SAP Certification: Overview and career opportunities

SAP is a global company specializing in business software, including customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, supplier relationship management, and more. SAP began in 1972 in Waldorf, Germany, under the leadership of five former IBM engineers who wanted to offer standardized software for integrating business processes. Today SAP has more than 345,000 customers and more than 84,000 employees.

SAP reports that 87 percent of Ford Global 2000 companies and 98 percent of the 100 most valuable brands use SAP solutions. In addition, 100 percent of the top scoring companies reported by Dow Jones also use SAP, and 4 out of 10 major German companies rely on the ERP system from Waldorf. 
To meet the need for qualified professionals, SAP offers an extensive certification program to ensure excellent product and customer support and to close the IT skills gap. The SAP certification program currently includes more than 350,000 certified SAP experts worldwide.

Overview of the SAP Certification Program

SAP offers more than 150 certifications, each of which is focused on a specific SAP product. You can search SAP certifications on the company's Website by product, solution category or delivery method, and location. Certifications are typically found at the associate, subject, or professional level, which can be understood as follows:

User certifications: These are aimed at people who are not yet familiar with SAP solutions and have familiarized themselves with SAP technologies in manuals or training courses. 

Expert certifications: These build on the references of the associate level and identify professionals with skills in specific components or roles. 

Professional certifications: These certifications distinguish people with a sound knowledge of SAP solutions and practical experience.

No prior knowledge, training or other certifications are required for Associate and Professional level certification. To receive a professional certificate, candidates must have an Associate level credential.

Furthermore, SAP certifications do not require re-certification. But to ensure that your qualifications remain current, SAP monitors your logon credentials and notifies you if one or more of your logon credentials are out of date. The company develops delta checks when an SAP solution is released that has undergone significant changes. Certification holders must take one or more delta exams within six months to keep their skills, knowledge, and certifications up-to-date.

SAP certification exams

User and Professional Level certifications require a single exam. For Professional Certification, candidates must pass both the Professional and the User exams. You can purchase an exam voucher from the SAP Web site and take the exam at an SAP Training Center.

Some certifications are available in the cloud via SAP certification. With SAP Certification Hub, you can take up to six exams over a 12-month period for an annual subscription of €500. (The fee for certification in the cloud is roughly equivalent to the cost of an exam at a physical test center. So it may be worth taking the time to check which certificates are available through the Cloud Program.

SAP Solution Categories

Those familiar with SAP certifications may recall that in the past, certifications were classified according to job roles such as system administrator, system architect, and developer. While job roles still play an important role in the certification program, SAP now classifies its certifications by solution categories. This makes it easy for SAP professionals to find training and certifications that match their areas of interest and expertise within a company. There are different solution categories:

•      SAP Ariba Procure-to-Pay (P2P)

•      SAP Business One

•      SAP BusinessObjects

•      SAP Customer Relationship Management

•      SAP Enterprise Resource Planning

•      SAP HANA

•      SAP NetWeaver

•      SAP Solution Manager

•      SAP Supplier Relationship Management

•      SAP Supply Chain Management

•      SAP Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (SAP Sybase ASE) 

•      Enterprise Mobility Solutions

•      Industry Solutions

In these categories, most certifications fall into the user level, but you will also find many professional and specialized certifications in the entire SAP certification portfolio. SAP lists all current certification exams here. Since we cannot cover all categories and certifications in this article, we take a look at some of the most popular SAP certification solution categories to give you an overview of what SAP has to offer.

SAP NetWeaver

SAP NetWeaver is a popular platform; here you can find SAP NetWeaver certifications that focus on managing SAP applications such as ERP, CRM, Java, and ABAP, as well as Business Warehouse, Portal, integration technologies, and development. The available certifications vary by category, but here are some examples of these current certifications:

Administration: Technology Associate - SAP NetWeaver 7.4,
Technology consultant OS/DB Migration for SAP NetWeaver 7.4

Warehouse: Application Associate - Business Intelligence with SAP NetWeaver 7.0

Portal: Technology Associate - SAP Enterprise Portal 7.4.0

Technologies for process integration: Development employees/technology employees - Process integration with SAP NetWeaver 7.31

Programming of ABAP: Development employees - ABAP with SAP NetWeaver 7.40 or 7.50

SAP also offers numerous NetWeaver training courses, including training for project teams.

