Customer Solution Case Study
/ / BusinessSchool Brings Learning to Life by Using Business Management Software
Overview
Country or Region:North America
Industry:Education
Customer Profile
The College of Business and Behavioral Science at ClemsonUniversity in Clemson, South Carolina, is a fully accredited business college and serves about 4,000 of the University’s 16,000 students.
Business Situation
The College believes in providing a hands-on system to help students acquire business management skills effectively. But the system in place was costly and difficult to maintain.
Solution
The College implemented Microsoft® Business Solutions–Great Plains® software to provide business and accounting students with a relevant, valuable learning experience.
Benefits
Relevant, valuable learning experience with compelling results
Optimal use of faculty resources
Low-overhead technology solution, extensible to other fields
Educational leadership and sustained innovation / “[B]usiness students learn best when we combine theory and practical application. Our project with Microsoft Great PlainsbenefitsClemsonstudents and the businesses that hire them.”
Larry LaForge, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Management, College of Business and Behavioral Science,ClemsonUniversity
ClemsonUniversity aims to provide students a relevant, valuable learning experience, usinglimited resources. The university wants to integrate management systems into business classrooms, but avoid the high overhead costs of hardware and software implementation and maintenance. With resources available through the Microsoft® Business Solutions Academic Alliance, the College of Business and Behavioral Science implemented Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains® software(now part of Microsoft Dynamics™)to run a virtual business. Now, students of management and accounting learn effectively in a hands-on environment, and faculty are more productive in preparing students for the business world. Long known for innovation in learning, ClemsonUniversity enhanced its educational leadership, winning the Pinnacle Award for Excellence in Education at Microsoft Convergence 2005, the worldwide conference of Microsoft customers.
Situation
The College of Business and Behavioral Science at ClemsonUniversity in Clemson, South Carolina, has a long-standing commitment to excellence in teaching and leadership in developing innovative educational programs. The College’s mission is to develop leaders, conduct research, and engage in professional and public service activities that contribute to economic, social, and intellectual development. Fully accredited by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business, the College of Business and Behavioral Science has nearly 4,000 of ClemsonUniversity’s 16,000 students.
The College of Business and Behavioral Science offers undergraduate and graduatecourses in operations management and accounting. To give students a realistic learning experience, the College is committed to the use of business management software to integrate topics in the curriculum. Initial efforts involved a manufacturing resource planning system running on a mid-size computer. In use since the late 1980s, this system enabled students to practice real-life operations management in a manufacturing business using a simulation. However, the instructors had to invest much time and effort in maintaining operating system software for the manufacturing application.
The system also required costly maintenance. With ClemsonUniversity’s limited technical resources, maintenance soon became a budget drain and took instructors away from teaching students and developing course content. The College decided to replace the system. Main requirements for a new learning solution included:
Consistency with the body of knowledge taught in operations management and accounting courses
Ability to extend the tool for use in other areas of business management
Inexpensive operation and maintenance.
The College also hoped that a new business management learning solution would help it fulfill its mission with greater effectiveness and help it attract committed students and excellent instructors.
Solution
ClemsonUniversity conducted a thorough survey of available solutions and decided on Microsoft® Business Solutions–Great Plains® software. A compelling factor in the decision was the opportunity to use the resources of the Microsoft Business Solutions Academic Alliance.
Advantages of the Microsoft Business Solutions Academic Alliance
As a sustaining resource for education, the Microsoft Business Solutions Academic Alliance makes Microsoft Business Solutions available to students and instructors. Students can participate in hands-on experiences and gain business insight. Through the Academic Alliance, instructors and universities can receive tools and support to enhance their business, management, accounting, and sales curricula while operating within budget constraints. For faculty and staff, the Academic Alliance also provides online training courses and access to a community of educators and partners committed to using technology to bring learning to life.
Trouble-Free Implementation of a New Learning Technology
The College first implemented Microsoft Business Solutions for Manufacturing–Great Plains, including, as well,the Purchase Order Processing, Sales Order Processing, and Inventory Control modules from Microsoft Business Solutions for Distribution–Great Plains in its Manufacturing Management Laboratory. Microsoft Great Plains became the manufacturing management solution for a virtual business, Orange Office Products, a maker of office furniture. A year later, using the data from the manufacturing operation, the College implemented Microsoft Business Solutions for Financial Management–Great Plains.
The solution runs on Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server, with Microsoft SQL Server™2000 databasestoring information and events pertaining to the virtual business. Client computers on the Clemson network use theMicrosoft Windowsoperating system. The deployment of Microsoft Great Plains and SQL Server was smooth and rapid, using internal ClemsonUniversity resources.
The virtual manufacturing business operates in real time, just like a real business, with “vacation” during academic holidays. A random-number generator built using the Microsoft Office Excel® 2003 spreadsheet software creates the unpredictable events at the heart of the business and easily integrates with Microsoft Great Plains. Such events include actual customer demand, supplier performance, and downtime. While these numbers fall within an expected range, neither students nor instructors can predict them with certainty, adding to the realism of the virtual business.
The manufacturing operations feed into the financial system, where general and administrative expenses result from the use of additional random-generation routines. Individual instructors can also add data to support concepts relevant to individual courses, such as asset purchases, accounts receivable write-offs, and mortgage loan amortizations.
Real Learning in a Virtual Business
Each student has a dedicated terminal in the Manufacturing Management Laboratory, and classes are never larger than 20 students. Students interact with Microsoft Great Plains in several ways in both the manufacturing and accounting sides of the virtual business.
