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How to start a career as an SAP Functional Consultant in India

Ajay Joshi — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:38:47 GMT

I will try and answer a few frequently asked questions on making an entry (and a Career) in SAP as a Functional Consultant in India . The answers are based on my observations of the Indian SAP scene over the last 8 years, and not backed by any research. This is a personal opinion and not necessarily shared or endorsed by my employer.

Question: I am a professional with X years (from Nil to 15 or more) years of industry experience and want to make a career as an SAP Consultant. Will an SAP certification guarantee me a position as an SAP consultant in a company ?

Answer: The simple answer is NO. An SAP Certification will NOT guarantee a job. While the agencies ( SAP and its authorized education partners) selling the Certification training often make tall claims of “placement assistance” and 100 % placement, this is merely sales talk. Once you have enrolled and paid the fees, they do no more than act as a post office. If you are lucky there might be some company looking for SAP certified freshers around the time you complete Certification and the company might contact the training agency, who will then refer you. My estimate is that less than 20% Certified freshers get placed through the training agency, and this tells me that the training agencies are really NOT doing any great deal of concept selling to prospective / potential employers of Certified SAP Consultants.

(If anyone from SAP or an Authorised training agency is reading this and would like to dispute my estimate, I would only be too happy to be corrected)

Question: So is certification of any use?

Answer: This one is not so simple to answer. First, please bear in mind that while there is strong demand for SAP Consultants, very few IT large companies (in fact not more than 2 or 3) take Freshers, Certified or non-certified. The problem is that while IT companies have large programs for Graduate / Entry level hiring of BE/ BTech/ MCA, when it comes to SAP Functional consultants, everyone wants consultants with experience. So how do you get experienced consultants if there are no openings for freshers ? It’s a classic chicken and egg story, to which the IT companies by and large have either not found a proper answer or do not want to find an answer. The current solution seems to be to take experienced people from other companies and sometimes through the contact hire route. I will write more about the contract hire issue later in this note.

So the Certification has a very limited utility. In cases where companies take freshers, SAP Certification might carry some weight, but is, as I said before, not a guarantee for a job. A certification may sometimes be specified as minimum eligibility criteria in selection of freshers, but this is extremely rare. I am not aware of any large scale recruitment where certification was used as the only screening criteria. At best, with a certification , you have a slightly better chance of being short-listed/ selected than another person with an identical profile but no certification.

Typically, companies look for

for industry experience AND
some minimum SAP experience (usually 1 to 2 yrs) OR SAP Certification (with or without SAP experience)

Also keep in mind, that once a person has acquired some experience as an SAP consultant (say 3 plus years) , the value of certification becomes almost NIL. There was a time (say 2007 or before) when some clients insisted that Consultants should be certified, but those days are over.

Question: So if the industry is looking for experienced consultants and not taking freshers, how is the total pool of SAP consultants growing?

Answer: There are several streams from where the IT industry gets consultants to add to the total pool

From Indian companies that implement SAP. Core team members, once they have acquired some experience in their company (say 2 to 3 years) have a good chance to move on to IT companies as SAP consultants. Please note that while IT companies usually do take Core team members, they will not take end-users/ super users
As mentioned above some hiring of freshers does happen.
Contract hire route. Companies take SAP Consultants on contract from various sources. Later, depending on demand and individual capability they are absorbed as employees. The logical questions here is .. where do the contract resources get their initial experience ? The catch here is that many of the contract hires have fake experience on their CVs. These are people who take training from unauthorized institutes. The institute then helps them “manufacture” suitable experience. Some of them get absorbed by smaller SAP outfits and get real experience. After getting an year or so of real experience , they “clean up” the CV and may then get a contract position with a larger company. In my estimate, this is also the largest channel for addition to the SAP talent pool. It is not an ethical practice, but it is happening because the IT industry has not really taken the trouble to find a better solution. This is a very sad situation, because I have often noticed that while the fake CV resources may finally get real experience, their communication skills are usually poor. Not only I totally disapprove of this fake CV practice, I also want to add that this route is very risky as IT companies have found methods to spot fake experience and if an employee is caught he can be sent to jail in addition to losing his job.

Question: So keeping in mind all the above, should I do a Certification ?

Answer : My advice would be NO. Unless of course if you have Rs 3.50 lacs to spare and take a risk, go ahead.

Question: I am thinking quitting my job and doing SAP training. Should I quit.