SAP Solution Manager

When you think of technical support, think of SAP Solution Manager. SAP Solution Manager enables professionals to manage complete SAP-based solution environments, including selection and implementation, daily operations, and ensuring system reliability.

SAP offers numerous training opportunities and certifications to prepare professionals for working with SAP Solution Manager. Training is divided into several subcategories, including general solution overviews, project management, End-to-End solutions, configuration, and application.

SAP offers various certifications for those responsible for implementing and maintaining systems with Solution Manager, including several Certified Technology Associates specializing in change control management, business process monitoring, and business process interface monitoring. Each certificate comes with its own roadmap of recommended training.

One of the interesting SAP Solution Manager certificates is the SAP Certified Associate Project Manager. This certificate goes beyond traditional project management skills and focuses specifically on the validation of skills required to manage SAP projects. The exam topics include data management, key results in the work process, business process management, management of technical solutions including the ASAP methodology, implementation of SAP projects, Enabling-tools, key concepts for ASAP, training within the SAP methodology, change management, SAP NetWeaver capabilities, test and cutover management, and "Running SAP like a factory" with enabling tools.

SAP Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (SAP Sybase ASE)

SAP maintains a complete training and certification portfolio for anyone interested in DB administration, integration, security, development, or performance. In addition to SAP ASE, these include SAP IQ, SAP Replication Server, SAP Power Builder and SAP Power Designer.

The SAP ASE portfolio has two subcategories: ASE Administration and ASE Development. Each offers an individual Technology Associate certificate.

The ASE Administration track includes the Technology Associate - Database Administrator for SAP Sybase ASE 15.7. Exam topics are:

•     Database-Backup

•      Serverconfiguration

•      Tuning with Logical Process Management

•      Transactions with Transact-SQL functions

•      Architecture and Installation

•      Maintenance 

•      Security

•      Table Management

•      Database Management and 

•      Data Analysis

The training focuses on SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise and includes a fast-track course for career starters. Other courses include System and Database Administration, Performance and Tuning: Configuring Adaptive Server Enterprise and Powering On with Sybase Adaptive Server.

In the ASE Development area, SAP offers the SAP Certified Technology Associate - Development Consultant for SAP Sybase ASE 15.7. This exam validates a candidate's knowledge of data analysis, query optimization and statistics, query access methods, join processing, table and index structure, transaction concepts, stored procedures and optimization, and ASE performance tuning and basics. Recommended courses include Fast Track to SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise and Performance and Tuning: Adaptive Server Enterprise 16.0 Query Optimization.

Related professions, training and resources

SAP certifications affect almost every business process in all major industries. A quick search on online job exchanges provides insight into the range of jobs available for SAP-certified individuals. A sugar manufacturer in Minnesota is looking for an SAP developer to design, build, monitor, test, and optimize SAP ERP applications. A leading technical service provider is looking for an SAP administrator who "owns" all aspects of the customer's SAP application infrastructure and is focused on managing SAP Incident, Problem, Risk, and Change Management A global SAP Business One Value-Added Reseller is looking for an SAP technical sales representative to provide consulting and support services for SAP ERP solutions to its customers.

Whether you are a business analyst, business process owner, developer, IT administrator, team leader, trainer, power user, or executive working with SAP products, you will find a wide range of career opportunities. SAP offers classroom training at its SAP training centers around the world. There are also live virtual classrooms taught by SAP experts that include access to live SAP systems for immersive learning. You can also attend interactive e-learning courses that complement classroom training by registering for a single course or subscribing to multiple courses.

