Blog Host: Jon Reed - President, JonERP.com READ ENTIRE BIO

So, what I do is try to present, through the career answers and blogs, a sense of the best practices you can use in your own SAP career. There are principles that can guide you no matter what your skills or situation, and hopefully some of those have come across in the last two weeks.

In closing, the one thing I want to touch on is that opportunities in SAP now extend throughout the product line (with the possible exception of SAP development and ABAP -- see my blog entries on ABAP for that). This may sound like an obvious statement, but you have to keep in mind that as recently as two years ago, this was not the case.

In the 2000-'02 era, it really did seem like the core SAP functional areas were leveling off in terms of consulting demand. Sure, there was plenty of work there, but it was mostly being scooped up by senior consultants. So folks like myself would suggest that both new and experienced consultants should be looking into mySAP production extensions like APO, CRM and BW. The "future of the core" did not look real promising.

But now things have shifted. With the emphasis on upgrades to mySAP ERP 2005 (or ECC 5.0, or whatever else people want to call it), what we see is an uptick in demand for core consulting skills in areas like HR, FI and SD. So the demand for skills in the core area of SAP has definitely changed the market. True, there are also pending needs in mySAP extensions like CRM, but I no longer advise HR consultants to necessarily leave their core areas. What I do tell them is that they need to get onto the newest releases sooner rather than later. When you get on the new release, by definition, you will also get more exposure to the NetWeaver technology underneath it, as well as the latest Web services and Internet-based functionality that is integrated into the latest SAP ERP suites.

And as far as the mySAP product extensions, those are now the hit or miss areas. I don't really even think of BW as an extension anymore. It's a good career option, but it's really becoming part of the core. CRM is the same -- there is high demand for consultants and it is becoming part of the core sooner rather than later. Demand for SEM is not nearly as high as I thought it would be, and I think we can assume that SEM will remain more of a niche product, or part of a broader business intelligence/analytics push rather than a product that really drives a market.

I still have some hopes for APO, but, in the short term, that market is also stagnant,, perhaps due to the complexities of APO installations. The rest of the SAP supply chain area beyond APO looks stronger, but in my mind that's really just core logistics modules taken to the next level. So that's more about the core than anything else. PLM and SRM both look promising, but at this point they are markets growing at a gradual-enough pace that the senior consultants are getting all the opportunities.

So despite the predictions of experts like myself, the core ERP areas look pretty strong as far as SAP career paths go. I still maintain that, in the end, ERP is shifting from a transactional system to a strategic system that leverages that transactional data for strategic purposes. And I continue to believe that the Internet will be a driving force, providing a means for companies to "extend" their enterprise and let partners and customers access their data without the need for complex integration efforts.

I believe these trends will continue to impact SAP and should be taken into account as you formulate your SAP career path. Of course, I do think that the shift to the Web services-friendly NetWeaver architecture is significant for all SAP consultants, especially technical ones. So doing your homework on how NetWeaver impacts your area of SAP is imperative.

In the end, what area of SAP you are working in is not that important. What's more important is how strategic and mission-critical that work is. The more you are helping your business to remain competitive in its industry, the better off your skills are. The more you are simply helping a company process back office transactions, the more I think you run the risk of becoming a part of a commodified market that may even be outsourced sooner or later.

The ultimate goal is to stay current. Even though it's difficult to do that, the good news is that the SAP professionals who are proactive about learning new technologies and skills will have the best chance to succeed -- and that's the way it should be.
Posted by Jon Reed Should I be functional or technical?
01 JUN 2006 15:51 EDT (19:51, GMT)
It's an important question for both aspiring and veteran SAP consultants. The biggest mistake is to make that decision based solely on marketability. I would agree with the general statement that functional SAP consultants generally have more stable and more lucrative career paths. But that's not true across the board. I know some technical SAP experts who are doing very well.

The problem with chasing a particular area is that you can lose sight of what you are good at (and what you are passionate about). If you are passionate about SAP development, but you're trying to become a functional consultant because you are chasing the best rates, that could end up being a mistake. In the end, we excel at what we are good at, and it makes sense on both a practical and "spiritual" level to structure our careers around our best skills and strongest interests.

So I think the choice between functional and technical should come down to individual skills and interests more than any other factor. However, there are other considerations. For example: Is there such a thing as a "techno-functional" SAP consultant, someone who is about 50% on each side? I do run into some of these folks. Especially in smaller companies where people wear many hats, a broad techno-functional skill set does make sense.

But in general, success in hands-on SAP consulting is a matter of focus. For that reason, I recommend going for an 80/20 split between technical and functional SAP on one side or the other. 80/20 is the ideal because it gives you just enough knowledge of the other side to work effectively with other teams and see the big picture on your project. For example, functional types don't need ABAP skills, but it doesn't hurt to understand enough to relay your specifications to a developer in a way that makes as much sense to them as it did to you.

