The Seidman ERP Program News
Five Seidman College of Business students attended the SAP TechEd and Americas' SAP Users' Group (ASUG) conference October 19-23 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
October 30, 2015
Five Seidman College of Business students attended the SAP TechEd and
Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) conference October 19-23 in Las
Vegas, Nevada.
The conference, which attracts business executives and industry
experts, highlighted new technologies shaping business today and
included information on SAP HANA, a new in-memory computing platform.
The students that attended, are part of the Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) program at Grand Valley, and included Marissa Mushna,
Kajal Magal, Audrey Koons, Megan Wagner and Mel Atkins. The ERP
program at Grand Valley is one of the world’s leading programs where
students gain an understanding of integrated, cross-functional
business process experience using SAP® software.
“SAP University Alliances provides students the opportunity to
network with industry professionals during the week long SAP TechEd
conference. It is such a rewarding experience to be able to use the
knowledge learned in the classroom and being able to apply it to an
interactive conversation with an industry professional in that
specific SAP discipline,” said Marissa Mushna. “At GVSU, we learn a
wide range of SAP disciplines from the business process, ABAP,
business intelligence, data warehousing, configuration etc. which
provides the opportunity for a wide range of conversations with the
industry. I really enjoy being able to reach out to professionals to
not only network but being able to ask for career advice as well as
getting a better understanding of what direction in SAP I want to
continue post-graduation.”
The $2,500 cost of admission to the conference for students was
covered by SAP University Alliance, which connects students around the
world who are interested in SAP solutions, careers and research
opportunities. “As a student, I was pleasantly surprised by the
number of people that wanted to include us in discussions. In fact, a
few of us attended a diversity and inclusion event where we got to
informally brainstorm ways to make employees feel involved, safe, and
heard in the workplace. As five young women just beginning our
careers, it was very reassuring that people were excited to learn what
we look forward to, and our ideal work environment,” said Kajal Magal.
Students participated in classroom sessions, app development and networking opportunities. Another opportunity SAP University Alliances provided was being able to participate in SAP InnoJam. SAP InnoJam is a 36 hour coding event where teams stay up all night coding using SAP software to come up with a solution to healthcare issues today. “My team was made up of 4 other people from different industries that I met at the event. We were given a health care issue and the SAP technology, and we were off and running. This experience was incredible, challenging, and an activity I would enjoy doing in the future. I was able to learn a lot about SAP HANA Cloud Platform and other technologies. There were SAP developers in the room during the event, and I was amazed at how knowledgeable they all were. It was truly inspiring. Although my team did not make it to the DemoJam, we were all proud of the application we made,” said Audrey Koons.
Overall, TechEd was a great experience,” said Megan Wagner. “It was incredible to see just how big SAP really is and how so many companies use it all across the world. TechEd will help in my career by showing just how many options there are to assist in everyday business and how technology can assist in making my job easier.”