Answer: ABSOLUTELY NO !!!! Find a method to get training while continuing in the job.

Question: So how do I make a career as an SAP consultant?

Answer: As I pointed out earlier there are multiple streams.

If you are working for a company which is implementing or has implemented SAP, try and get into the Core team or the Support Team. The crucial thing is that you should be doing (at least as a significant part of your total work) an SAP role and not just be an SAP end-user.
If you are not working in such a company, join a company where you might get this opportunity.
Keep a look-out for IT companies running Fresher hiring. Now the problem is that while the number of positions IT companies have may be 400 per year, the number of applicants is at least 10 times more. So IT companies often do an “employee referral hire only” recruitment drive. Therefore keep in touch with friends/ relatives who work for large IT companies.
Keep abreast of the industry requirements through sites such as Linked in
Join a training program… the cost is usually one tenth of the authorised one. Then try and get into a small SAP company, but DO NOT repeat DO NOT use fake experience. Firstly because it is unethical, and secondly because giving fake experience is a criminal offence and you could be sent to jail.

As I said at the beginning, this is my personal opinion based on observation. No research has gone into it. I would welcome comments, corrections and criticism.

Finally a bit of advice to aspirants. Please improve your English communication skills. Even if you have certification you will get rejected if communication skills are poor. My observation is that 50 % of certified candidates do not have adequate communication skills. You have spent or are planning to send money on SAP training …at best SAP knowledge has a shelf life of 10 years. So consider spending money on communication skills, they last a lifetime.

Career Options: The Indian SAP Functional Consultant

Ajay Joshi — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:03:18 GMT

Introduction

In recent years the Indian IT landscape has seen the emergence of a new profession, that of the SAP Functional Consultant . In this article I intend to explore issues such as the Origin, Characteristics, Roles and challenges for future professional growth of the SAP Functional Consultant .

It was when ERP systems started gaining popularity in the late- 90's that the ERP companies such as SAP realized that for their applications to grow they needed people who understood business AND could also "configure" the package. They did not have to necessarily write code. And thus was created the SAP Functional Consultant.

(A distinction must be made between Functional Consultants and Business Analysts. A Functional Consultant has business process knowledge AND also a good knowledge of the ERP package. They are therefore able to discuss solutions with Clients/ Users and then configure those solutions. A Business Consultant/ Analyst on the other hand has process knowledge but generally does not have a thorough knowledge of the package to carry out configurations.)

Origin, Characteristics and Sources

In India, among various IT professionals, the SAP Functional Consultant is relatively new. He/ she came into existence not before the mid 90's. The major factors that influenced the origin and growth of the SAP Functional Consultants in India were

Rapid growth of SAP usage by the worlds largest and leading corporations
The recognition of India as a reliable source for high quality IT professionals,
Major improvement in communication technology and connectivity worldwide and in India that made offshoring possible.

Combined, these factors meant that SAP work could be outsourced to India with considerable cost advantages, and this contributed to the rapid growth of the Indian SFC community. To the individual aspiring to be an SFC, it meant working in the (Indian) sunrise industry of IT, better working conditions, better remuneration and foreign travel. I estimate that as of now the total number of SAP FC's in India is in the region of 10 to 12 thousand.

SFC's typically have a graduate degree, 3 to 10 years of industry experience and some training/ exposure to SAP when they take up their first assignment as SP Functionl Consultants. The various channels that professionals have used to become SAP Functional Consultants are

Industry professionals, who acquire SAP knowledge through Official (SAP Academy/ Partner) or sometimes informal channels and then join the SFC community. This source is by far the largest. In many cases the SFC starts as a contract resource on the payroll of small sub contractors, and gradually moves to larger Consulting Companies. While SAP / partners make a promise of placement assistance after the training/ certification is over, placement success percentage has never been a high figure.
Members of Core teams from companies where SAP has been implemented. While most Client companies have an anti-poaching clause in their contract with the Implementation partner, a significant number of Core Team Members eventually join Consulting Companies.
Some Consulting companies run Industry Domain Hiring programs where they hire professionals with rich industry experience, with or without SAP knowledge. These hires are subsequently trained on SAP by the company.
Fresh graduates from leading Business schools are sometimes hired by companies and given SAP training.

All the above sources/channels have been used at one time or another by the larger Indian Consulting Companies. However when requirements are not high, Domain and Fresher Hiring is usually not resorted to.

