HERUG Business Meeting

Notes

April 19, 2000

1. New Membership

Concerns were raised that the HERUG executive was not catching all the new Universities that were signing up with SAP.

E. Wallis stated that SAP sends out a list of new clients to the chair of HERUG and it is up to the delegates to contact the institutions and add them to the list.

All present were requested to tell other HER SAP prospects or customers of the HER user group and to point them to the HERUG web page at WEB.MIT.EDU/HER so they could join the user group.

There was a discussion on what criteria was used for organizations to be added to HERUG. J. Hollberg stated that it was, in fact, up to this users group to decide who they wanted to join the group. In 1996, because of different requirements, two user groups were set up, one for Government (local and state) and the other one for Higher Education.

After discussion, the consensus of the group was to remain with the current membership policy, that adds only professional institutions that are SAP customers and are under the Higher Education and Research category using R/3 for production.

L. Seymour stated that new members should be prepared to make decisions regarding the user group on behalf on their institutions at the HERUG meeting.

2. Newcastle 2001

G. Kemp asked the membership to comment on a theme/ideas for the next HERUG meeting in Newcastle. There was consensus among the members that they did not want to see sales pitches. They want to see how members are using other products such as Business Warehouse/Cognos in conjunction with R/3. They also want to see presentations on what the different universities/colleges were currently doing as it helps them rethink/ approach issues. The members also felt that it would be useful to know in advance what presentations would be taking place. They agreed that the presentations should be shorter, leaving more time for workshops.

3. New Executive

The new executive for 2000/2001 will be:

Chair John Goddard, University of Newcastle

Vice-Chair John Julian, Monash University

Past-Chair Graham Kemp, University of Toronto

Directors: Lisa Seymour, University of South Africa

Glen Pinkston, Duke University

It was decided by the membership that if someone resigned from the executive, the seat would remain vacant unless a replacement could be found from the same institution. The Chairs term of office is for one year and elections are merit based rather then institutional based. As it was decided to discontinue with the SAPPHIRE meeting in September; the terms of office are effective immediately.

4. Conference 2002

The HERUG conference in 2002 will be hosted by John Julian, Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

5. Mid-Year Meeting

There was general consensus that the HERUG meeting following SAPPHIRE be discontinued as the mid-year meeting. There was discussion on setting up regional meetings for the North America members. The consensus of the membership was that the SAPPHIRE meeting be replaced with Educause. There was consensus among the members that HERUG continue to have its main meeting in April/May.

6. Consultants

After general discussion, it was decided that consultants should not be involved with the HERUG conference unless they are representing a University/College, or SAP.

7. HERUG Website

It was decided that MIT would continue to host the official HERUG communication website where members can communicate with each other. It was also decided that the name and e-mail address of the official HERUG representative from each institution be added to the HERUG web page. This will allow communication with specific institutions.

8. Development Requests

After general discussion on development requests, it was decided that the new annual development request cycle would be designed around the annual HERUG meeting. This will allow customers to find out more about development requests prior to voting for them. The following annual cycle was agreed upon:

- all development requests to be submitted by December 1;

- by early February, SAP Product Management from the Public Sector IBU, SAP AG to add input and feedback on the requests. This will include adding SAP comments; removing redundancy; establishing whether requests are feasible, not feasible or currently under development;

- by mid-February, the HERUG executive and SAP representatives will create a votable list and decide on the requests that could be refined at workshops at the annual HERUG meeting;

- prior to the HERUG meeting, SAP representatives will send out questionnaires to all HERUG participants to guide the workshops;

- on the first day of the annual HERUG meeting, workshops will be run on the relevant development requests. It was suggested that 3 parallel sessions be run, Finance, HR/Payroll and Student;

- on the final day of the HERUG meeting, SAP representatives will talk to the remaining items on the list;

- voting will occur one month after the annual HERUG meeting.