The BASIS of SAP

On a recent SearchSAP podcast, SAP explains the new certification options that are available. There’s also some detail coming to light on the SAP Certification site.

The original level of SAP certification is now called the “Associate” level, aimed at inexperenced practitioners. SAP is also rolling out the “Professional” level certification for people with more extensive project experience with system integration, and applying the “Associate” skills against the Customer requirements. This is a more rigorous certification program, where project experience will be mandataory, so may carry more weight with Customers and therefore employers. Most of these certifications are available now.

There is also a third level of certification on the way also, called the “Master” level, designed for the Project or Team Leader with 10 years or more experience. These should be available from the 4th quarter 2008 onwards. Some other key points to takeaway:

• if you’re going to invest in certification, invest in SAP’s own three-tiered certification offering, which is the only official, SAP-recognized certification offering in the marketplace. Lots of third parties currently offer SAP ‘certification,’ but SAP is going to be more aggressive about regulating these kinds of claims.
• Certification is most important at the early stages of an SAP career, but fades in importance later on. It is in response to this that SAP offers a ‘master’ tier of certification to recognize and reward senior-level consultants and their experience.
• SAP’s certification seeks to encourage and enable lifelong learning. It is part of the process of becoming a better SAP consultant. Thus, certification is not an end but a means.
• There are plans to enable a social network, providing personalised training paths and discounts based on your existing and planned certifications.

Some sample questions are already available on the levels, certification focus areas, and exam preparation.pages, including

• SAP Certified Development Associate – Java with SAP NetWeaver 7.0
• SAP Certified Development Associate – ABAP with SAP NetWeaver

Depending on where you are located, and at what stage you are at in your career, you may be wondering if SAP Certification is worth spending time and money on anyway. In the BASIS field particularly, the arguments revolve around SAP specific skills versus real life experience, especially nowadays where there is so much more to maintaiing SAP systems than just the SAP systems themselves. The article does have a useful comment from John Reed, the SearchSap Careers Expert. I’ve pulled some extracts from John’s comment:

Back in the 1990s, it was possible to land an SAP job with “certification only” because there weren’t enough experienced consultants, and “Big Six firms” on large project sites were able to field teams with plenty of junior-level consultants who did not have any hands-on SAP experience other than their classroom certifications.

And there are fewer “big bang” type implementations where companies just open the floodgates and hire hundreds of consultants regardless of experience level. As a result, even though the SAP consulting market is very healthy, the power of SAP certification to land that all-important first project has diminished over the years, and I don’t expect that power to return.

Sometimes I have found that SAP hypes its own certification, but often, I find that it’s the job seekers themselves who latch onto certification and hype it for themselves.
…..many aspiring SAP professionals view certification as the easy (if expensive) way to open a door into the SAP field that is not always easy to open.

how many SAP jobs require certification? The answer is: only a small percentage. Project references are so much more important,

I think knowing how to make your current skills appealing to SAP customers and their IT departments may be more important. One good exercise is to review current SAP jobs on sites like SearchSAP.com and see what kinds of skills are required.

The key to breaking into SAP remains hard work, good overall technical and business skills, and savvy self-marketing.

Some of his comments resonate with me and my career. I had general Mainframe Systems Programming (DOS and MVS, CICS and a mixture of Databases) experience, but also Windows PC programming experience, when I applied for a job at an SAP R/2 site that was looking for a Capacity Planner. I was able to leverage my mainframe skills (JCL, CICS, Assembler, and DB2) into a Job with the R/2 BASIS group. A couple of years later, I applied for a job with an outsourcing company with a strong SAP Practice, on the condition that I was to be transitioned into R/3 BASIS. This was back when the 3.x releases of SAP were being implemented.