Just last Friday, Digital Senior braved the huge Mapletree Business City to witness the signing of an MOU for the beginning of something special: SAP Skills University Singapore!
Before you jump out of your skin wondering when this seventh university (SSUS??) happened, and if you’ve been propelled into an alternate dimension, wait! You’re still on the right plane of existence.
Let us explain.
What is this SAP Skills University?
It’s not a university or educational institution à la SUSS or NTU!
Instead, it will be a range of training programmes co-developed and delivered by SAP and the five polytechnics. The programmes aim to impart unto mid-career/existing Information and Communication Technology professionals, as well as aspiring ICT jobseekers with specialized skills, so they stay future-ready and prepared for the changing economic landscape.
Why now, and why the necessity?
We live in interesting times, where digital disruption has changed the way companies and markets play. Anyone can be in danger of becoming irrelevant if they don’t upskill or reskill …in time.
To emphasize this reality, the managing director of SAP Singapore, Mr. Khor Chern Chuen, notes how “…out of the 1955 list of Fortune 500 companies,” he shares, only 60 remain as of last year”.
If we do the math, that’s a mere 12%.
Closer to home, digital ATMs and service kiosks can and are set to do the jobs of bank tellers: local banks here are developing new technologies that can perform a large number of over-the-counter bank services. As a result, bank teller roles will undergo major cutting and staff will be retrained to take up broader roles.
Changes are happening fast, and we need to anticipate an education model, complementing the existing ones, that will help us to react quickly. SAP Skills University’s skills-based model, which enables constant ‘bite-sized chunks’ of hands-on learning, assists this. SAP, working with the polytechnics, will provide training resources to ICT lecturers to help expand their training capacity, amongst other things.
What’s on offer, and can we have a sneak peek?
The SAP Skills University is a tri-sector collaboration (the first of its kind in South East Asia!). The last partner, which will provide funding support, is SkillsFuture Singapore. This has helped SAP Skills University Singapore, when it opens, to:
- Provide career advisory and placements services for ICT related jobs
- Offer SAP training programmes delivered through innovative blended learning, two of which will be Work Learn Programmes. (The first will be a Professional Conversion Program and the second programme, for fresh polytechnic grads looking to kick-start a career in the ICT sector.)
In the training programmes, students will be exposed to emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Blockchain.
That could experience with SAP’s various applications and emerging technologies result in? Countless possibilities! To visualise them, we take a short tour of SAP’s Leonardo Center, a center showcasing digital innovation to learn more.
Solving real-world problems with technology
We interacted with a few exhibits in the SAP Leonardo Center, and one particularly fascinating one was the Smart Stadium Experience.
We’ve all been to a game or performance at a stadium before, and know how it can sometimes be a hair-pulling experience. Road jams, missing the moment a favourite player scores a goal, squeezing through crowds on the way out…
How do you improve and create a better fan experience? That was a question SAP pondered over, and with the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and other technologies, they created a fan engagement app.
The app helps stadium management and staff to relay information, in-real time, to a match-goer, even before the start of a match all the way till it ends! Information such as which gates have the most or least traffic so match-goers can enter on time, as well as when and where to send food to a match-goer that ordered food from an e-shop, can be accessed and used accordingly.
If this sounds futuristic and too grand a scale to imagine, you’ll be pleased to know that such technology (SAP Process Orchestration Software) has started being used…by Bayern Munich, in their Allianz Arena stadium!
In fact, according to the club’s director of media, digital and communications Stefan Mennerich,“[the club is] 10 times faster now in various areas”!
We’d tell you more, but we think you should see it for yourself. (;
If you’re interested to see what the SAP Skills University can offer you when it officially launches and are keen on learning all these technologies, do swing by Temasek Polytechnic, where it’d be located when it’s officially launched! Digital Senior looks forward to what the SAP Skills University will have in store*!
(*Until then, you can explore SAP’s MOOCs here.)
