It’s been a while since I posted to the site, I have really missed doing that. The reason for the short absence is that I have been working hard on a new project in the last 2 months. It is a website that promises to give a lot of valuable information to newbies looking to get into SAP.
You can check out the site here. SAP Unveiled

What will you get from  SAP Unveiled?

Let me give you some background information on why I started SAP Unveiled. I have been getting a lot of questions about how to get break into SAP as a newbie without experience. So I decided to do some research.

• I spoke to current SAP professionals to get their advice on getting your first SAP job.
• I also spoke to career experts on what it takes to get a job in an field where you have little or no experience.
• I have also done some in-depth reearch into the techniques you can use to secure SAP jobs.

What came out of these research have been explained in the articles and videos you will find on SAP Unveiled.

Please click over to SAP unveiled now to get a teaser of what you will get from the site. Make sure you remember to sign up for the series of articles with a valid email address and you will also get notified when SAP unveiled is launched.

I will still continue to provide free high-value tutorials on SAP Business Intelligence on this site
in case you are concerned that it will stop but I have seen two groups on this site, if you are looking
for tutorials on SAP business intelligence, this is where to be. But if you are looking for information
on SAP career guidance, SAP Unveiled will best serve you.

Click here to see the free articles that will be released before the site launches next week.

Thank you for your support, it has been a great motivator for me to continue to give you valuable
information.

I bumped into an old school classmate of mine one day and it was a sad encounter. Here was this guy, brilliant, one of the top performers in school he sure helped me a lot with my assignments. He got into trouble for something he did wrong and got kicked out of school and I never heard from him since. Now he is a cleaner at a fast food restaurant. To cut the long story short, I got his contact details and tried to get him to do some professional exams that will help him get a job. But somehow, he hasn’t done any and this is one year ago. I know he is capable of ace-ing the exams and getting a good job but it seems as if he is somehow comfortable in his situation.

“There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.” John F. Kennedy.

Inaction is a very common mistake that people make and you may not know it but it can single-handedly put a stranglehold on you career and snuff the life out of it. I am also guilty of inaction myself and this is why many people fail to live to their potential. Why is this so? Here are some reasons.

Fear of rejection

You might have  a job right now which you terribly hate doing but you are somehow perversely comfortable in it. Maybe because your task at work is something you know how to do well and people look up to you and don’t want to lose that or you are scared of not living up to expectations at a new job. Someone once told me that the moment you achieve “guru” status in any field is the time you stop growing. Why? because you stop learning and people start learning from you. After they have received all they can from you, they move on to better things and you are left to teach the newbies. You should never stop trying to improve yourself.

Fear of the unknown

You are scared that if you quit your job now because you may not find another one. This is perfectly understandable in this economic climate. No one in their right mind will ask you to do that. You can always get training in your spare time and there are ways of finding a new job while keeping one. It does take more effort though.

Fear of failure

You are scared of taking that professional exam because you are not sure if you are up to the task you are scared that you will lose some money. See it from this point of view, you are investing in yourself and your knowledge. Since no knowledge is lost, this is the safest investment you can possibly make. There will always be a second chance to try again.

Plain old procrastination.

This is the group I belong to. David Allen, author of the book Getting Things Done split procrastination into two categories. The first, seeing some small tasks as an annoying interruption e.g like organizing a room. The second is seeing some larger tasks as too big to control and then tending to defer these tasks to later dates or times. There is no excuse for being a procrastinator.

Pat Flynn on his blog made a great post on his blog where he applied the laws of Physics to internet business, you can also apply these laws to your career.

I have decided to get up and take action. To take the next step in my professional life and get training in SAP business intelligence. I can get a better career and improve myself along the way. What is the worst that can happen? People in the financial world would say it in this way. The downside is limited, there is no cap in the upside.

Once again, life is all about constant improvement.

“SAP Certification is useless, it was almost never a good indication of consulting talent”. So says a SAP mentor on the SAP developer network (SDN).

“Getting certified in SAP will never get you the dream job you have always wanted, you need to get the experience”. Says another  SAP consultant guru.

So the question is…. why bother getting certified? Am I wasting my time?

Fact

SAP (the company) is advocating the certification program. Recently, SAP has introduced a new three-tier certification process to make sure the process is relevant. They have spent a lot of money developing the certification and would not do so if they thought it was useless and not needed.

Fact

SAP is strongly encouraging customers to hire certified consultants and have confidence in the certification process for those breaking into SAP. Jon Reed is a widely known SAP career guru. He interviewed Sue Martin who is Global Certification Portfolio Manager for SAP on his podcast and she spoke about the certification roadmap. You can listen in by clicking here.

Fact

SAP has introduced new technologies based on Netweaver. e.g SAP has acquired Business Objects which will be the new Business Intelligence framework, so all the 12-13 years of experience the current consultants are claiming as gold will become obsolete.

The most obvious fact is that certification backs experience. Imagine walking into a company and telling them “Please hire me, I want to break into SAP, I have no certification or knowledge whatsoever but I am willing to learn on the job”. Are you kidding me? No company will want to train you on their account, they could do it but you will have to sell your soul to them for the next two years.

One other point I want to make is, don’t listen to people telling you that certification is useless. If you take a closer look, this advice comes from current consultants on the other side of the fence trying to guard their market. They see us as another newbie consultant to compete with for their job.

