Answers to your questions on SAP training

I sent an email last week to you, the people subscribed to my blog. I asked you to let me know about any questions you may have on the ‘Beginner’s guide to sAP’ report and also questions on SAP in general. I have received a great deal of responses from you and I would like to thank you all for sending in your questions.

In this post, I will pick some of the questions that came up more than once and publish the answers I gave to the people who asked the questions.Here are your questions.

How do I know which SAP module is in demand?

This is one question which I always see coming up again and again. This does not come as a surprise because the SAP landscape is broad. With more than 25 industry solutions and more than 6 business process solutions, choosing which SAP module to start your career in can be a daunting task.

I did tackle this question in a previous post and I have had a lot of feedback in the comments on that same post. Feel free to go back and read the post but the main points to consider are

• Choose a module that is core to most company’s business processes and
• Choose a module that is needs similar skills to what you currently do or have a passion in doing

You can check for demand using job boards and research agencies. If you live in the UK, you can use ITJobsWatch. I have chosen SAP Business intelligence because it fits into the picture after considering both points.

How can I get hands-on practice for SAP certification?

There were two variants of this question. Some people wanted sample questions to pass the certification tests and some wanted to actually try their hands on SAP software. SAP offers sample questions on their website. Click here for the SAP sample questions. That is a great resource for anybody looking to take certification exams on the topics listed.

Getting hands-on experience with SAP software is also a must if you want to break into SAP consulting. There are companies that offer access to SAP software for a monthly fee. You can find more information in a previous post here. The price range is about $99.00/per month.

Some want to buy SAP IDES images from ebay. This is really not the way to go. Most of those images are either scams or images of really out-dated software. Not to talk about it being illegal. To get the job you want, is $99.00 too much of an investment to make? I don’t think so.

Where can I find affordable SAP training?

This is a question I asked myself a couple of months ago when I was looking to get SAP business intelligence training SAP training from an SAP academy is prohibitively expensive, running into thousands of $$. I found an institute here in London that had a good offer and threw 6 months of SAP IDES access in as well. I took the course and I loved it.

I have decided to develop a training course/study guide that will focus on SAP business intelligence and offer it to a limited number of subscribers of this blog for a massive discount. I am hoping these poeple will help me shape the course into the best SAP online course there is out there. I don’t want to go into too much detail but this is the first time I am announcing it and it is work in progress and if you want to more information,  you will have stay tuned and make sure you are subscribed to my mailing list.

I already have SAP training, how do I get a job?

This is another question that comes up very often. It is hard for freshers to get a job in SAP. There are no step-by-step rules. Let me give you one small tip though.

The world is changing, we are entering into the age where social media is becoming a part of our daily lives. The days of sending out CV’s and hoping that someone calls us for an interview are over. The best way to get a job in this economy is to stand out by getting into a discussion with the people that are working for the companies you want to work for. SAP has a community network SCN where a lot of SAP consultants, employees and newbies hang out. Join the SCN and take part in the forums, answer some questions, build your profile, be the person that is always willing to help.

After a while you will get noticed by people and when you decide to ask these people for a job, they will be happy to help. This is a strategy I am currently pursuing. It is a long term one, but if it takes 3 months to let my CV sit in a public database and wait for calls, I might as well get on networking site and build my profile in the same time.

Update: I just found this very interesting post from David Bann on how to find SAP jobs. There is a lot of useful information in that one post.

Wow, this post has ended up being longer than I expected. There were so many questions that came in and I am sorry if I haven’t highlighted yours here but I am sure I replied to every one personally. Thanks for sending them and please keep them coming. I will answer them if I can. We are in this journey together. You all are the reason why I do this and thank you for your support.

If you have any comments, please leave them below. I look forward to hearing them.