Enterprise Resource Planning Blogs by Members
Gain new perspectives and knowledge about enterprise resource planning in blog posts from community members. Share your own comments and ERP insights today!
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Leduckduck
Active Participant

This week I failed my first SAP SuccessFactors certification – it must be first time a consultant admits that. :cool:

But it happened – it was my first encounter with the new way of taking the certifications in the Cloud. Instead of meeting at a test center – it is now possible to do the test from home or other location. Only requirement is a working internet connection – and an installed program which closes down all other programs than the test.

It was a so called closed book exam – no aids are available or legal to use. After the failed exam I have thought a great deal about the closed book exam form. The approach to test the consultants, forces them to memorize the course material. And the available course material is not 100 or 200 pages but a lot more. Some of material is technical and not easy to memorize.  Welcome to a world were XML still is present.

An example of a question could be:

You are at customer – where you are supposed to set up x – which of the below is the correct URL to use:

  1. https://xxx1.xxx.com
  2. https://xxx2.xxx.com/
  3. https://xxx3.xxx.com/
  4. https://xxx4.xxx.com/

Is the above reasonable to demand from a consultant to remember - what is your opinion?

My personal opinion about the closed book exam form – is that it is not a “normal” set-up – when have you ever implemented and customized a customer system without access to the internet or SAP material? Answer à It will never happen.

Is there a more normal and more recommendable way to check that tested consultants have reached a learning level within a certain SuccessFactors suite in question? Yes – but it will also be expensive for SAP and the Partner Network within SuccessFactors. Provide the consultant with access to a demo system which has to be customized to the requirements from a fictive customer. The consultant will then pass the certification if the demo system is correctly customized. The certification will be an open book certification – just like in a real implementation.

The above will certainly not happen – so next week I will start to memorize “stuff” for the next certification planned. So have not surrendered – but will start the memorizing war Monday morning.

Have memorized in the below 5 SAP Certifications – so it is possible. I will give it a new go -  but my gift from SAP next Christmas will hopefully be a new test procedure.

45 Comments
Labels in this area