The fol­low­ing guest per­spec­tive was authored by Murat Adi­var, mem­ber of the man­age­ment board of SAP North Amer­i­can Aca­d­e­m­ic Com­mu­ni­ty and Found­ing Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for ERP and Advanced Ana­lyt­ics (CER­PAA) at Fayet­teville State University.

Near­ly 20 years ago, I joined SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances — the ecosys­tem of uni­ver­si­ties that teach SAP — and lat­er became a mem­ber of ASUG. It quick­ly became a dream of mine to con­nect the two and build a strong partnership.

Being the ecosys­tem of SAP cus­tomers across North Amer­i­ca, ASUG is a log­i­cal mem­ber­ship orga­ni­za­tion to cre­ate a bridge between the stu­dents who are learn­ing the lat­est SAP skills and the orga­ni­za­tions that are seek­ing that talent.

I’m a mem­ber of the man­age­ment board of SAP North Amer­i­can Aca­d­e­m­ic Com­mu­ni­ty and Found­ing Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for ERP and Advanced Ana­lyt­ics (CER­PAA) at Fayet­teville State Uni­ver­si­ty, home to an SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances Lab and a grow­ing ERP work­force devel­op­ment ecosys­tem serv­ing stu­dents, pro­fes­sion­als, and mil­i­tary vet­er­ans. I’ve vol­un­teered for and cham­pi­oned the ASUG Car­oli­nas Chap­ter since 2021, and in 2024, we began part­ner­ing with ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect to bring net­work­ing and poten­tial jobs to stu­dents and veterans.

At Fayet­teville State Uni­ver­si­ty, this col­lab­o­ra­tion has been par­tic­u­lar­ly mean­ing­ful for mil­i­tary-con­nect­ed learn­ers and tran­si­tion­ing ser­vice mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ing in our U.S. Army-approved Career Skills Pro­gram. Through part­ner­ships with ASUG mem­bers and indus­try lead­ers, we help learn­ers trans­late tech­ni­cal and lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence into civil­ian ERP and SAP career pathways.

Ulti­mate­ly, my col­leagues and I view the edu­ca­tion pro­gram as an end-to-end busi­ness process. It starts with stu­dent enroll­ment, but it does not end in grad­u­a­tion or a diplo­ma. For us, the end task is when the stu­dent starts their career by land­ing their first ERP-relat­ed role.

We first con­nect with those in the indus­try — ASUG cus­tomers, part­ners, and SAP — to under­stand what is hap­pen­ing in the tech world, so we can gain a greater under­stand­ing of the skills and tal­ents they seek. Then, we redesign our pro­grams and cours­es. Semes­ter after semes­ter, we regroup to stay cur­rent with indus­try trends.

That’s why it’s a real tal­ent pipeline rather than a tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic program.

We reg­u­lar­ly bring SAP cus­tomers and ASUG mem­bers to the class vir­tu­al­ly. I teach a course in which Deloitte rep­re­sen­ta­tives work with our fac­ul­ty and stu­dents to solve one of their (anonymized) cus­tomers’ prob­lems in the class­room. The stu­dents work like real con­sul­tants to find solu­tions. This is a win-win because Deloitte gains fresh per­spec­tives and ear­ly engage­ment with emerg­ing tal­ent, while our stu­dents expe­ri­ence real con­sult­ing sce­nar­ios and prob­lem-solv­ing dur­ing class.

I’m always bring­ing my stu­dents to the ASUG Car­oli­nas Chap­ter meet­ings, where they can see busi­ness process­es in action and deep­en their under­stand­ing of the real-world appli­ca­tions of SAP technology.

Across more than 500 learn­ers, we have seen strong place­ment out­comes, with grad­u­ates enter­ing SAP and ERP-relat­ed careers in con­sult­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, tech­nol­o­gy, defense, and sup­ply chain. I attend­ed ASUG TechEd in Louisville back in Novem­ber 2025, and one of the stu­dents I brought along was quick­ly hired. This is the norm. Many of my for­mer stu­dents are now work­ing for Apple, Deloitte, Accen­ture, the U.S. mil­i­tary, Lock­heed Mar­tin, Lil­ly, Park­er Han­nifin, MANN+HUMMEL, and even SAP.

My advice to com­pa­nies that want to gain access to the top-tier tal­ent com­ing straight out of col­lege: Inter­act more with acad­e­mia. There’s a lot to learn from our stu­dents. Deep­er engage­ment with acad­e­mia lets com­pa­nies build struc­tured tal­ent pipelines instead of end­less­ly attend­ing career fairs and com­ing up short.

Indus­try often oper­ates on urgent busi­ness time­lines, while acad­e­mia focus­es on long-term capa­bil­i­ty devel­op­ment. Bridg­ing these two worlds is not always easy, but it is essen­tial, and ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect is help­ing make that con­nec­tion possible.

Join ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect today to start bridg­ing the tal­ent gap at your uni­ver­si­ty or enterprise.