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SAP Specialist: Who is and How to Become One

When I just started to delve into the topic of sappers, I was filled with great sadness: judging by what they write on the Internet, SAP is a very narrow specialization, the main work is focused on the support, there are a lot of restrictions and mandatory documentation, but market specialists are in demand, so for You can not worry about your wallet (salary statistics dev.by only confirms this). I talked with colleagues and found out that in reality SAP is not so simple and boring as it is painted. In one EPAM Enterprise, the practice has 1700+ specialists and 500+ implemented projects (more about what and for whom we can do read here) The department works only with business sharks and provides an opportunity to develop in different directions. If you have not yet decided on the choice of a profession in IT or want to try something new and look at SAP with caution, stay. I will try to put everything on the shelves.



What is SAP?


SAP ( English System Analysis and Program Development, Russian. System analysis and program development ) is a German software manufacturer. A small private business for the production of solutions for effective business management quickly grew to a large corporation, which is building a reference product. Today, SAP is the world leader among software solution providers (SAP products use more than 60% of the European and 50% of the US market) and are among the three Forbes ratings along with Microsoft and Oracle.

SAP?


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Each company has its own needs. For each of them, SAP developed a specific product.

Most Popular SAP Products


SAP R / 3 ERP system  , SAP NetWeaver integration platform , SAP BI (Business Intelligence)  suite of analytical applications , SAP HANA database management platform , new generation SAP S / 4 HANA ERP system , SAP Cloud Platform . Most SAP products are written in the internal programming language ABAP / 4 .

Project Roles


  1. SAP consultant
  2. SAP developer
  3. BI consultant

Let's go in order:

1. Who is an SAP Consultant?


Comments on the chief SAP consultant EPAM Andrei Velichko

Each SAP product can be adapted to individual customer processes. Solution customization is done by an SAP consultant. The SAP system for the most part has already been written and has its own built-up business chains and directions. The task of the SAP consultant is to choose the area for work and study it thoroughly, in order to know all the capabilities of the system and be able to present them to the customer.

“We need a clear understanding of the business and its place in the industry: how processes work, what are the differences, what they depend on, how the system is debugged in other companies . ”

You can start with a narrow specialization. For example, with material management. For this, the SAP consultant needs to understand the procurement process, its various variations, the difference in procurement depending on the industry. When the basics are learned, you need to understand how the work in the SAP project works. Each project has its own methodology and goes through certain phases. The consultant performs his range of work on each of them.

“It is important to understand that the project begins long before the signing of the contract with the client. The first step is getting to know the business and the wishes of the client. The consultant must explain to the customer what SAP is, what benefits the introduction of SAP products will bring, to convince that SAP is convenient and even necessary . ”

This is followed by examination, technical design, product setup, its completion, user training, information transformation from a source system to an SAP system.

“At each of these stages, the consultant communicates with the customer and clarifies details or offers better solutions . ”

What should be an SAP consultant?

She is sociable, presentable, stress-resistant, not afraid of communicating with people of any link: from the storekeeper or security guard at the entrance to the general director or owner of a large business.

With what base is it easier to succeed as an SAP consultant?

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SAP-?


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If the product setup does not give the desired results, the development team adds the necessary functionality. Previously, the SAP developer was a Full-stack specialist who was responsible for writing both the server side and the presentation. In recent years, there has been a separation of specializations into frontend and backend: the backend all also work with the ABAP language, the frontend uses Java, JavaScript, HTML and other frameworks.

ABAP is designed to work exclusively in the ecosystem of SAP products. This programming language appeared a long time ago, but continues to develop actively: new designs, frameworks are created. Over the almost forty-year history of existence, it has incorporated many different programming paradigms, such as procedural, oriented and object-oriented. The language syntax may seem archaic (somewhat reminiscent of COBOL), but the source code is easy to read and understand. You can read more about how to code on ABAP here .

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The SAP developer is somewhere in between the programmer and the analyst. In addition to writing code, he must speak the same language with business representatives. To work with data, SAP specialists use the HANA platform (you can read how to work with the tool here ). A special team implements and develops this tool. HANA developers are engaged in native development with HANA specifics. This is a development, but not like everywhere else. She is more enterprise oriented. The main consumers are large enterprises whose internal software is naturally written in SAP. To work with HANA, you must know the SAP environment, tools and standards.

“If you work with the Java language, then write everything yourself: how the database lies, authorization. You are used to working this way, but in SAP everything is tripled differently. There are certain standards here and they must be adhered to, they cannot be changed, otherwise integration will suffer. When generic developers come to work with us, they have a shift in consciousness, it’s hard for them to get used to it. ”

Due to certain restrictions, the HANA developer must be able to maneuver and find creative solutions that will meet the requirements of the customer and the technical parameters of the system. This is complicated and requires some skill.

“We are always learning something new, we are developing and mastering related fields. The market is very appreciated by specialists who know more than necessary, are able to take the initiative and make independent decisions. ”

What should be an SAP developer?

Neat, corrosive, thinking, flexible, creative, have analytical skills, speed and structure of thinking, be sure to speak foreign languages, the ability to work in a team to listen to other people's opinions and take responsibility for making decisions.

