What to learn SAP?

If you are already a developer the logical move is into ABAP. Unlike many other languages, where technical ability is all important, in SAP, knowing the programming language is only about 60% of what you need to know.

A lot of importance is placed on how well you know how SAP works. From the clients perspective, the more you know about how SAP works, the faster and cheaper you will be able to do the work they need.

If your background in from Business processes (Sales, Accounting Manufacturing etc), you're in luck. Depending on your experience, you may have an advantage in knowing the basic business processes. You just need to know how SAP does it!

How SAP enables you to create and order deliver goods.

How SAP enables you to invoice the customer and post payments.

Your logical move into SAP is as a departmental user or as a customisation expert.

SAP Industry Sectors

Due to its' popularity, SAP has developed solution for many industry sectors. SAP now have versions specifically aimed towards these (Retail, Manufacturing and Oil etc) industries. You need to decide which of these industries you wish to specialise in. This decision is particularly important if you are to be a customisation expert or ABAP programmer.

What else you need to know?

SAP is also broken into various modules, your are not expected to be an expert in all these modules. However the more modules you know the more work opportunities you will get.

ABAP programmers will be expected to have at least one module skill. Not necessarily as in-depth as a customisation expert, but certainly as good as any user. You will find that most organisation implement SAP to work differently.

The differences are what each company consider their 'competitive edge'. For this reason you will not be expected to know how a particular company uses SAP. You will be expected to know how a 'standard' SAP system works. A standard SAP system is often called a 'vanilla' system.

Factors to getting a job

To get work in SAP is very similar to any other field. Get an understanding of what SAP is and what it can do from a business perspective. Next decide which business module you want to specialise in and start learning how SAP does it.

Most people have a fair understanding of what happens in a sales office, so they specialise in SD. Pick a module you have some experience in. If after all this you still want to have a career in developing SAP learn ABAP or customisation.

Customisation will be far easier to learn once you know how to use SAP. ABAP is easy for anyone with a programming background. However in order to do anything useful you need to know where the data is and to do this you need to know how SAP works.

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