UC San Diego opts for Student Lifecycle Management on SAP S/4HANA

It was worth the wait and effort. After several request for proposals, and much consideration and discussion, UCSD, and SAP providers invenioLSI and NTT DATA Business Solutions Benelux, established their partnership officially. There are no rings involved. But they did seal the deal with a contract for the implementation of SAP’s Student Lifecycle Management. This will be supported by the SAP HANA database and rolled out in the form of NTT DATA’s own it.education add-on for SAP Student Lifecycle Management.

Up until now, University California San Diego has been using ISIS as the go-to-system for student information management. UCSD wanted a solution that contained richness in functionality and opportunities to accommodate all specific and unique processes within their university, without compromising on educational methods.

Mark Arts, business unit director Higher Education at NTT DATA comments: “The system UCSD uses now, is at the end of its life. Due to the technology used, it is almost impossible to maintain it. What they wanted was a Student Information System that could provide live insights into the entire student lifecycle, and a system that harbors a single source of truth per default. They found that match in the solution invenioLSI and our experts showed them: our it.education and Student Lifecycle Management on SAP S/4HANA.”

Academic processes that will be supported once the system is live will be: course and class scheduling, enrollment and registration, academic records, curriculum management, and student finance.

An unconventional project approach

While the system runs on a Cloud Service by a hyperscaler, invenioLSI will take care of the system maintenance, licenses, and the implementation support. The team of NTT DATA will focus on the training of the UCSD project team and subject matter experts. The first round of introductory training sessions in which the team will learn about the components of it.education and SLcM, is planned to start in March. The next step is less conventional in the world of IT projects.

Mark: “Where we usually are flown in to carry out the entire implementation, the core project team of UCSD will be performing a great deal of the implementation themselves. To get them up to speed and make sure they have the right technical know-how, our experts are training the core team as we speak. They’re teaching the UCSD subject matter experts to configurate our solution, and coach them on how to take the right decisions in functional design. The design process will be supported by the experts of invenioLSI who have implemented it.education before. Of course, as experts and product owners, we will monitor the project closely and will help UCSD where needed.”

Great eye for detail by the UCSD stakeholders

During the RFP phase, stakeholders throughout the university defined the campus’ needs to select the best system for UCSD. The university states on its website: “The goal of all those involved in this project is to implement this new system thoughtfully, applying lessons learned from past projects, and SLcM was chosen with this in mind. As we move forward with this project, we will continue to prioritize the needs of our faculty, staff, and student users, seek to improve and optimize the user experience and ensure the system allows users to do the work they need to do within the system.”

About the expected go-live date, it states: “With this new milestone, the target go-live for a new SIS will be in 2026, pending readiness of the system and the university. The project core team is working closely with project leadership and the vendor to identify a more specific go-live date and will share that with the university community once it is known.”

An interesting detail is that UCSD is the second American university that has opted for the NTT DATA it.education add-on for SLcM on SAP S/4HANA. The first one being the Airforce University that experienced their implementation fully remote during corona times.

Of course, we will keep you updated on the progress of this project with UCSD and invenioLSI. In the meantime, take a peek at our Student Lifecycle Management solutions here.

Want to know more about our solutions? Contact Mark Arts directly or via the form below.