Of course, I am not saying here, “Get certified and the massive rate paying job offers will be rolling in”, but it definitely will get our foot in the door. Imagine a sailor that is being told,  ”Don’t set sail because there is so much turbulence on the seas, there is the hazard of capsizing, stay on that side of the ocean and you will be safe”. Yes he will be safe but he will not achieve, I prefer to set sail in the storm and feel proud of myself when I end up on the other side.

Let’s get certified.

p.s your comments are always welcome.

Apart from the superior packages received?…

Check this out….

• 600 Insurance companies run SAP solutions.
• Up to 80% of Fortune 500 companies run SAP solutions
• SAP has 41,200 customers in 121 countries

and from this post on CIO.com there is a shortage of between 30,000 to 40,000 SAP consultants to support its customers and solutions.

Are you kidding me? Talk about positioning yourself in a sweet spot.

Let me break down those statistics for you and why they are important.

Top companies implementing SAP.

500 companies to pay top dollar for SAP implementations and consultants, there must be some level of trust and satisfaction from what SAP has to offer. For a future career, you want to position yourself in a playing field where the big guns are part of the team.

Software for all industries

I am almost sure you can identify with one of these industries.

• Aerospace and Defence
• Automotive
• Banking
• Chemicals
• Consumer Products
• Engineering and Construction
• Financial Service Provider
• Healthcare
• Higher Education and Research
• High Tech
• Insurance
• Media
• Mill Products
• Mining
• Oil and Gas
• Pharmaceuticals
• Public Sector
• Retail
• Service Providers
• Telecommunications
• Utilities

SAP offers solutions for each of these industries and with this you can find a little niche for yourself and be one of the guru’s in the industry or go mainstream and choose a path in the ERP solutions

Worldwide reach

Customers in 121 countries? Gone are the days where you would have to be in the US or Western Europe to have a great career in IT. India is home to many top SAP consultants,  East europe has it’s share of top SAP consultants. Africa is becoming a hub of SAP with its push into the continent. You get the gist, anywhere you are, it is almost guaranteed that you will find a list of companies looking for SAP talent.

The future is secured

This one is a bonus reason. Companies have already spent millions on their SAP installations,  you have got to offer them something earth-shattering to switch to a different provider. Especially if they are happy with the current one. So our future as SAP consultants is secured for years to come.

So that’s it… your reasons to become a SAP consultant. If you have other reasons of wanting to be a SAP consultant, please drop a comment and tell us about it

This is an introduction to what SAP is as a company and what they offer businesses and their consultants from my own point to view.

What is SAP?

SAP stands for Systems, Applications and Products which is literally translated from the German word, Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte. It is the world’s largest supplier of enterprise solutions and taking into consideration that they have been around since 1972, and are at the forefront of their market, it really implies that they know what they are doing.

I have worked in two multinational companies, Nokia and Philips and other mid-sized companies. All have SAP software as a backbone of all some of their in-house processes, be it HR, purchasing, team management etc.

What does SAP offer that is so great?

So what exactly does SAP offer? What SAP offers is huge and there is almost no industry that is doesn’t have a SAP solution. Come on, the company was founded by Germans and if you have ever heard of the German efficiency, you will know what I’m talking about. Having lived in Germany for about 6 years, I have experienced the efficiency personally. Let me give you some examples about a SAP offering. Bear in mind that this is by no means an exhaustive list.

• An employee wants to take a five-day holiday.
• He/she logs in to the SAP system at work and makes an application to take the days off.
• The manager is automatically notified that an employee has requested an offer.
• The SAP system being connected to the business processes can automatically find out what has to be done on those days the employee needs to take off, and how many employess are around to cover for the extra workload.
• The system packages this information into an easy to understand way for the manager.
• The manager sees that there are enough resources available and approves the holiday
• The employee is happy and and flies off to Dubai and finds out he/she loves it there and doesn’t want to come back. :-)

Ok, that last one is a joke and I’m not sure the SAP system can cater for that, but from that example you will understand a tiny bit of what SAP can do for a company. The technical buzzwords for this Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) which is a major part of the software solution that SAP has to offer.

What does SAP offer me?

That is what SAP has to offer to companies. But what does SAP have to offer for you/me.?

The simple answer is a role as a much sought after SAP consultant. SAP consultants are one of the most sought after and rare breed of consultants that command a huge day/hourly rate. I personally know 2 SAP consultants that are on 2-year implementation projects and receive £600 per day. Let’s do the math, assuming you work 40 weeks in a year, with 5 days in a week, that is 40×5x600= £120,000 in a year. I don’t know about you but for me I could think of a lot of things out that money to work. I’m about to get married and will be having kids, so that means comfortable living for my wife and kids.

The picture below shows the survey done by ITJobsWatch on how much the average SAP consultant earns as a permanent staff.

ITJobs Watch survey

But you might think, can I break into SAP? I don’t have an IT/Software background. I don’t live in the US or UK, will I get a job in my country? Let me dispell those worries with these statistics…

• SAP is deployed in over 25 industries. including Aerospace, Automative, Chemicals, Consumer products, Retail, Mining, Financial, Telecommunications, Media, Utilities and that is not all. What on earth are you doing if you are not in any of these industries or the others which are listed on the SAP website?
• 600 Insurance companies across the globe run SAP solutions e.g AIG, AOK, General Reinsurance
• 121,00 SAP installations
• 41,200 customers in 121 countries

Are there any concerns you might have that  I haven’t addressed in this post? Please leave a comment below and we can discuss this. I might even make a blog post out of it and give you credit for it.

Anyway, we are on this journey together. The journey to get certified in SAP without breaking the bank and I will update you with tips along the way.