Career in SAP? good or bad?

What little I know about SAP you could fill a thimble with.  However this question intrigued me, so I thought I'd look at the responses.

What I don know about SAP was that it was originally developed in Germany in the late 1960's.

Obviously it's been around a while, and I do believe that the most current version is web enabled which means that it has kept up with the times pretty well.

For what's its worth, I think a career in SAP is pretty secure.  As long as you keep up with current SAP updates you won't have to worry about becoming a programming dinosaur who is stuck in a rut with some defunct knowledge basis.

Thanks a ton Steve and TAD for answering the question,

Steve, I donot enjoy much of coding to be true to you and moreover I am a mechanical production engineer somehow landed in web development,

1) I feel SAP will give me an opportunity to use my Production Engineering skills as well. What do you say?

2) I was thinking to start with ABAP 4 and then learn ALE workflow. Is it a good choice from future and current perspective?

3) Is it easy to get a first descent job after just doing ABAP and ALE myself at home without any proefessional exeperience in it?

4) To start with I was thinking SAMS ABAP 4 in 21 days book?Is that quick and easy way to learn.

5) Can you guide me please how to move forward?

All I can offer is a big thank you in return and 75 points for the questions. Looking forward to your informative and prompt reply like before.

Thanks again
Nitin

Hi Nitin.
I have been a SAP R/3 basis consultant for the last 6 years so I can tell I know a litle bit of it.

SAP has become a comodity which means that every big company has it. So Everybody should know a litle of it.

Some tips

1.- SAP AG is the name of the german company that sells the product.
2.- SAP stands for Software, Aplications and Products in data procesing (in German of course).
3.- SAP R/3 is just the ERP product of SAP.
4.- SAP AG has also another products: SAP CRM (Custormer Relationship Management). SAP BW (Business Warehouse). APO (Advance Planner and Optimizer), SEM (Strategic Enterprise Management), among many others. Check www.sap.com.
5.- SAP R/3 includes all the backoffice parts that a company may need to run its business:
      FI - finnacial (Accounts payable, receivable, general ledger,etc)
      MM - Material Management (Purchasing, Inventory.etc)
      SD - Sales and Distribution
      HR  - Humman Resources
      PP - Plant Production
      PM - Plant Maintenance
      Basis - Systemen Admin.
      Abap - SAP programming language.
      Many other R/3 Modules
6.- You should do things that you enjoy, you are Production Enginneer, I recommend you to read about PP and PM before make a decision.
7.- My wife is an abap but she enjoy the thing.
8.- Latest R/3 version is 470 or SAP Enterprise.
9.- CRM and Public sector solutions are hot now.

Good Luck
Carlos

SAP holds the majority of the market share in ERP solutions at over 30%, the rest belonging to Peoplesoft, BAAN, and JD Edwards.  I've been working with SAP for almost 5 years now and on top pf the standard modules there are even applications like Portals, which is a stand-alone single sign on web portal which ties into SAP R/3, your file system, timekeeping services, and can anything else that can connect via BAPI, OLEDB, etc.  I'm also a BW (Business Warehouse) Developer, which is SAP's stand alone OLAP Reporting system, and I'm somewhat of an ABAP programmer.   The point is that SAP really encompasses all of the technologies applied to all aspects of a business and its processes, which in turn translates into jobs for DBAs, Webmasters, Programmers, Data Architects, Security Experts, Industrial Engineers - you name it!

For a good overview on the ERP industry, look at: http://www.indiainfoline.com/cyva/erp/ar01.html

SAP is based in Germany, so the demand is there, but you'll be up against many gurus over there.  So goes the same for India, as they have mushroomed with crash-course training facilities, i.e., a lot of competition as well.

Anyway, HTH and good luck!
Joe

Hi nb27,

I was originally a project engineer in food manufacturing and was asked to head up the PM module of a SAP implementation. I did the PM courses and I've never looked back. I've now moved onto contracting and have been a consultant for the past five years. Once in, it can be very easy to learn new areas of SAP. I now specialize in security and authorizations and I do find that my PM knowledge is a big help. Also in 5 years I have learnt alot of the basis aspects and I know understand enough ABAP to be able to debug problems. My advice is look at what areas of business are your strengths and focus on learning that module. not everyone is SAP needs to be able to program it. Most projects use programmers to support the functional teams, so others can take care of the serious end while you look after configuring the business processes.

I also now that alot of companies are looking to outsource their SAP support services to India. India is definitely a growing market for people with SAP knowledge, though the pay rates are less, hence why companies like to use them over there.

Regards
DJEDEN

Can anyone pleae advice me of any SAP schools in India, how long would it take to learn the skill sets.
Cost also.
Presently I  work for Delliote and Touche  here in USA and iIwant to make myself very valuable to them.
I intend to learn the SD MM and if possible HR modules.or( Even BW)
Any comments and hints are welcomed.

Hi,

There are three areas in SAP with which one can build a career. They are.

Functional Consultants - SAP has many modules like MM- Materials Management, FI- Finance & Inventory, SD - Sales & Distribution etc etc. Functional Guyz basically know the business process and how they are implemented in SAP software..Functional Guyz are very highly paid than anyone in SAP. These guyz have very good onsite chances. Basically people who have worked in Companies around 2 years on some particular domain like finance, production etc learn SAP modules and hit the SAP JOB market with a Bang.

Technical Consultants- These are the guyz who learn ABAP-SAP's propriteary programming language. They will have to program specific needs of the functional guyz in the SAP software.
These guyz have a good grip of the ABAP syntax, the Database tables and ways of quering them with SQL.  These guyz will be required a lot in a project.  Scope is also nice.

Basis Consultant-Basis guyz are those who maintain SAP db.  They will be instrumental in providing User rights.. basically they will do the DBA job.

Getting into ABAP will be easiest following by Basis & Functional