The German SAP is one of the world’s largest software companies, helping all kinds of industries run at their best. Here’s a fact you might want to know: 77% of transactions in the world are connected to SAP technologies. Another fact: the close collaboration between the industry giant and TUMO Labs has resulted in various projects in business and services and customer relationship management implemented by TUMO Labs students.
As part of this ongoing collaboration, SAP brought their expertise to the students involved in their innovative research challenges. Students had the opportunity to conduct research, choosing topics such as the Future of Self-Service, Access Control and management systems, and Knowledge Graphs.
19-year-old Arevik Armenakyan, for example, chose to study new trends in access control and management systems and perform an industrial market analysis. A key condition for this challenge was an interest in business, which Arevik definitely has!
“This was a good opportunity to develop my communication skills as well, because after conducting the research, I had to present it to all kinds of people, from SAP representatives to our peers. Someone once said that if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. I find that completely true,” Arevik reflects.
At the beginning of the project, a variety of lectures and meetings were organized for the students with specialists from the SAP Startup Factory. During these meetings, students had the opportunity to ask questions and prepare to take on the challenges that were set.
Photos from a series of TUMO Labs and SAP meetings with students
“Data breaches are a big problem. Through my research, I decided to understand whether there are methods to prevent these breaches from happening. When I started, I realized that there were many innovations that I hadn’t even heard of before joining the program. For example – biometric access control verifies biometric data. I also studied and talked about managing the cloud,” says Arevik.
Formerly 42 Yerevan, now TUMO Labs students Norayr Muradyan and Milena Movsisyan, who had just met when SAP and TUMO Labs announced the competition, soon realized they were both interested in data science and decided to apply together.
“For our project, we chose “The Future of Self-Service” as it included technical aspects in addition to research,” mentions Norayr. “ We were very interested in data analysis. We weren’t initially familiar with it and thanks to the project we could delve into its implementation right away. We faced a major mishap and were left with no option but to start from scratch with an extremely limited time on our hands. Thankfully, we managed everything and now look back at it as a learning experience. The project was especially helpful for entering the data field,” tells Milena.
27-year-old Vardine Sargsyan has extensive work experience in the field of finance and is a newcomer to TUMO Labs. She was still on the lookout for a career change, when she came across the announcement of the competition and decided to try her hand at “The Future of Self-Service” challenge.
“While doing my research, I became familiar with personalization and hyper-personalization. I found out where the data is collected from and how Data Privacy can regulate it. It was a fascinating experience,” Vardine shares.
Upon completion, students presented their projects, talked about past stages, and listened to the experts’ opinions and assessment. While students implement their newly-acquired skills in the job market, TUMO Labs and SAP work to develop new projects and challenges.