With very few exceptions, I don't see job orders come through for 50/50 technical-functional skills. This backs up my assertion that the 50/50 mix is not the best when it comes to marketability, despite what some consultants have tried to argue to me. :-) And, of course, even once you have that 80/20 ratio down, you still need to make sure you are focused enough. For example, most functional SAP job orders pertain to one or two related modules, such as FI/CO or SD/MM.

It is rare to see real configuration jobs that combine four or five modules. I do know consultants who try to claim expertise across many modules, but I don't see how that's a good idea. SAP is informed by the disciplines underneath it, so the best FI/CO consultants have deep financials backgrounds; the best CRM consultants have deep sales and marketing backgrounds, etc. So the best SAP functional skills to pursue are those that deepen your overall industry and skills background. Otherwise, you are just chasing trends and not building a career.

And on the technical side, there is an obvious split between development (ABAP and Java) and systems administration (Basis and now NetWeaver). Again, a focus on one side or the other is going to be much more effective than trying to master it all. I know that there are senior folks who really can "do it all," but these folks are to be respected rather than imitated. Most job orders are focused, and the best SAP resumes have a similar focus.

When I see resumes that span across the entire product line, I tend to put them aside, with the exception of project managers, who are obviously expected to have a bigger scope. It's also true that some end user trainers can be effective across many modules because on the documentation level, it's much easier to span across modules than in terms of specific configurations.

Of course, most of us can't sit down and plan our careers on paper. We have to go where the opportunities are, and that means that there can be periods where are skills are scattered across a number of areas. But the guidelines I've laid out here will still serve you well. In SAP, there's an art to balancing specialization with a core knowledge base, but when in doubt keep a narrow focus as long as it is bringing good projects with good rates in your direction.
Posted by Jon Reed The future of ABAP, part 2
01 JUN 2006 14:15 EDT (18:15, GMT)
In my last entry, I talked about the impact of outsourcing on the ABAP consulting market. I also addressed how SAP's technical shifts are affecting ABAP. It's surprising to see that SAP plans to continue supporting ABAP, given how they were talking a couple of years ago. I see, however, this as mostly good news, because it will give companies the option to focus on the development environment they prefer and let the Web services "wrap" their code as needed. That way, they can open the enterprise to customers and suppliers, and no one has to know whether their Web service was coded in ABAP or Java or even .NET.

So how do these trends impact SAP programmers? How do you keep the work coming? To remain marketable as an SAP developer in this kind of global market, you have to move beyond being a "heads-down, bread-and-butter" programmer. The way I like to say it, the days of the "cubicle coder" are pretty much over. You have to bring something else to the table.

That something else could be one of two things.

1. You could remain focused on development but stay on the cutting edge. You could do this by adding to your ABAP with the latest and greatest NetWeaver development tricks. The cutting-edge stuff can't be outsourced because it's so new. For example, I know several programmers who customize enterprise portals, mostly using Java, sometimes a bit of ABAP, and they are doing very well. So, you can stay technical, but stay on the NetWeaver side, and things could work out well for you.

2. The other option is to become better-rounded as a consultant in terms of your so-called "soft skills." You could aim to be more of a techno-functional consultant, working as a liaison with the functional teams, perhaps eventually becoming a technical team leader. Understanding the big picture of where the company is going and how your work impacts business processes can be a part of this also. I know consultants who have found success in this approach. The best technical developers actually combine these two methods, becoming more business-savvy and more cutting-edge technically at the same time.

So, there are still many career paths and options available to the ABAP programmer. It's not true that ABAP consulting is dead. But it is true that a great deal of strategy and effort must go into keeping that type of consulting career going. But if programming is really your career focus and passion, you can pull it off if you are forward-thinking and take the time to understand the latest trends in SAP technical development.
Posted by Jon Reed The future of ABAP
31 MAY 2006 15:13 EDT (19:13, GMT)
We've gotten a lot of questions on ABAP programming this week, and they all point to an underlying question: What is the future of ABAP? And what is the future of the technical programmer in general? Is there still a good consulting career for a programmer, or has the impact of offshoring made the rates too low for a viable consulting career?

Let's tackle the ABAP part first. ABAP remains an integral part of the SAP vision, no matter what you might see in their latest NetWeaver presentation. A couple of years ago, we all thought SAP was phasing ABAP out in favor of Java. Many developers I know were not pleased with that. Through SAPtips, two SAP technical gurus I respect, Axel Angeli (who also answers questions for TechTarget) and Lynton Grice, have made the argument in several white papers that ABAP still has a place within SAP due to proven performance in high transaction settings.

