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career change - BI or ABAP

Former Member
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It would be much grateful if any forum experts could scribble few lines of advice at this juncture of a career change for me.

Basically a enginnering graduate in mechanical, I was always been interested in a level of programming as well as business processes..so ERP was always in the back of my mind..But my entry to IT has been associated with more of the UI stuff (to be specific, less of java and more of RIA) in my past 4 yrs exp in coding. But now I have taken a career break and am thinking of getting trained in SAP. I want to move away from more of UI development which I have always felt unthankful.

Since, I had a year's experience in purchase at the start of my career, I was thinking of taking up ABAP now and later down the years, I could move more towards a techno-functional role so as to satisfy my interests..Is this fine? I am unaware of ABAP's future directions.

Or I can opt for a training in BI, which also I believe is hot at the moment, and guess will be. But without a computer science background, is it fine to take up BI and become an expert? Also, will i be able to embrace the functional part down the line if I start with BI? What exactly will a BI expert be doing (nature of work) deep down his career path?

All inputs are greatly appreciated. Thanks much.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Former Member
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Hi, Thomas,

I don't know which country are you in, I work as a ABAP engineer for 6 years in china.

In my Opion, If you choose BI field, you must with stong ABAP skill as precondition.

in spite of you will work as a ABAP or BI expert, if you want to premote in erp field, you must have comprehensive knowledge with Business process of enterprise.Most of people say ABAPer is the strongest role , they can do everything them want to do.

Hope it helps.

Best regards,

Rock

9 REPLIES 9

Former Member
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Hi, Thomas,

I don't know which country are you in, I work as a ABAP engineer for 6 years in china.

In my Opion, If you choose BI field, you must with stong ABAP skill as precondition.

in spite of you will work as a ABAP or BI expert, if you want to premote in erp field, you must have comprehensive knowledge with Business process of enterprise.Most of people say ABAPer is the strongest role , they can do everything them want to do.

Hope it helps.

Best regards,

Rock

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Thanks rock, you mean to say that you need to get thorough in ABAP before moving on to BI? Besides, I'm from India.

Edited by: thomas_tiju on Aug 13, 2010 7:29 AM

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I think I am learning that BI does not have any business to do with business processes. BI translates to just inteligent reporting and that a BI consultant will never need to worry too much about the business processes?

Am I learning right? Please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks much.

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Hello,

correct me if I am wrong. You don´t have any idea about how it works in SAP, how to navigate around, the concepts, nothing about theprogramming, about the database concept and stuff. Is that right? If yes, don´t think about the ABAP basics as the target, it will be thepath to the overall knowledge of the SAP system.

You will learn how it works, about the transactions, SAP standard, function modules, general rules you can use any time and that will provide you a better basis for your decision. After like 2 weeks playing with SAP ABAP trial (minisap) you will understand much more and you can ask the question again, with ability to ask about the details important for you.

In ABAP trial you can play with both ABAP language itself or the BI. Try, learn the basics and reconsider your question.

I hope that could help,

regards Otto

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You are right, Otto. I was clueless and now I want to try the minisap.

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I hope I gave you the best answer I could. It is based on my own experience.

I was able to create some HR reports in first few days, the development is the same in PHP, Java or ABAP. But to get the picture took me like two years. And a reasonable navigation became a little clearer after like few weeks. So do not waste your money for any official training or anything, start on your own with the minisap, and pay the money when you have enough questions to ask. The other guys who have no idea about what is SAP like will struggle for days and will lose the money for these days, but you can get far ahead thanks to your previous homework.

Good luck and hope to see you around,

regards Otto

Former Member
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Hi , Even am also a VLSI verification engineer with 6.5 years of experience. I want to change my career from VLSI to SAP.

Because VLSI does not have much onsite opportunities.I want to learn SAP and learn the technology well and be here for a while and then want to work in overseas.I want to learn SAP BI.I heard there is not much coding work involved and it would be less complex than SAP ABAP.Please advise me with the course and the SAP teaching center as well.

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What would I do if I were a SAP newbie: /people/otto.gold/blog/2010/08/20/what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-sap-newbie

"Want to switch to SAP consultancy": http://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/18544

regards Otto

Former Member
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First , I think your decision to move to SAP is right .

I advice u to take a look a about SAP user interface module

like HR, MM, ... and see how things going on to under stand the

concept of SAP, whether u want go as ABAPer or BI .because that gives u strong knowledge

when u want develop  or report