I would like to tell you a little bit about my history with SAP.
After finishing school near Nuremberg (Germany) with the majors mathemathics and physics and some limited programming experience with BASIC in the 80s I wanted to study something completely different at my university in Berlin (Germany): Chinese Studies, politics and economics. I have changed that several times and after 2 years I was finally registered for business administration with the focus on computer science, finance and operations research. So you could say I went back to my roots as an enthusiastic logical and analytic thinker.
My professor in computer science was an expert in a software doing operations research activities but still at that time I first heard the term SAP from him. A company and software he regarded very highly. Also at that time I read in a computer magazin that SAP is especially looking for business asministration graduates with knowledge of computer science to fill their consulting ranks. Both things really fascinated me.
So during the 2 last years of my studies I did 3 internships at well known german and swiss companies. The first one in the IT department of Volkswagen, where I worked with information systems in the controlling area. I also had some exposure to SAP at that time. The second internship was at Hoffmann - La Roche in corporate accounting and controlling where I had some more contact with SAP and the final one at SAP in Walldorf in Regional Support Center CO where I had a full exposure to SAP. So I would regard my internships on my way to a career in the field of SAP as very important. I also did not pay for SAP trainings or certificates by myself that time.
After some half-hearted job search after graduating from university (after a total of 3 years 11 months of studies, I was 24 at that time) I then worked as a trainee or analyst at Solvay in Hanover (Germany) where I was an inhouse team member in an SAP implementation project. This was not about FI or CO as my background might have indicated but for the brand-new system of SAP CRM. And I think this was really great as it was highly interesting to work with that software already in the early days.
After a little bit more than one year that project at Solvay went live and I started to work at SAP SI - a subsidiary of SAP at that time - near Frankfurt (Germany) as a consultant for SAP CRM because I really liked SAP project work. My focus at that time was SAP Mobile Sales (inside SAP CRM) and SAP Analytical CRM and also some SAP BW. During that time I participated in a lot of international projects at well-known companies. This was one of the most interesting times in my life.
After around four and a half years I switched again to another company this time to Capgemini as I also wanted to work for one of the big consulting companies. But here I was only a little bit more then half a year. Again my work consisted of SAP CRM and SAP BW.
Then I started freelance work with SAP CRM and SAP BW which was also a great experience. But at the end of that time SAP Mobile Sales was no longer really used by the clients as offline scenarios were no longer regarded as important by SAP because of the upcoming mobile internet and I had to learn the new SAP CRM WebUI which is developed with ABAP OO instead of the Visual Basic .Net which I used for developments ealier.
So I found it easier to finish freelancing after around 4 years and became again the employee of a small SAP consulting company in Munich (Germany) called SAP Solutions, products, Visions around 4 years ago, where I am still employed today. That environment helped my a lot to get more familiar with SAP CRM WebUI which was my main area of expertise during that phase besides still some SAP BW.
Today I am 39 years old and I try to learn new technologies like Cloud for Customer, Fiori and Lumira and I am very curious what the future might bring. I think the work as SAP consultant is very interesting and rewarding and I am happy that I have chosen that path.
