The Undergraduate Certificate in Enterprise Resource Planning with SAP offered by Penn State World Campus is an opportunity for professionals to obtain specialized training in this important area and master skills that can give them an advantage in the workplace. The goal of this certificate program is to use SAP technology as a tool to help teach business concepts.
This program is supported by the Black School of Business at Penn State Behrend, whose membership in SAP University Alliances enables us to provide our students with a wealth of state-of-the-art learning content and SAP knowledge. Students can access SAP software and interact in a business-like setting by executing transactions to do real industry tasks and evaluate the results.
Jeffrey Ellis, a graduate of the program who is now a senior supply chain analyst at LORD Corporation, said, “I have pretty much used every single thing I learned as a student there when it comes to SAP. It's actually a bit easier because I can see the process flow of how material runs through an actual facility.”
Teresa Petty, global supply planner at Callaway Golf, described how the certificate helped her get her first position after graduation: "The certificate that has helped me the most was the ERP with SAP that I got while at Behrend. Working in the manufacturing industry of home textiles, I work with an ERP system daily. This helped me understand what ERP systems are capable of and why they are the heart of an organization that uses them. This certification made me marketable and played a big factor in why I got my job with American Textiles Corporation six weeks before graduation.”
As part of the SAP certification, students take MIS 404: Introduction to ERP and Business Processes, SCM 445: Operations Planning and Control, and SCM 460: Purchasing and Materials Management. In these courses, they work on SAP’s next generation Business Suite, S/4HANA, which is a real-time, user-friendly version of SAP with built-in intelligent technologies accessible across platforms such as mobile, tablets, or PCs. By 2027, all SAP systems will migrate to a S/4HANA–based platform; this certificate program provides hands-on training to the students using S/4HANA on relevant modules.
Organizations are increasingly using advanced technologies and data to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The importance of technology and data-driven capabilities for organizations’ success has been further heightened by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Facing significant disruptions, many businesses all over the world turned to ERP technology for business continuity and resilience. In software applications in the manufacturing and supply chain settings, ABI Research forecasts that “the supply chain impact of Covid-19 will spur manufacturers’ spend on enterprise resource planning (ERP) to reach US$14 billion by 2024.” By helping our students develop ERP skills for the intelligent enterprise, this certificate positions our students for success in today’s and the future’s workplace.