"Digital Business" introduced as a new specialisation for business electives

Digitalisation and the Internet of Things are currently the buzzwords par excellence in pro-duction companies. According to an IDG study, the biggest obstacle to increasing digitisation potential is the lack of skilled workers in this area.  
In order to meet this need, it has been possible since the winter semester 2019/2020 for Ba-chelor students of industrial engineering and business and engineering to take elective mod-ules in the newly conceived specialisation "Digital Business". Until now, students could choose economic elective modules from the fields of production, sales, controlling or pur-chasing. In order to specialise in one of these fields, students from the chosen specialisation have to take two predetermined elective compulsory modules and two further modules from a subject catalog for in-depth study. If all modules are successfully completed, the student will receive a note on his specialisation in his Bachelor's degree certificate. Students who wish to broaden their horizons can also complete the "Genera-list" and freely choose the four elective modules from all specialization directions.
For the new specialization, students can attend lectures on the topics "Current Issues in Digi-tal Business Processes" and "Business Intelligence I" and additionally choose two courses from the lectures "Production-related Business Processes with SAP Software Solutions", as well as "Business Intelligence II" and "ERP Systems and Digital Transformation". The compo-sition of the subjects reflects the areas of expertise of Prof. Dr. Alexander Dobhan (Business Application), Prof. Dr. Bernd Knobloch (Business Intelligence) and the full-time lecturer for business processes in SAP, Jan Senner.
The focus on "Digital Business'" is innovative not only in terms of content but also with re-gard to the teaching concepts. At least two of the courses are strongly project-oriented, so that students not only hear about digitalisation but also experience it. In addition, the course "ERP Systems and Digital Transformation" is offered as a completely digital course via the Virtual University of Bavaria (vhb). In developing the course, the team of the ERP laboratory (Enterprise Resource Planning) around Professor Dr. Alexander Dobhan and Dipl. Wirtsch.-Inf. Johannes Beckert worked together with the Chair of Business Education at the University of Bamberg (Professor Dr. Karl-Heinz Gerholz). This project is supported by financial means of the vhb, which will be used to finance half a staff position at FHWS for more than a year. The digitalisation can thus be learned digitally, and via the vhb course even by students of other universities. The specialisation is offered in German as well as in English.