JEDDAH: The Northern Borders University (NBU), Saudi Arabia has selected SunGard Higher Education, a global provider of education software and technology services, to support its mission for quality higher education in the remote areas of Arar, Rafha and Turayf in the Kingdom. This is one in a series of initiatives planned to help ensure that students from these areas can obtain quality higher education without having to migrate to the major cities in the Kingdom. SunGard Higher Education, in collaboration with International Turnkey Systems (ITS), will help NBU deploy the Banner Digital Campus as part of a multi-phased project. The first phase of the project will involve the deployment of Banner Student and Banner Financial Aid with the associated Arabic Language User Interface support. These solutions are tailored to help institutions like NBU streamline their administrative processes and provide enhanced learning resources to students and faculty members. Specifically, the solutions will provide 24/7 online access to campus resources and information. Students will be able to search and register for classes by term or date, as well as retrieve relevant data online, while faculty members will be able to manage course information, rosters, grading, and advise students from remote locations. “This project will be a key turning point in our evolution as a new institution of higher education in Saudi Arabia. We have a responsibility to match and even surpass the quality of higher education offered in the best universities worldwide and we have looked to SunGard Higher Education for support because of its global reputation and strong local presence,” said Dr. Abdulrahman Bin Ali Said Malawi, Vice Rector, NBU. SunGard Higher Education's Banner Digital Campus is a widely used administrative system, or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, for higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia. NBU is the 12th institution in the Kingdom to have adopted Banner. The growing number of Banner customers in the country is supporting innovation and further development of a localized version for Saudi universities. Commenting on the localized version of the Banner Digital Campus for Saudi universities, Mathew Boice, Vice President, EMEA and India, SunGard Higher Education, said: “The growing community of Banner customers in Saudi provides new opportunities for institutions to share best practices and collaborate on new ideas. We are supporting this collaboration through our online Commons customer community and our Community Source initiatives. Both allow our customers to share experiences, ask questions, and find answers through a collaborative and informed network; this helps make functionality available faster and helps ensure product quality through functional and technical review.”
