Developing An International Business to Business Process Curriculum: Extending the Classroom Walls with ERP-Software

As businesses progress into the 21 century, they have embraced an ERP driven, web-centric, business to business process orientation in an effort to remain competitive. In order to prepare students for this new process oriented e-business world, Universities need to develop curricula that not only expose students to the use of ERP systems but introduce organizational and technical issues that enterprises face when developing business to business processes. This paper describes the framework and continuing development of a cooperative curriculum between two Universities that address these issues of new e-centric business practices. The developed curriculum utilizes SAP R/3 and the web to link geographically dispersed students to address cross-cultural and inter-organizational issues revolving around ERP, helping students to understand the integration of business processes.