How do I learn SAP?

Every time a new certification is introduced, the question of the certification being worthy or not emerges and SAP certification is no exception. There are many discussions on the value of SAP certification in the IT field. The conflict between the value of having a SAP certification and having actual technology skills is one of the major topics in such discussions. A certification doesn’t prove one’s actual skill sets. But it definitely validates one’s skills in the professional world. A SAP certification showcases a participant’s effort and dedication to go through an exam and get certified. SAP certification is one of the best ways to self-educate people. The testing procedure to certify professionals in SAP exams is rigorous and participants need to gain adequate knowledge to attain one. Also surveys say that employers are always keen to hire certified professionals than the non-certified peers. The debate on the important of SAP certification will continue to move on without a conclusion.

The need for SAP training to attain a certification is important. SAP implementation can be very challenging for beginners and therefore, self-study always might not be sufficient. SAP training forms the base of SAP knowledge for beginners and polishes SAP skills and expertise for existing SAP users. Owing to the striking benefits resulted of SAP implementation; many companies sponsor their employees for SAP certification training. SAP certification is however not enough for mastering SAP tool. Along with SAP certification, professionals also need to build in experience in handling SAP systems. Expert SAP consultants are those who have both experience and certification on SAP and thus the ability to effective manage SAP system. Thus, SAP certification training is definitely a worthy investment for professionals looking forward to build a career as a SAP consultant.

Being in the functional side of SAP, I would recommend you to start by getting an overview of MM/SD/FI/CO modules. By overview, I mean not being able to customize the system in those modules as it requier a lot of work. But rather reading and learning enough to understand capabilities of each of those 4 modules and how they are linked to each other.

Then, you will know if you prefer the logisitics area or financial area and go deeper in the related scope.

As a very beginner, you will need to get used to SAP terminology and visualise in terms of transactions/screens and some customizing what are autorizations, Idocs, Workflows, RFC, function modules

If you have access to SAP at the moment, start checking various transactions, try to create an Purchase Order and check the various fields in that screen. Don’t forgt to register on SAP Community network and read it daily.

Hi

It is a good question and everyone who wants to find a job in SAP world should be asking this question before considering any paid training opportunities. The official way of learning SAP is SAP training courses provided by SAP Education (a division of SAP that is responsible for training and certification).

However, these courses are quite expensive and not everyone can afford them. Of course, there are cheaper alternatives – non-official SAP training institutes that provide SAP training for a smaller price. There are two problems with non-official SAP training providers: (1) they are still expensive, (2) there is a high chance of encountering a fraud institute that provides low-quality training. So, if you decided that official training from SAP or from the third-party institute is not your thing than what you should do?

Be aware that the SAP market is a highly saturated one and SAP is now aggressively adopting technologies and taking over companies so it has one of the fasted changing ecosystem out there.

So unless you are already working on some area in SAP, you will find it hard to keep up with the changes.

Or, if you are working on some cutting edge technology, you may soon find an SAP use case for it and join the SAP ecosystem.

For example, Big Data and Hadoop developers can now get on to Big Data projects for SAP customers where they would be trying to leverage the power of Big Data on SAP Platform.