With which base is it easier to succeed as an SAP developer?

“Ideally, an engineering or engineering-economic education is needed. The narrow specialization by which you simply write code is now extremely rare. More often, the developer prepares a solution to the problem together with the consultant. To do this, you need to understand business processes. A big plus will be the knowledge of several programming languages, the basics of databases and the ability to build SQL queries. ”

Who is a BI Consultant?

Comments on the leading BI-consultant EPAM Natalya Dubovik.

BI consultants are engaged in reporting: they collect data for analysis and build a decision support system. In our case, these are SAP components, but responsible people make decisions anyway. The task of a BI specialist is to provide information from decision support systems in the most lightweight way. And present to the customer the result of the company so that the client not only makes a decision, but also comes for a new one.

“The specialty was born from the concept of extreme laziness of people. A BI specialist is a “thing in the household” necessary, useful, and a good BI specialist is also profitable. We do something beautiful, smart, useful, understandable, easy to configure and implement for the customer, and, naturally, cheaper. It is important here not only to create the perfect solution, but also to convince the client that what we offer is what he needs. ”

Each client has his own vision of what he needs, his own understanding of what will help him and not always the same things.

“We realize the desires of people in the technical base that is available. And almost always one does not coincide with the other. People want more than they can get. We have to compromise and get out. To do this successfully, you need to know all the technical details of SAP products and their capabilities. The more SAP components you know, the easier it is to create solutions and anticipate customer desires. ”

The client’s business has to be constantly studied in order to speak the same language with him. It is impossible to communicate with him, being “off topic”.

“People are so saturated with their profession that they use slang words in ordinary speech. In my first year as a BI consultant, I often called up with a client after two or three conversations about postings for the last fin. the period about whether it hits or doesn't hit went to accounting courses. Because I didn’t just understand what a person means, but didn’t know how to ask about it? ”

In addition to business features and technical issues, it is important to consider the individuality of each case.

“This is an area where there are no pre-configured solutions. Even two customers with the same business will have different needs. Just as there are no two identical snowflakes, there are no two identical BI solutions. The basic idea and even the base may coincide, but the embodiment is individual. Typical, template solutions are impossible here and you need to be prepared for this. ”

In the work, it is worth considering even the features of the client’s visual perception: someone is more comfortable working with the excel table, someone needs to read charts, someone needs static information, someone is easier to deal with interactive reports.

“Often BI specialists are confused with BA (business analyst). They sound the same, but from my point of view, a good BI is doomed to become BA over time, because without an analysis of what is at the moment, what the customer wants, what he can get and what else he wants, normal work is not working. "

Technically, a BI specialist works simultaneously with components both as a developer and as a consultant. And as the solution is created, it manifests itself as a tester, designer, teacher and psychologist. It turns out a rather large stack of skills, but without them, nowhere:

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What should be a BI consultant?
Open, thinking, searching, independent, to have a certain level of empathy. A classic geek programmer will not succeed in this area because he will not be able to hear the customer, read between the lines and guess what he did not tell him. A person must have creative thinking. Most often, the team does not have a clear technical task, and you need to come up with a solution from scratch to meet the unique needs of the client. Must want to learn and build knowledge in related fields.

With which base is it easier to succeed as an SAP developer?

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SAP-?


Recently, SAP has become more open. Today, information about its products and systems can be found on the Internet in the public domain. There are communities of SAP specialists, various forums where developers and consultants exchange experiences and help each other resolve conflict situations. SAP holds regular seminars and courses for those who want to learn more about products and technologies. More recently, it became possible to install a demo version of SAP on your PC and try to deploy it, learn, and even pee something.

But if you are serious about learning, our experts recommend choosing courses based on companies in order to immediately gain practical experience together with theory. Entering some SAP specialties alone can be very expensive, and companies have the necessary servers and documentation, which will greatly facilitate and speed up the learning process. For example, the EPAM Training Center annually enters trainings for SAP Development and SAP Consulting, and the SAP Lab is open on an ongoing basis. At the end of all stages of the course, you can not just get a diploma, but also a job offer in the company.

What can help in studies? Expert Advice


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Natalya Dubovik: “If you want to become an SAP BI consultant, you can first learn to become a BI consultant with a wide profile. SAP is just a shade for technical capabilities and it builds up quickly. But only locally and experimentally. The theory gives no effect and profit in terms of the growth of personal opportunities . ”

What are the prospects for growth?


The position of an SAP specialist is at the crossroads of business and development, therefore:

  • You can grow from a junior specialist and further as far as enough strength and desire. To become more in demand in the market and receive salary bonuses for additional skills, you will have to deepen the level of knowledge of the SAP system and its implementation.
  • You can go to architecture. To gradually move from performing work in the system and its settings to creating architecture and project management, you need to work with a wide range of solutions and gain experience in their implementation. Since the architecture covers the maximum number of products (not only SAP).

Summarize:


An SAP Specialist is a satisfied rare specialization that covers a wide range of skills and soft skills in one bundle. Training will cost time, money and extra effort. Vacancies for SAP-specialists in the market are many times less than for universal ones. But SAP customers - large prestigious foreign companies - are willing to pay big money for rare pros. If that's what you need, go for it.

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