Did you know that up until now there have been no programs to provide JDE knowledge at the post-secondary level?

I never thought about it until very recently. I think the combination of my realization that a shortage of JDE resources is coming (or already exists), as the graybeards among us head out the door, and my interest in all things education related made me realize that “hey, this is something I can sink my teeth into, and actually do something about.”

So, in the last two months I’ve made a number of phone calls–talked with folks ranging from clients, to business partners, to JDE executives, to professors that teach IT in business schools, and it’s all starting to come together.

First, and most importantly, I decided that this is not just a JDEtips project. To succeed we need a number of different entities, working towards a common goal. JDEtips will be one of many business partners involved. I also decided this needed to be a separate organization–with its own Board of Directors–and that I would donate a significant portion of my time, for the next two years, to get it off the ground. After that, by early 2017, I hope that we can hire a full time Executive Director.

Next, I started thinking about the curriculum. JDEtips will provide training manuals and eLearning for Common Foundation/User Interface, Basic Financials and Basic Distribution. We can teach these subjects during a two week, on campus Bootcamp. iLearnERP is providing some excellent JDE eLearning that we’ll use to supplement the manuals.

Given the curriculum, I then started thinking about prerequisite courses for the students. Learning JDE would pretty much be wasted on students that don’t have any knowledge of accounting, ERP, and end to end business processes like order to cash and procure to pay. So all those courses need to be taken, typically through the IT division of the Business School, before the JDE courses. For this reason, I think we need to have the program hosted by four year institutions, and not community colleges.

Next, we needed someone to step up and host an EnterpriseOne training environment. Victor Lang of Smartbridge, an Oracle business partner, has stepped up to that challenge.

I’d like to offer four of these sessions next summer at different Universities, in the US (and perhaps Canada). After that, we’ll look at further international expansion outside North America.  And year by year we’ll expand the number of participating universities and colleges with an eventual goal of training 1,000 students every year.

To pull this off, I’ll need your help. JDE clients, JDE business partners, Universities and Colleges–please let me know if you want to be involved. Contact me at [email protected] if you have any questions, suggestions, or ways that you’d like to help make this happen.

I am very optimistic that this program will succeed. That feeling was buoyed by an email I received from an independent JDE consultant. I had asked her if she’d like to volunteer to teach for the program, and she replied:

“I’m definitely interested as I strongly believe we need more young people in JDE. It has been a great place for me to develop a career, so I’d like to see others find a place, too.”