The Sapient College, a division of ERP major SAP AG, has now reflected this concern by launching its virtual campus at Sapphire 99, an IT event held in Singapore during the first week of November. Says Bob Armstrong, senior vice-president, education and development, SAP Asia Pte Ltd, ``In keeping with the mySAP.com thrust, we are launching a major initiative in learning through the Internet.''

Started as a facilitator in training project teams and customers, the Sapient College has gradually transformed itself into a highly specialised training institute. It is the authentic place to train professionals in R/3 of SAP. ``We conduct several small courses through which an ERP professional can maintain his competitive edge,''says Armstrong.

The college offers training in the use of SAP products and a forum to develop skills and experience in the practical management and application of technology. It is for everyone-from everyday users to senior management. As part of their `Knowledge Management Solution', which includes elements of the former `Advanced Training Solution (ATS), the college makes available processes, SAP knowledge, and tools of various aspects of relevant business areas within human resources and controlling.

SAP Knowledge Warehouse is the cornerstone of SAP's knowledge management solution for continuous knowledge transfer and life-long learning. It contains a repository for storing content and includes tools to create, modify, distribute, and administer that content. To make the process of content development easier, SAP Knowledge Warehouse can be delivered with content created at SAP, including training courses, instructor guides, associated materials, documentation and related content.

Together, thesecontents and tools make it possible to greatly speed up the processes required for developing and transferring knowledge. The Knowledge Warehouse is based on SAP's open system architecture and is also scalable to match your own need for knowledge.

The college offers role-based education through what they term as a 3-step empowering approach. The programme also helps seasoned users to upgrade their skills to the level of R/3 proficiency. The three levels of instructions take you through the business basics to an overview of R/3, before advancing to specific skills training.

Three classes of student take these courses: new and current users with no formal training; current users who wish to upgrade their training; and R/3 users assigned to new roles and responsibilities.

The Sapient College has also innovated with IDES (International Demonstration and Education System), a pre-configured installation of R/3, which is populated with data and business processes of a fictional enterprise. It is the basis forall exercises and system demonstrations in SAP's worldwide training courses. All SAP customers can access the IDES systems which allows them to quickly explore and demonstrate an example of the productive R/3 system.

Working with the pre-configured processes of the model company is also a good method to provide initial training for a company's IT specialists and their the support team. From within an IDES system, additional IDES-specific procedures are available in the SAP Library.

With its new CBT CD-ROMs, a professional can also develop his R/3 skills anytime, anywhere. The CBT programme can also be deployed via SAP Knowledge Warehouse across a corporate intranet. The Sapient College also has a University Alliance Programme, which provides set up, follow-on consulting, maintenance, hot-line services and R/3 training for faculty staff, at SAP's expense. In exchange, the company asks the university for comprehensive utilisation of their product in innovative, challenging, leading edge curricula.

InIndia, two IIMs, in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, have entered into this alliance programme. The institutes are free to use R/3 as a part of their curricula as a research aid, a marketing tool to attract top flight staff and students, and as a link to business and industry leaders in enterprise resource planning (ERP).

Says Armstrong, ``The alliance programmme is an extension of our academic roots. Corporate recruiters prize experience with R/3. Students well versed in the principles of management and use of R/3 are highly marketable to SAP, our customers and our partners. Enhanced student career placement also strengthens the university's reputation with prospective enrolees.''

Ten universities in the Asia Pacific region have joined the programme. The college expects that by the year 2000 there will be 20 active universities in the region teaching SAP concepts to over 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students.