SAP Functionl Consultants from each source have their plus and minus points. While Industry professionals come with experience, their Communication and Client facing skills are not very good, when compared to Domain Hires and Freshers.

SAP Functional Consultants Roles

Till just a few years back, it was every SAP FC's dream to be on an implementation project , primarily because it meant that he/she would be working in either US or Europe and with the attendant higher income that working abroad involved. Indeed the profession was so new in India that most people had not looked beyond the immediate attraction of money.

An interesting outcome of this "implementation" fixation was that when Companies advertised for SAP FC's they would invariably mention "at least 3 end-to-end implementations experience required", even when it was known that the resources were being hired mainly for "support" projects!!!

It is important to understand that SAP is now a mature market and most of the large companies (Fortune 500) have implemented SAP at least 5 or more years ago. It has been estimated that 70 percent of global revenue in SAP work is from "support". The Indian situation is no different. In fact the percentage of revenue for India from support would be considerably higher than the global number because India's advantage is primarily in offshore support.

As of now we see SAP FCs in India in the following roles:

Working on "support" or "maintenance" projects for Clients located in India or abroad. Most of the SP FC's in such roles are located in India and a small number may be onsite. This role forms a major chunk of the Indian SAP FC population. The growth rate of this segment is expected to be higher than others.
Working on Implementation projects. This is the second largest pool and a majority of the SFC's in this role are working on implementations in India. A few may be working abroad.
Working in SAP Sales and sales related activities.
In support areas like Training and Skill development.

Career Growth and Challenges

As mentioned earlier, the SAP FC is a new community, and the bulk of the population has less than 5 years of SAP experience. So the hard questions about career growth have yet to be faced. Also we don't have a great deal of evidence on what could happen in the long term to SAP FC from a career growth point of view. The visible career paths are:

Project Management: Given that a major part of the community is engaged in offshore support projects, moving upwards into Project management is a logical progression. This is the most visible career growth path in India and will continue to remain so for a long time. It is worthwhile to note that , in the early days, while SFC were deployed in India, Project management activity itself was not outsourced and Project management was done by foreign Clients/ Implementation partners. As of now Project Management by Indian Consulting Companies and Indian PM professionals is clearly established. This is a clear move up on the value chain.
Sales and Related activities. The Indian SFC's participation in Sales/ related is mainly for domestic customers, although we nowadays see some of the pre- and post-sales activity for foreign clients being done in India.
Consulting. This is career track which has very high earning potential but has been neglected by both the Indian companies as well as the Indian SAP FC community. Even today there are significant opportunities in US/ Europe for this role, but one does not see many Indian SFCs moving in that direction.

There are also a number of areas of skill-gap that need to be addressed by the SFC community. While package/ configuration knowledge among the Indian SFC is usually high, the challenges are mainly in managerial skills.

Communication/ Language skills (In English). This is the most serious skill-gap and the number one reason for slow growth for any of the career paths. What the SFC community has not fully understood and absorbed is that in any senior position, communication in English becomes vital for 2 reason

For communicating with Clients globally
For communicating internally, because even in an all-Indian group, the only language which everyone understands is English (strange but true!!).

Most large companies arrange a 1 or 2 day communications skills trainings but this is wholly inadequate. What the SFC community must realize is that improving Communication/ language skills require sustained long term effort and as such unless there is a high level of personal commitment and ownership, nothing much would be gained. So my advice to all SFC who want to see career growth, is to invest time AND money in improving Communication/ language skills. Fortunately in India a number of English training institutes are available to help solve the problem.

Client facing / Selling skills: Only a handful of SAP FC enter the SAP world with Client skills. (Usually SD consultants). For the rest, they have to learn them. The trend has been that in most companies, people learn "on the job", and there is very little formal/ class-room training that is made available by employers. Also such training is not easily available in the market. This will continue to be a challenge for some time.
Consulting skills: These are necessary in Consulting roles, and the situation is even worse than for Client facing skills.

In summary, the Indian SAP FC is a growing community which offers an attractive and stable career in the IT Industry to those industry professionals who are not directly involved in programming and hardware. There are attractive career and growth paths available, but there are also associated challenges in terms of skills. While the world recognises the Indian SFC for quality work in support and Project management, we have not yet established a strong image for Consulting. The SAP FC community, along with Consulting companies and SAP itself, needs to make concerted efforts for the Indian SFC to move up on the value chain.