Hi, I’m Dominic Kennedy and I’m studying Computer Science at Newcastle University. In July, I started my 15 month long placement working as an Assistant Business Analyst for Newcastle University IT Service (NUIT). I am working within the Student Systems team, who are responsible for managing the Student Lifecycle Management processes within the University. SLM involves the full lifecycle of a student – from registration through to graduation – meaning that we provide a wide variety of different services to both students and staff.
Most of our work is done on SAP, a piece of enterprise resource planning software. SAP systems are used by many companies around the world to manage their business processes. Here at Newcastle University, we use SAP ERP for Student Data, Finance, Payroll and HR. Later this year, the University is migrating to SAP S/4 Hana – the next generation ERP system. Over the past 7 months, I have worked on numerous different projects such as:
- Confirmation/Clearing – One of the busiest times for the University. I had to make sure everyone had the correct computer account access and worked IT support during the training sessions.
- Student Attendance Monitoring – Processing student’s scans for monitored lectures and auditing the physical scanners.
- Annual Patching Exercise – Each year patches are applied to SAP ERP. Before the upgrade goes into the live system, multiple development/test environments must be tested vigorously. I was also in charge of maintaining the testing spreadsheets.
- Programme Code Mapping – A new coding system (HECoS) has been developed to classify subjects which is currently being implemented.
- General Support – Answering service desk calls on a variety of different issues.
Our team is very friendly and approachable. They were very welcoming from the start, helping me ease into working life and continue to be extremely supportive. We go on monthly team lunches, and the occasional trip to the pub after work on a Friday with the other teams in our office!
Our team is also recruiting for a placement student next year; so if you want to gain valuable experience, develop life skills and earn a competitive salary, then this is the placement for you! For more details follow the link:
For your first three months, I’ll still be working for NUIT, so we’ll be working closely together whilst you learn the basics. I found it nice to have another student around whilst I was getting to know everyone, and he also had plenty of useful knowledge to teach me (I just pestered him with lots of questions).
If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them – Just drop me an email at dominic.kennedy@newcastle.ac.uk