Enquiries about UAP policy

[Former Member]

Hello everybody,

I am a student from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. I am studying the behavior of knowledge communities and SAP-UAC has been selected as our group's studying target.

We found that the resources of UAP (University Alliances Program) seem private use for faculty members from universities in UAP, such as a privileged membership. We know that UAP should be tailor made for each university due to there are different needs and objectives. On this issue, I would like to know more details in the different service treatment for different universities' needs. For example:

- Are there different membership in UAP? What are they? What is/are the different(s) between them?

- It should be different materials assess right. How to guide on these assess right allocation for different membership?

- Are there any universities is most "privileged"? If yes, what is/are the requirement(s) as a privileged universities?

- UAC is a good place for interactions amoung different universities' SAP members. There may be local "SAP community" in different university. Are there any interactions amoung these local communities and UAC?

Your input would greatly enrich our research and your help is very much appreciated.

Look forward for kind contribution.

With my best wishes,

Paul Lui

[CrispianTan]

Dear Paul

All the materials found on the University Alliances Community (www.uac.sap.com) are meant for all who have registered with the UAC. You can be a student, professor or even a University Administrator. Even SAP Partners and Customers can register themselves to be a member of this Community. Mostly, the Community members would want to have some information about SAP and how it can be taught in their school curriculum. It can just be a white paper or case study without any hands-on use of the SAP software.

There is a Private workspace area (called the "UA Library Reserve Desk") meant for University Alliances Program (UAP) members. These are the Universities such as The Hong Kong Polytechnic University which has recently entered into an Agreement with SAP to use our software in the classroom for students to have hands-on practice for students to better understand about business processes concepts they learn in class (for example). In order to do so, the Professors/faculties of these UAP members access the Private workspace area where the curriculum materials have exercises that actually touch on the SAP system. These materials help our UAP Professors/faculties to better understand on how they can integrate the teaching of SAP in their classes.

As for your answer of whether there are any "privileged" universities, the simple answer is not so much by "privileged" as how "committed" they are in using SAP to teach students on the concepts of integrating businesses processes. We have University Competence Centers (UCCs) that physically host the SAP software for our UAP members to access in return for an annual nominal hosting fee. For more information on these UCCs, please see the link:

There are only 5 UCCs in the world, with 2 in Americas, 2 in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and 1 in Asia Pacific Japan (APJ). These non-profit UCCs work very hard and have many committed staff hosting the software for Universities and finding new ways to host new SAP products for Universities to teach students and new ways of teaching them etc. Hence, we can call these UCCs our "privileged" universities. Then, of course, there are many other Universities that really spend time and effort to train staff and students to understand SAP and some of their staff even go on to develop new curriculum for other UA members' use and conduct Train-the-Trainer (TTT) workshops. So, again, these can be considered as our "privileged" universities.

You are correct that the actual UAP members in many different locations form "local communities" and they also form "virtual communities" on the UAC. For example, on the UAC, you will find that there are UA Russian language Community forum, UA Japanese language forum (/community [original link is broken]), and UA Chinese language forum (/community [original link is broken]). The actual local communities meet sometime in real person over the TTT workshops that SAP organised for our UAP professors and then they meet virtually on the forum by posting their queries, answers and opinions and throughts. In addition, these UAP professors also meet annually in Academic Conferences in APJ to learn more about new products, best practices in how to teach SAP for their students. Hence, we extend the actual forums to the UAC virtually since it is not always possible for everyone to travel and meet all the time.

I hope the above helps answers your questions.

best regards,

Crispian Tan

SAP Regional Director

University Alliances Asia Pacific Japan

Edited by: Crispian Tan on Apr 13, 2010 10:27 AM

Edited by: Crispian Tan on Apr 13, 2010 10:28 AM

Edited by: Crispian Tan on Apr 13, 2010 10:29 AM

Edited by: Crispian Tan on Apr 13, 2010 10:29 AM

[Former Member]

Dear Crispian,

Thank you very much for your kindest and helpful response, you provided value information to me and it helps me a lot for our research.

Actually, I would like to know more details in:

- There are many users visit UAC community, such as student, professor, University Administrator, SAP Partners and Customers. Would you mind to provide monthly visit records within 2 years for our statistic analysis? If it is not possible for detail data, would you mind to tell me which group is most frequently visit UAC?

- As you mentioned, local communities and Academic Conferences are great opportunity to reinforce the contributions (and loyalty). Would you provide more example(s) for the community encourage more visitors and contributions in the community? What are the expected outcomes of this activities? (Explicit/Tacit knowledge? Increased loyalty and contributions? Increased number of (active/non-active) members?)

- Does any plans (such as activity, campaign) for more contribution and participation in the near future? Would you mind to share some motivation methods on contributions UAC used, and should be used?

My teammates also posted inquiries on:

SAP Community Network Forums » University Alliances » Business Network Transformation - Faculty Club

Thread: How UAC maintains its blooming as a great knowledge communities?

SAP Community Network Forums » University Alliances » Business Network Transformation - Faculty Club

Thread: Duties and roles of different stakeholders

And they are not answer yet. Please kindly to check them as you wish, and hope you and other participants can contribute for these inquiries. I am many thanks for your contribution again.

With my best regards,

Paul Lui

[Former Member]

Hi Paul,

Mr. Tan provided a very detailed answer to your questions. The remaining questions were not answered because some of this is proprietary information and other questions could be answered by going through the key pages - UA Events, Announcements, Newsletters, etc.

Does your university professor want to consider teaching with SAP under our University Alliances program? He can contact Mr. Tan or me at any time.

Thanks for your interest.

Bob LoBue