SAP certification: overview and career opportunities

SAP is a global company specializing in enterprise 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 provide standardized software to integrate business processes. Today, SAP has more than 345,000 customers and more than 84,000 employees.

SAP reports that 87 percent of the 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 large companies in Germany rely on the ERP system from Waldorf.
To meet the demand for qualified professionals, SAP offers a comprehensive certification program to ensure outstanding product and customer support and close the IT skills gap. The SAP certification program currently comprises more than 350,000 certified SAP experts worldwide.

Overview of the SAP certification program

SAP offers more than 150 certifications, each 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", "Specialist" 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. 

Professional certifications: These build on Associate level credentials and identify professionals with skills in specific components or roles. 

Professional certifications: These are awarded to people with in-depth knowledge of SAP solutions and practical experience.

No prior knowledge, training or other certifications are required for Associate and Professional level certification. Candidates must have an Associate-level credential in order to receive a professional certification.

In addition, SAP certifications do not require recertification. But to ensure that your qualifications remain up to date, SAP monitors your credentials and notifies you if one or more of your credentials are out of date.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 examination. For the professional certification, candidates must pass both the professional and user exams. You can purchase an exam voucher through the SAP website and then take the exam at an SAP Training Center.

Some certifications are available via SAP Certification in the Cloud. With the SAP Certification Hub, you can take up to six exams in a 12-month period for an annual subscription of €500. (the fee for certification in the cloud is roughly equivalent to the cost of taking an examvia a physical test center. So it may well 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 by 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 category. In this way, SAP professionals can easily find training and certifications related to their areas of interest and expertise within an organization. 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 across the SAP certification portfolio. SAP lists all current certification exams here. Since we can't cover all categories and certifications in this article, let's 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 will 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 certifications available vary by category, but here are some examples of these current certifications:

Management: Technology Associate - SAP NetWeaver 7.4, Technology Consultant OS/DB Migration for SAP NetWeaver 7.4

Business Warehouse: Application Associate - Business Intelligence with SAP NetWeaver 7.0

Portal: Technology Associate - SAP Enterprise Portal 7.4.0

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

ABAP programming: Development staff - 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 SAP Solution Manager. SAP Solution Manager enables professionals to manage complete SAP-based solution environments, including selection and implementation, day-to-day operations and ensuring system reliability.

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

SAP offers several certifications for those responsible for implementing and maintaining systems using 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 validating skills required to manage SAP projects. Exam topics include data management, key deliverables in workflow, business process management, technical solution management including ASAP methodology, SAP project implementation, enabling tools, key concepts for ASAP, training within SAP methodology, change management, SAP NetWeaver skills, 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, this includes SAP IQ, SAP Replication Server, SAP Power Builder and SAP Power Designer.

The SAP ASE portfolio comprises two sub-categories: ASE Administration and ASE Development. Each offers a single Technology Associate certificate.

In the ASE Administration track you will find the Technology Associate - Database Administrator for SAP Sybase ASE 15.7. exam topics are 

• Database backup, 

• Server configuration, 

• 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 entry-level professionals. Other courses include System and Database Administration, Performance and Tuning: Configuring Adaptive Server Enterprise and Powering on with Sybase Adaptive Server.

In the area of ASE Development, SAP offers the SAP Certified Technology Associate - Development Consultant for SAP Sybase ASE 15.7 . This exam validates a candidate's knowledge in the areas 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 fundamentals. Recommended training 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 boards provides insight into the range of job openings 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 services provider is seeking an SAP Administrator to "own" all aspects of the client's SAP application infrastructure and focus on SAP Incident, Problem, Risk and Change Management. A global SAP Business One value-added reseller is seeking an SAP Technical Sales Representative to provide consulting and support services for SAP ERP solutions to their customers.

Whether you are a business analyst, business process owner, developer, IT administrator, team leader, trainer, power user or manager working with SAP products, you will find a wide range of career opportunities. SAP offers classroom training at its SAP training centers worldwide. There are also live virtual training courses 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 designed to help you familiarize yourself with specific SAP solution areas and prepare you for certification exams. You get one to five months access to self-paced courses. SAP e-Learning provides access to individual courses for anyone interested in a single training course. Candidates who want to deepen their knowledge can sign up for Live Access, which allows them to practice existing skills in a supported SAP environment. If none of these learning options are suitable for you, take a look at the SAP Learning Hub, where you will find 24/7 access to all the training you need.

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

Visit training.sap.com to find out more about SAP training opportunities.

5 steps to a successful ERP implementation

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

1. define the requirements

Before you look at any aspect of the 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 it will be to implement 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 taken into account before implementation. The choices for an enterprise resource planning software package are endless. Each vendor has its own specific benefits and features. Once you have addressed your pain points and business process needs, selecting a vendor will be much easier. 

Select people to help with preparation, information gathering and feedback. Make sure to involve people from different business areas because they are the ones 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.

Don't 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 usually causes difficulties in the long term with regard to future upgrades, bug fixes and support.

Research indicates that the 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 running into long delays and large cost overruns.

3. consider future extensions

During planning, you and your team have focused on which functions are necessary for the go-live, and this is extremely important. However, you also need to think about the "next steps" that will also 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 allow. This step will help you keep an eye on the long-term success of your ERP program and evaluate ERP vendors

4. the importance of selecting 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 placed to formulate which functionalities are missing, how business processes can be improved and how problems in the current system can be localized. Listen to them.

A big advantage of this 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 just suddenly finding themselves in front of the new system. The feeling of being presented with a fait accompli is usually very unpleasant. Involve managers and department heads from each functional area. These managers are responsible for talking to employees and will help gather and relay information.

For most people, changes to routine are initially negative. A holistic communication strategy therefore helps employees to understand why this change is necessary. If employees are involved in identifying problem areas and contributing improvements, "heroes" emerge among them, so to speak, who have made work a lot easier.

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

5th training

Training, training and more training. Make sure you provide your staff with appropriate training. If staff are well involved, they will also be more motivated for user training. You may even find that the end users are already curious about the new solution. 

A successful ERP implementation requires a strong training program. If employees don't know how to use the new system, they won't get the most out of all the new functionality you've worked so hard on. This missed step will result in a less successful implementation.

End user training is critical to your successful ERP implementation. Don't skimp on this area of your ERP budget.

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

Good luck.