The SAP E-Academy offers training courses to help you become familiar with specific SAP solution areas and prepare you for certification exams. You receive one to five months of access to self-study courses. SAP e-Learning provides access to individual courses for anyone interested in an individual course. Candidates who want to deepen their knowledge can register for Live Access, which enables them to practice existing knowledge in a supported SAP environment. If none of these learning options is suitable for you, take a look at the SAP Learning Hub, which provides round-the-clock access to all the courses you require.

Finally, SAP provides sample questions for most CERT exams, formerly current questions from previous live exams. You can view sample questions by clicking the PDF link for sample questions on the Web page of an exam.

Visit training.sap.com to learn more about the opportunities in the area of SAP training.

5 steps to a successful ERP implementation

It is time to consider a new ERP system for your organization? And it's your job to ensure that it is successful? These 5 tips will help you to achieve a smooth implementation. You will learn how to define your scope, involve the right people in your process, why ERP training is important and more.

1. Define the requirements

Before addressing any aspect of ERP implementation, you need to define the scope of requirements. In the description, focus on a few key factors such as:

• The selection of proven business processes and system requirements

• Make a complete list of requirements

• Define your pain points and your challenges

• Which systems are currently in use?

• Define what you can optimize

• Set yourself realistic goals

Remember - the more details you can formulate now, the easier the implementation in the future. Defining the new ERP requirements precisely also makes it easier to select the system. You can also include this information in the supplier proposal to ensure that all requirements are considered before implementation. The choice for an Enterprise Resource Planning software package is endless. Each vendor has its own specific advantages and characteristics. Once you have addressed your pain points and business process needs, selecting a vendor will be much easier. 

Select employees who will help with preparation and information searches and provide feedback. Make sure to include people from different business areas, because it is you who will ultimately use the new system. Don't keep this project exclusively in the IT department. Allow selected end users to help with your selection process.

Do not rush through this important first step!

2. Think unconventionally

Avoid unnecessary "customizing" and individual adjustments. Any additional customizing of the system that is built into this project will usually cause difficulties in the long run regarding future upgrades, bug fixes and support.

Research indicates that individual customizing of ERP systems takes up most of the time of an ERP project. These statistics also show that customizing can be a necessary evil. However, it is important that you have these additional upgrades under control to avoid long delays and large cost overruns.

3. Consider future enhancements

When planning, you and your team have focused on what features are necessary for go-live, and that is extremely important. But you also need to think about the "next steps" that need to work in the future. During step #1, you can create a "wish list" of features that the staff has requested but which are not yet necessary to get started.

Keep these features on hand so that they can be purchased as soon as time and budget permits. This step will help you keep track of the long-term success of your ERP program and evaluate ERP vendors.

4. The importance of choosing a team

As mentioned in step 1, it is important to involve employees outside the IT department in ERP development. Those who work on the system every day are usually best able to formulate which functionalities are missing, how business processes can be improved and problems in the current system can be localized. Listen to them.

A big advantage is also that the user experience will be easier if everyone feels they have a voice in the process and the new system, rather than suddenly finding themselves in front of the new system. The feeling of being confronted with a fait accompli is usually very unpleasant. Involve managers and department heads from each functional area. These managers are responsible for talking to the employees and will help to collect and pass on information.

Changes in routine are initially negative for most people. A holistic communication strategy therefore helps employees to build up an understanding of why this change is necessary. If the employees are involved in identifying problem areas and making improvements, "heroes" are created among them, which make their work much easier.

Create your teams early and communicate with them. Create a precise plan and make sure you are in line with your vision with the business decision makers.

5. Training

Training, education and even more training. Be sure to provide adequate training for your personnel. If your staff is well involved, they will be more motivated to attend user training. You may even be able to get end users to be curious about the new solution. 

A successful ERP implementation requires a strong training program. If employees do not know how to use the new system, they will not get the most out of all the new functionality you have worked so hard on. This missed step will make the implementation less successful.

End user training is essential for your successful ERP implementation. Don't skimp on this part of your ERP budget.

End users who are not well trained will start working with workarounds on a daily basis and leave new functionality unused. This in turn will cause difficulties with many other interfaces and reduce the potential for savings. 

Good luck.