SAP Career Coaching By A SAP Consultant
Another SAP project, another CEO asking me what SAP is. Not unusual, but when combined with the fact that more than 410,000 people have visited our website to find out what are the most popular SAP modules, I have begun to sense a pattern.
Really, there are two undercurrents to the pattern I am seeing:
- SAP needs to do a better job answering what SAP is!
- SAP Consultants and those wanting to become SAP consultants, as well as customers, want to know what SAP modules to focus on.
SAP Career Tips
Unfortunately, I never really set out to be a career coach. However, I cannot negate the fact that I receive a constant stream of requests to both explain what SAP is and to recommend where and what SAP modules to focus on and how to get started.
Interestingly, I get these request from both people wanting to “break in” to SAP and from people who are in the SAP world who have seen a downturn in their opportunity pipeline and want to know where they should refocus their careers.
Your 10 SAP Career Coaching Tips
I promised you 10 SAP Career Coaching Tips at the beginning of this blog, which I’ll give you shortly.
Later on, I will be introducing you to a new service offering I think you might benefit from. So, without further ado, here are my top 10 SAP Career Coaching Tips:
- Get SAP certified. This isn't at the top of my list randomly.
I know this is controversial, but as the number of good SAP consultants increases, the differentiator of having SAP certification will become critical.
You might keep in mind that I have hired many, many SAP consultants and expect to do so in the future. I look at this a risk mitigation strategy from a project manager perspective. - Whether functional or technical, learn about an industry you are interested in, better still, work in the industry you are interested in.
- Within any industry, learn how they truly make their profit, not just “what” they do, but where they actually make their profit.
- Learn to learn.
If you have just entered the SAP world, you can expect to read SAP documentation, constantly, for at least the first six months of your SAP career, before you can really add value to a customer. This is a part of the continuous self improvement process that all top professional SAP consultants must pursue. - Learn about the “things” that touch a SAP system, i.e., a Point of Sale (POS) solution, and what things touch those things.
- Learn about the industry direction you are focusing on. If you are, for instance, focused on financial services, what new regulations are coming down the pike, such as IFRS updates, that might influence your customer and how will it affect or be affected by SAP.
- Learn to communicate in ALL situations. Take acting lessons!
- Take negotiation courses. Become an expert at it.
Do not fall into the trap of believing that because your culture does a lot of day-to-day negotiating that you are better at it than your counterpoint. - Learn the implementation methodology.
This means learn and know SAP ASAP and the new SAP Activate methodology. - Create your own SAP training library and customer document repository. You will reuse it.
The Value of Focused SAP Career Advice
There are, of course, many other pieces of advice you might be interested in. Much of it is worth what it cost you. That's why we think you will benefit from knowing where the best SAP opportunities are and who is hiring.
SAP Career Market Intelligence Newsletter Service
Other advice, however, may well be worth paying for and that brings me to our new service offering.
We are rolling out a new SAP Career Market Intelligence Reporting Service.
The website you are currently reading this blog on has been designed too and will provide the foundation for the content of our SAP Career Market Intelligence Reporting Service:
Find a SAP Customer with a Need and Fill It-Pretty Simple Really:(
- Uncover SAP customers with Active SAP Consulting needs.
- Determine who is doing the SAP implementation at particular SAP customers.
- Determine who the SAP implementation partner is.
- Provide insight into what SAP modules are being implemented.
- Critically, our SAP Career Market Intelligence Report will provide insight into the areas implementation teams are having issues with, which can be of great value in your "elevator pitch".
- Provide highly granular information about how long projects are taking to complete.
Learn to Target Specific SAP Career Opportunities
We believe that this information, the "who", "what", "when" and "where" of the SAP marketplace, will provide much more valuable information than just casually answering questions as they come in. This then, is the final "how" you are looking for!
If you’re interested in subscribing to such a service, please click on the button below and fill out the form on the page you'll land on and you will receive our subscription information via a separate email. You can subscribe right on that page if you want.
Who should subscribe to this service?
- Newly minted SAP Consultants or those wanting to break into the SAP market desiring highly targeted SAP market opportunity information.
- Experienced SAP consultants who are wanting to change direction because their opportunity pipeline isn’t as full as they would like or as full as it used to be.
- SAP customers and prospects who want to find out what their competitors are actually implementing and what sort of problems they are encountering and how they might avoid them.
- SAP recruiters who want to uncover additional market opportunities.
Tell Us More About Yourself To Get Specific Information
Once you subscribe, we will ask you for some additional demographic data, such as the city where you live, current employment situation, and where you want to work, among others.
This will allow us to automagically tailor the SAP Market Intelligence Report to each subscriber. This is also one of the critical differentiators of our offering, we are able to use our extensive information segmentation and enrichment capabilities to provide you with specific, actionable intelligence that will be unique to you and your particular situation.
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