Context
Vienna University of Economics and Business (Wirtschaftsuniversität – WU), a business school with over 26 000 students, embarked on a large-scale digital transformation programme in 2019. The initiative was driven by the university’s ambition to mirror the level of its physical campus in the digital sphere, creating a modern and user-friendly environment for students and staff. The project was spearheaded by the vice-president for infrastructure and digital transformation, who collaborated with the chief information officer to design the strategy. Overall governance fell under the vice-president’s domain.
Objectives
The digital transformation strategy had several key objectives. One crucial goal was to equip all students with digital skills by modifying existing curricula and introducing a new master’s programme in ‘digital economy.’ The programme also fostered a new research focus on the digital economy, supported by the recruitment of new professors and researchers in this field. Furthermore, the IT landscape was scheduled for a complete overhaul, with a focus on realignment and renewal of all major IT platforms. A core principle was to ensure anytime, anywhere access to all university services for users.
Implementation
To achieve these objectives, a comprehensive digital transformation programme ‘transforming tomorrow’ was launched. This programme encompassed several large-scale projects aimed at modernising the university’s entire IT landscape and transforming the user experience. The projects included: (1) a shift from desktop computers to laptops equipped with cloud-based services for communication and collaboration, (2) a migration to the latest generation of SAP’s ERP and HR management system, and (3) a complete overhaul of the student administration system to improve user-friendliness and mobile accessibility. Additionally, a new online learning environment with a cloud-based learning management system and video platform was implemented to facilitate both purely digital and hybrid teaching formats. On the research front, a new digital solution was introduced to streamline research project management and associated outputs, while the digital research infrastructure was redesigned, renewed and centralised to accommodate the evolving needs of data analysis and processing.