Career Change

[Former Member]

Hello -

I was looking for some career advice.

At the moment i am working as an accounting manager in a large corporation.  We recently implemented SAP and i am a user for SAP ECC and SRM.  My company recently asked me to get the SAP Project System to track the costs of projects instead of only cost centers.  I have no SAP experience -i would just answer the project manager's questions and check the data after implementation.  After working with some of the consultants and hearing how much we are paying them i got to thinking that maybe i should switch careers...

My Background: I am a CPA and i have worked in Accounting and Finance for 6 years.  I started as an analyst but now i'm a manager.  My skill is analysis, i can sit down with executives and explain financials to them and help make decisions.

At this time i am earning about $135,000 a year plus benefits but i am super ambitious and want to earn more. Also, i love to learn new things.

What SAP career path would you suggest for me based on my background?  Are there any concerns about the market getting too saturated?  There are a lot of people in Chicago who are trying to become SAP consultants so this kind of made me a bit nervous but i still hear about some folks earning $200,000 a year so that is why i am really interested.  I thought with my accounting skills and end user experience i could be more marketable but that's just my theory, i understand it may not even matter.

[Former Member]

Eduardo,

I am assuming you are in the United States or Canada. If you are making $135k in salary, you are making well above what the average SAP consultant makes. In order to switch to SAP consulting, you would need to take a pretty big pay cut for several years before you'd get back to where you are now.

Also, you may be confusing what the consulting companies are charging with what the consultants are actually making. Consulting Companies often charge $200 to $300/hr or more, but the consultant often sees only about 40% of that. I'm an independent consultant and have a pretty high billing rate (with 16+ years of experience), but I don't make all that much more than you and I have to take the risk of not getting paid if I get sick or when I go on vacation. I also have to pay some pretty high rates for my medical insurance for my family ($1800/mo) and while you probably pay some for your medical, I'm sure your company pays a pretty good portion. You might want to work up a total compensation number rather than just a salary number.

The only SAP consultants making close to $200k/year probably have close to 20 years of experience or have some seriously unique/in-demand skillset. (For example, long time BW/analytics experience PLUS current HANA experience. Note: HANA training doesn't get you the big bucks, it's combination of extended analytics WITH recent HANA hands-on experience. Folks with no experience jumping on the HANA training bandwagon are chasing phantoms.)

If I were you, I'd concentrate on climbing the ladder at the company I'm already in, because they're clearly paying above average wages for your field.

Just my two cents!

Best regards,

--Tom

[Former Member]

Dear Tom, Thank you for your input.

I appreciate the numbers because this helps me value the potential upside.

A lot of companies including mine are moving their some of the accounting and finance functions to Indian companies such as Genpact to save money.  I have seen some co-workers laid off as a result so it's made me rethink my career.

I will keep looking at different career paths, my next one to research is management consulting.

I had one final question regarding jobs and wage growth for SAP in the United States.  Do you have an opinion on where that's headed over the next 10 years?  Since you have 16 years of experience i would like to hear about the trend is SAP.

[Former Member]

Dear Eduardo,

The trend towards outsourcing you are seeing in accounting started in IT. Over the last 16 years, more and more SAP work has been outsourced to India (and now from India to even cheaper countries). This has had a chilling effect on wages over time and it only looks to continue. It's a self reinforcing cycle. US citizens see the IT jobs as being unreliable over the long term and select different fields. Since there aren't enough US citizens to fill the jobs in the US, it's difficult to find qualified applicants locally, which makes outsourcing more attractive. And the cycle continues. So for SAP (and accounting, and many

Outsourcing makes sense for very large companies that can deal with the time differences, cultural differences, and communication challenges. It is more difficult for small to medium size companies to outsource. So you are more likely to find a job that's willing to keep in you the US if you concentrate on smaller companies, but, of course, they pay less and your chances for advancement are limited.

Consulting is a career path in and of itself. Once you get on this merry-go-round, it can be hard to get off. Companies tend to hire for their hands-on lower rank positions and then promote from within for their manager positions and up. They hire consultants for expertise, but often don't have room for that kind of high-priced firepower over the long term. Your option as a consultant, then, if you've been on the road for a few years and want to settle down/have a personal live/raise kids, is to take a pay cut and start at the bottom to work your way up OR to continue up the consulting ladder (become a manager of consultants/partner in a consulting firm/own your own firm/do independent consulting). Remaining on the consulting track generally means living the life of a traveling salesman/over-the-road trucker.

You have some tough decisions to make. If you think you can make it a little higher into middle management (which protects itself from outsourcing), that might be your best option. If your path upward is blocked by 40 and 50-something folks that look like they're going to stay put for a while, then you might want to look into related, but adjacent departments in your current company. It never hurts to get more exposure within a company. If that doesn't seem likely, explore similar positions at similar companies.

If you are attracted to the lifestyle of consulting and/or think you have a knack/love for being the designer/architect on projects, then by all means look into SAP or management consulting. But if you're primary concern is protecting your financial security, you might be better off pursuing a corporate strategy.

In the long run, you'll be better off if you focus on what you love to do more than the compensation. I know folks who do their job only for the money (doctors, lawyers, and, yes, some consultants). In general they're a pretty miserable lot. I know folks who do what they love every day and for the most part, they're compensated at an above average rate because their love of what they do keeps them motivated and able to produce at a high level.

You might want to look into an executive MBA program that covers SAP and management consulting as part of the curriculum. To rise higher in management, an MBA is probably a good thing and it's almost a prerequisite for management consulting. There are several programs near Chicago (U of Michigan and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee spring to mind) that have strong SAP components.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

--Tom