and Research firms successfully navigate pre-project planning through to realization to ensure a successful ERP engagement and outcome.

• Hear how EPI-USE and SAP experts can support your readiness process and journey with valuable accelerators and tools for speed to value.

Panelists

Mark is an energetic and transformational SAP/IT Leader with over 20+ years of experience in managing and leading small, medium, and large-scale SAP ERP system implementation projects. His current focus is SAP S/4 HANA initiatives as a Project Manager and Program Manager as well as an S/4 HANA Solutions Architect, and SuccessFactors Program Manager and Architect. Most recent experience includes delivering and leading the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, University of Toronto, and Purdue University Business Transformation S/4 HANA and SuccessFactors projects. Purdue University was SAP’s first-ever Global Higher Education University globally to implement SAP’s vision of the Intelligent Enterprise. Prior to that, accomplishments included delivering one of the first SAP S/4 HANA 1511 implementations consisting of Embedded Business Warehouse (BW), Budget Performance Controls (BPC), Embedded GRC, Fiori Hub Deployment, Vertex, Paymetric, SHIP ERP, and Enosix for Salesforce integration. Mark has extensive experience in Public Sector, Higher Education and Research, Consumer Products, Chemicals, Automotive, Aerospace, Textiles, Legal, and Manufacturing.

Michael is an experienced SAP Executive who has demonstrated the ability to lead diverse teams of SAP functional and technical consultants and client engagements across SAP ECC and S/4HANA landscapes. With strong technical and business qualifications, Michael has earned an impressive track record of over 20 years of hands-on experience in SAP project management, strategic planning, engagement management, SAP program management and driving SAP technology solutions that improve an organization’s ability to compete both domestically and globally. Prior to joining EPI-USE, Michael led a successful global S/4HANA project for Yeti. Today, in his role with EPI-USE, he brings a proven ability to successfully analyze an organization’s critical business requirements, identify deficiencies, opportunities, and key drivers for transformation.