Purdue University is transforming its finance systems by implementing S/4HANA 1610 – the first university to do so – marking a critical milestone in its business process reengineering project and playing a key role in its overall Transform Purdue initiative.
Certified SAP Partners, EPI-USE and EPI-USE Labs partnered with Purdue to help the acclaimed US research university to overhaul its accounting structures to improve transparency and reporting. By automating key business processes the university will eliminate both redundancies and paper.
The implementation migrated the university from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA 1610 and leveraged SAP’s latest S/4 migration DMO (Database Migration Option) – a first for SAP’s Higher Education and Research institutions globally.
“We could not be more pleased with the initial outcomes of finance transformation and our partnership with EPI-USE and EPI-USE Labs,” said Timothy Werth, senior director, Business Process Re-engineering. “Together we were able to take a vision for simplified finance structures and processes and build technology that significantly enhances our financial transparency while creating automated, efficient and paperless workflow,” he said.
Software solutions and managed services company, EPI-USE Labs managed the transformation, which included S/4HANA, BW, GRC, PI/XI, HCM/Payroll and employee self-services for more than 30,000 employees in four campuses.
Hosted in two data centres for full redundancy, EPI-USE Labs uses its Unified Platform software to monitor, automate, and orchestrate the complex landscape, Data Sync Manager to maintain refreshed non-productive systems and mask sensitive data, and Client Central as an incident and change management tracking facility.
“The Purdue/EPI-USE partnership already has a reputation amongst peers as one that is transforming how higher education does business,” said Victoria Farnsworth, executive director, IT Enterprise, Purdue University.
“The EPI-USE team’s ability to enable streamlined business process with the newest technology and user experience is unparalleled.”
“The EPI-USE group of companies uses their broad industry experiences and technology vision to drive higher education into the future. I look forward to their continued partnership and where it will drive Purdue,” said Farnsworth. “Rarely does a partnership move beyond implementation into something that is truly strategic, supporting university core mission in building a student-development innovation centre,” she said.
“Our combined teams have come together and executed a nearly flawless migration from the ECC to S/4HANA landscape,” said Jan van Rensburg, SVP, EPI-USE Labs on working with Purdue.
“Our partnership with the EPI-USE FILO team allowed us to evaluate industry best practices against Purdue’s business processes and get to the root of our true business needs,” said Stacy Umlauf, director, Finance Transformation Project, Purdue University. “We challenge our teams to think outside the box to ensure we streamlined, simplified and automated the University’s strategic financial processes to bring greater efficiency and transparency to our organisation’s processes and financial structures.”
