LaTrobe looks to SAP cloud

LaTrobe University is deploying cloud-based SAP software to support a digital transformation and five-year strategic plan to boost the university’s national and international ranking.

The university is rolling out SAP Student Lifecycle Management to provide a complete view of the student experience – from enquiry, application and registration, through to graduation and alumni services.

La Trobe is also the first SAP Simple Finance user globally, and will go live this month with SuccessFactors Employee Central, which records workforce data. This follows last year’s rollout of SuccessFactors Performance Management, which supports 3,400 staff.

The SAP suite also lays the foundation for the university’s mobility strategy, which is providing students with access – anytime and anywhere – to information such as timetables, meetings, email, financial commitment and test scores.

Over the last three years under its infrastructure modernisation program, the university has shut down 150 legacy systems, said Ged Doyle, CIO at LaTrobe.

“This has been a complex but necessary journey, and it will be a continuous and iterative one,” Doyle says.

“We are delivering on a digital strategy that has allowed us to eliminate in-house legacy systems and countless hours of support effort.

More importantly, La Trobe is simplifying work for our staff so they can focus on supporting students and alumni, while at the same time creating a technology environment to support the ever increasing digital needs of our students.”

The new modules are also integrated with the university’s existing SAP Human Capital Management and other ERP applications, providing staff with a single source of truth. This integration also removes the need to recreate data in disparate systems or dump validated data into spreadsheets for reporting, the university said.

The university can also monitor the progression of processes through automated workflows and save time by eliminating the need to reconcile data manually.