EUNIS Business Intelligence SIG webinar was held on 8 October 2021.

Title: Financial Management of research projects in custom SAP Fiori at Ghent University

The competition for research funding is often a challenge. Once granted, the challenge is even bigger, trying to keep up with the financial administration for these projects. Getting the tasks done at the right time by the right person, maintaining transparency within the research team. It is a complex, stressful process, full of room for mistakes. In order to tackle all of the pitfalls, we molded the whole financial process into a workflow, integrated into a series of Fiori apps, designed specifically depending on the role one has to perform a task. The only thing a user has to do when coming into the office, is to open up their Fiori launchpad and immediately they can see if there are any tasks awaiting to get the flow running again. Being able to follow-up on budget and actuals at any point in the lifecycle of a project, without having to dig into reports, excel files using many different transactions, is a huge improvement for all involved. Needless to say, the results in efficiency, administrative and financial transparency are mindblowing.

Host:

Speakers:

Sara Taeymans works as a SAP analyst and project lead at Ghent University, mainly in the domain of project management modules like SAP Grants Management, SAP Portfolio and Project Management, Project System but also analyzing, designing and leading the process flows of the Foc³us project from the IT side. She has had this role for the past 5 years now, previously working for over 10 years as a functional consultant on the SAP CRM module. Not an obvious choice with a Bachelor’s degree in foreign languages. Next on my professional to do list will be the SAP S/4 HANA migration, where I will be responsible for the Business partner processes and Customer/Vendor integration. Find out more about my professional journey on https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarataeymans/. You can contact Sara on sara.taeymans@UGent.be

Zjef Mallaerts is a dedicated, enthusiastic and result-oriented SAP professional with over 16 years of experience in SAP solutions within universities and research institutions. He grew from SAP developer, business consultant and project leader into the role of Partner and competence lead for Flexso’s activities with regards to SAP Technologies, SAP S/4HANA and SAP & Flexso HER solutions. Flexso is a fully SAP focused end-to-end service provider supporting 140 active customers by leveraging extensive business & SAP know-how and expertise together with our 350+ SAP experts. As a civil engineer, Zjef really loves seeing both the full as well as the detailed picture, focusing on the strategic main goals and helping customers with as much enthusiasm and positive energy as possible to take project implementations to the next level. Throughout his career, Zjef is and was active at the University of Ghent, Tilburg University, University of Luxemburg, KU Leuven, University of Leiden, Imec. https://www.linkedin.com/in/zjefmallaerts/

Rob Jonkers is Global Senior Director SAP Higher Education & Research at SAP. He was born in the Netherlands and studied Human Resources at Fontys University and International Business at Vaasa University, Finland. Rob started his professional career as an IT system engineer and joined SAP in 2006 in the role of SAP HR consultant to combine IT and HR in practice. Since 2007 Rob focused on ‘Education’ in the corporate context (LMS etc) and within the academic context (SIS etc). Rob further specialized in supporting institutions globally in their digital transformation projects in a variety of areas from student information system implementations to student recruitment and in the area of student & learning analytics. Rob has gained extensive knowledge in large digital transformation projects by supporting diverse projects for institutions of higher education in an international environment. After a successful career as consultant in the higher ed space, Rob joined SAP’s Global Solution Management for Higher Education to further enhance SAP’s industry and lines of business cloud portfolio for the education industry. In his current role Rob is also responsible for advising SAP regarding technology trends and requirements in the Higher Education sector, and for managing relations with the global customer base of Colleges and Universities using SAP technology for teaching, research, and administration. He has spoken at numerous conferences and events worldwide on how Universities can effectively adopt (SAP) technology to platform, network and run the university. Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robjonkers/