It seems that SAP has come around to agree with that. Though some SAP NetWeaver applications (such as Enterprise Portals) are really coded in Java, for the most part, SAP now plans to support ABAP development within NetWeaver along with J2EE. And in other cases, instead of writing a Web-based application from scratch, SAP has simply found ways of "wrapping" ABAP in Java/web-friendly code that allows for easy interfacing across platforms.

So we can be confident that many customers will continue to develop in ABAP and that SAP will continue to support it. The demand will be there. But what does that mean to a programmer? Will you get the job or will it be outsourced to an affordable overseas shop?

Certainly, the impact of ABAP outsourcing will continue to impact ABAP rates and opportunities. But I think there is still a career in SAP technical development for those who are willing to work at it. A couple years ago, we thought all SAP programmers would have to leave ABAP behind.

Now we have come to understand that the "SAP programmer of the future" will likely have a solid ABAP background, but ABAP will simply be one tool in a programming toolkit. And this toolkit will likely contain a variety of Web-based programming areas, including XML and SOAP, as well as emerging wireless and mobile development protocols.

But staying on top of the technical side is just one aspect of being a successful SAP programmer in today's market. In my next blog entry, I'll comment further on how to remain marketable as an SAP programmer despite the outsourcing trends.
Posted by Jon Reed Is SAP training worth the money?
25 MAY 2006 20:36 EDT (00:36, GMT)
Is SAP training worth the money? This is the question on the minds of many folks trying to move into the SAP field, and experienced consultants also wonder how much formal training they need. And is the SAP Academy the only option for training?

My feeling about it is that any serious SAP consultant needs to pour a percentage of their revenues into training and self-education. Sometimes that means attending conferences and seminars, other times a formal certification is helpful. Over the years, those courses can add up and look impressive on a resume.

More importantly, if you are already working on an SAP project, say as a developer, and you have a BW certification you paid for yourself, your chances of getting pulled onto the BW side of the project are much greater than an ABAP programmer on the team who doesn't have the BW certification. So strategic use of training and certification can really help an experienced consultant stay on top of their game. I've also seen certification serve as the tie-breaker between two people with the same amount of hands-on experience. But I rarely see someone with less hands-on experience get a job over a more experienced SAP person just because they were certified. So there's a limit to the value of certification. Hands-on SAP experience is much more important.

Training and certification can help to land your first SAP project, but you have to be careful about overestimating what training can do for you. I have heard from a lot of aspiring SAP consultants who paid a lot of money for training out of their own pocket and still couldn't land their first SAP position.

If you have unlimited financial resources, then training is a no-brainer. But most of us don't find ourselves in that position, and we take a cautious view towards shelling out thousands of dollars for a couple weeks of classes. I would put it this way: The money you spend on training is not nearly as important as the time you spend marketing yourself. The folks who land their first job in SAP are more likely to have sheer perseverance in common than anything else.

Whether you are new to SAP or not, training should be used selectively to build on your core skills. A lot of people seem to take a "dartboard" approach to training and see if they can get the skills that are hot. What you want to do is select the SAP training course that is directly relevant to your core skills and takes those skills into new areas. Programmers might look at portals classes, logistics folks at SRM classes, system admin folks at XI (NetWeaver) classes, etc. You get the idea.

Of course, a great strategy can be to get your current company to pay for your training. As the market heats up, this might start working well again for those who work for consulting firms. If training can make you more billable on projects, you may be able to make your case that way.

And what about other training options besides the SAP Academy? I'd be careful about getting trained as an individual from companies besides SAP, because SAP certification is the market standard. The one exception would be if the company in question has a good track record training and then placing you on your first project. Otherwise I would stick with SAP training. And don't underestimate how much you can pick up from the hundreds of books on SAP out there. No, it's not the most fun plane reading, but in this market, the hard work you put into deepening your expertise pays off.
Posted by Jon Reed Stay current and on your toes
24 MAY 2006 14:36 EDT (18:36, GMT)
If you're an SAP professional and if you're not current, you're out of the game. That's why SAP consulting keeps you on your toes. I've seen situations where folks with more than five, even 10, years of SAP experience have had trouble finding projects because they haven't stayed current on their versions.

The most recent example was two guys who stayed way too long on a stagnant 4.5 project because they were making $150 an hour. One was an FI guy and one an MM. Not only were they on 4.5, but they were in maintenance mode, not even doing hard core configuring. They fell behind and have had a hard time moving forward. It's great to have deep SAP experience, but it's what you've done in the last six months to a year that really defines you.

So what constitutes current? At the very least, you want to be on a 4.6C project. 4.7 is preferred, and 5.0 is ideal. If you are working on a pre-4.6C version of SAP, unless your project is about to take you through an upgrade, I'd recommend jumping ship before you find yourself losing marketability.

I'd be the first to agree that this fixation on the latest and greatest isn't always fair. Beyond the look and feel (GUI presentation), version 5.0 isn't all that different from 4.7 in many functional areas (the technical differences are greater). So it would be easy to bring an experienced functional consultant up to speed in 5.0. But in the last two months, I've seen a number of 5.0 consulting requirements that will only consider those who already have a 5.0 project under their belts. It's not easy to stay current in SAP, and your seniority only gets you so far.

For those who are trying to break into the SAP field, this obsession with current releases is good news. Essentially, it gives you a chance to cut in the line. If companies assume that financial people who haven't worked in 5.0 won't know how to handle the new General Ledger, that gives you a chance to try to get in there. To a degree, it levels the playing field a bit if you can find a way to quickly get training or get up to speed in 5.0.

The key to success in the SAP field is to master the game. And the name of the game is "stay current." There are many ways to do this, but one of the big ways is to choose your projects carefully. When in doubt, always choose skills exposure over money. Those 4.5 consultants weren't willing to make $25-an-hour less in order to get 4.6 experience, and now they're both stuck on 4.5. They'll find a way out at some point, but it's proving a bit harder than they anticipated. If you choose projects where the technology is cutting edge, your rate will take care of itself in the long run. To paraphrase a popular career book, "choose skills, and the money will follow."
Posted by Jon Reed Breaking into SAP
23 MAY 2006 18:15 EDT (22:15, GMT)
Judging from all the e-mails we've gotten so far, there's still a lot of interest in breaking into the SAP field. But is it still possible to break in? The short answer is yes. But it's important to realize that the process of breaking into SAP has changed over the years.

In the mid-'90s, the most common way to get into SAP was to get hired and trained by a Tier One consulting firm and get placed on a project. But that avenue into SAP consulting has really closed over the years. SAP customers are not willing to foot the bill for junior consultants anymore. So, consulting firms generally only hire senior SAP people.

In today's SAP market, the most likely way to break into SAP is to be pulled onto a project by your employer. In other words, you are working full time for a company that is either implementing or upgrading, and, before you know it, you've been asked to step in and play a role on the SAP side.

Of course, the frustrating aspect about this is that a lot of luck is involved. Plus you have to be willing to take a long-term, full-time job even to have that chance.

There are still a variety of ways to break into SAP. As the market heats up due to all the upgrades, I've seen folks who don't have any hands-on experience -- only a training course -- get an opportunity, but that's still the exception more than the rule.

You may be wondering how I feel about investing in SAP training and certification. I think it's a good long-term career investment, but it's important to understand that training may not lead right into an SAP project. I have heard from many aspiring consultants over the years who are frustrated about the money they shelled out on training. They weren't able to land a big-time SAP job on the other side.

The bottom line is that you can still break into SAP, but it takes a well-thought-out strategy, a lot of perseverance, and -- yes -- a little bit of luck. In terms of the strategy I recommend, that is best outlined in the case of specific examples. In the coming days, I will make sure to answer plenty of questions from those who are looking for their first SAP project. As you read those answers, you'll get a good feeling for the strategy I recommend.
Posted by Jon Reed Notes from ASUG
22 MAY 2006 18:30 EDT (22:30, GMT)
Greetings, SAP folks! For the next two weeks, I'll be answering your questions and making daily blog entries on SAP market trends and how to make the most of your SAP career.

I just got back from a few days at ASUG in Orlando with my team from SAPtips. I heard from quite a few consultants and got their take on the market firsthand.

The consensus seems to be that we are in the hottest SAP consulting market since the late '90s. There are a number of reasons for that, but the largest single factor seems to be "upgrade motivation." The vast majority of SAP customers are running on 4.6 or 4.7, and we can expect many of them to move to 5.0 in the next few years. These upgrades drive a need for SAP consulting expertise across the board.

I don't know if I agree with that consensus. The SAP consulting market is certainly healthier than it has been, but I see it as a "winners and losers" market without much margin for error. IT managers are still cautious with their resources, and offshore resources will continue to apply rate pressure on the market. Also, we see that SAP is taking a much bigger chunk of services revenue now. That works out well if you are a consultant for SAP, but not so well if you are an independent.

I see this as a market you can succeed in, but not without a strategy. And a thorough analysis of SAP's latest technology and how it might impact your skill set it also needed. For the next couple of weeks, I'll be writing blog entries and answering questions that I hope will help you to formulate a winning career strategy in today's SAP market.
Posted by Jon Reed