Manufacturing runs a complete, virtual operation:
Master planning, capacity planning, material planning, and scheduling.In senior-level and graduate courses in operations and manufacturing planning and control, students work practically on such tasks as master production scheduling, capacity requirements, and manufacturing order scheduling. For example, students learn how to verify that a planned order release in Microsoft Great Plains states the correct quantity and release date for the item, given the current master production schedule, bill of materials, planned lead times, order policies, and available inventory.
Managing. Once familiar with basic operations management principles and practices, students receive the option to join a project team running the virtual business. Students assume managerial roles in the virtual business and are responsible for all business decisions. Students’ success in running the business with the help of Microsoft Great Plains is a major component of their course grade.
Accounting students analyze and work with the data coming out of the manufacturing operation:
Business data review. In introductory accounting systems courses, students review data from Microsoft Great Plains to illustrate business events they learn about in their textbooks.
Financial problem-solving. In selected intermediate accounting courses, students work on financial problems that can occur in the virtual business and develop adjustments or other solutions for them.
Forensic accounting. In a graduate accounting course, which focuses on forensic accounting, students research Microsoft Great Plains data to identify possible problems, find the causes, and resolve them.
Benefits
At ClemsonUniversity, Microsoft Great Plains delivers the results instructors hoped for: A relevant, valuable learning experience for students, optimal use of instructor resources with low overhead, and the capability to extend the solution into other business areas. Confirming the success of the Microsoft Great Plains implementation at the College of Business and Behavioral Science, ClemsonUniversity received a Pinnacle Award for Excellence in Education at Microsoft Convergence 2005, the worldwide conference of Microsoft customers.
Relevant, Valuable Learning Experience with Compelling Results
Larry LaForge, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Management at Clemson University, says, “The active learning approach we take with Microsoft Great Plains is well received by our students because they see the activities as highly relevant.”
Students learn operations and financial management in a real-life context. Field trips to companies, visits from guest speakers in the field, and participation in the Clemson Student Chapter of APICS – The Society for Operations Management enhance student learning, confirming consistently that classroom learning with the help of Microsoft Great Plains is relevant and valuable. Many students gauge the success of their studies by the welcome they find when entering the business world, which supports the College’s approach.
The College encourages and assists advanced students participating in the management of the virtual business in featuring their experience on their resumes. Selected students can post their resumes on the Web site of the Manufacturing Management Laboratory, where prospective employers can see them. Students report a good reception in the workplace. Operations management students from the College have found employment at leading manufacturing companies, including Milliken, BMW Manufacturing, Allied Signal, and Ryerson Steel. Accounting students, who manage the financial information and taxes for the virtual business, also pursue rewarding careers. Many undergraduate accounting students take positions with corporations, while graduate students usually become auditors or tax accountants.
It also helps that the user interface in Microsoft Great Plains is similar to what students experience in the Microsoft Office System programs such as Microsoft Office Word 2003 and the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client. Students need little training to start looking at data and events in Microsoft Great Plains and working effectively with the software.
Optimal Use of Faculty Resources
Instructors no longer worry about maintaining the system or the equipment it runs on. As Professor LaForge says, “We have cut out a major cause of wasted time and lost productivity by implementing Microsoft Great Plains. Faculty can focus on the success of students’ learning, not the technology.”
Richard Dull, Assistant Professor of Accounting at ClemsonUniversity, confirms, “We can now effectively get students to a point where they understand realistic issues and work onaddressing them, as opposed to presenting students with textbook problems and business narratives.”
Professor Dull emphasizes that he does not dwell much on Microsoft Great Plains, itself—there is simply no need to do so. Because of the ease of use of the solution, he moves quickly to real-life business challenges. “The virtual business never stops,” Professor Dull explains. “It’s like any real operation. As the instructor, I don’t recycle problems over and over, but expose students to the endless variety of financial situations they will encounter on the job.”
Low-Overhead Technology Solution, Extensible to Other Fields
Other faculty members at the College have expressed interest in using Microsoft Great Plains in their classrooms. The customer relationship management and human resource management modules of Microsoft Great Plains may be the next to enhance the learning environment as the College moves toward an integrated enterprise model serving all business majors.
Support and training requirements for Microsoft Great Plains are minimal. ClemsonUniversity maintains the server for the College. The University’s Innovation Fund purchased the server and helped to pay for travel and one week of training on Microsoft Great Plainsmanufacturing modules for Professor LaForge. He brought everybody up-to-speed on the product. Other faculty training took place through online courses.
As the College extends and customizes Microsoft Great Plains for more instructors, students, and a greater variety of courses, it will engage with a Microsoft Business Solutions partner who sells and supports Microsoft Business Solutions software to customers, and draw on the partner’s expertise. The partner relationship will help increase the benefits of using Microsoft Great Plains while keeping overhead to a healthy minimum.
Educational Leadership and Sustained Innovation
ClemsonUniversity and its College of Business and Behavioral Science have won much positive visibility with their use of business technology in the classroom. Professors LaForge and Dull frequently receive inquiries from other schools considering enhancements to their learning environment. Prospective students tend to seek out ClemsonUniversity after hearing about its innovative, practical approach to learning. Typically, information sessions for prospective students and orientations for newly enrolled students include discussions of the learning environment with Microsoft Great Plains. ClemsonUniversity has publicized its approach to local media, and a tour of the Manufacturing Management Laboratory is a frequent highlight of visitor tours at the College.
ClemsonUniversity strongly promotes innovative teaching, to the point of making it a factor in its faculty reward system. “We believe that business students learn best when we combine theory and practical application,” says Professor LaForge. “Our project with Microsoft Great PlainsbenefitsClemson students and the businesses that hire them.”
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship
and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to: