How to become a SAP consultant
Let me split this question into two parts. On the one side there are students or business users who want to start or change their career into SAP. On the other side consultants who want to grow and become better for themselves and market. Except first several steps the remaining approach is the same and there let’s be honest to each other, there is no easy way how to become a SAP consultant. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but like any other profession it takes time (from my experience it’s about 5 years). Let’s dive into it.
First of all you need to understand consulting is a tough profession. You must deal with people everyday. You must travel to different cities or countries. And the most important you must learn something new everyday. If you are up to this, than follow me and see what applies to you. Sometimes you need to not only to learn but to keep your sap certification up to date.
So, what does SAP consultants do? They consult other people, companies in either way: how to change business processes or how to implement a new IT system like SAP. Ideally you should do both – these people are SAP functional architects, cause they know how to change business to make it better and support these changes with IT system.
There are functional and technical consultants. Functional are these boys and girls who know business, not IT. They understand legal reporting, business requirements, best practices in specific areas. Technical people are these nerds, who install, support, update IT part of SAP implementation. In 99% cases you can’t be both. And the worst news are you can’t switch modules (areas) because just one module would take you 5 years to learn to be a good SAP consultant.
Step 1. Find a business area
It’s really important. Some people are good in communications, others in math, third in coding, etc. It’s about what you like to do most, because once you in, be ready to stay there at least 5 years. Yes, it takes minimum 5 years to learn just one modules, one functional area in SAP.
Idea is to stick with something general and then become more specific over the years. General I mean finances, sales and distributions, controlling, human resources, material management, logistics, etc. It’s a good idea to do some preliminary research what this business area is, what do people do there, how it looks like.