Career guindance on SAP Domain

[Former Member]

Hello All,

I am a professional graduate in the discipline, Food processing and engineering with 2+ years of experience in Quality assurance or Quality Control in a process industry and recently certified in SAP PLM - QM from an authorized SAP Education partner. I was part of the core team member in implementing SAP from the business side at my first organization. I am currently in a new project of QM redesign (2nd org). This is a small gist of my profile.

Since I have done the certification, I felt to change my role as implementation consultant and to take up projects. But I am somewhere struck as how to convert my role and whom to approach to do so. Appreciate your valuable feedbacks.

Thanks in advance for the inputs which will shape my career and place me in a right track.

Anitha Pauline.

[former_member13738]

Hi Anitha,

Congratulations for getting certified. That is really great.

Regarding the role conversion you have queried, I would suggest if you can find an opporunity in your current company to become an implementation consultant, then that is the best way forward. As you know, it is always difficult to start in a new company in a different profile. Also there you will be treated as a fresher with no experience in that area. But if you can get an opportunity in the current company, then it will be more comfortable for the role change.

All the best, Anitha

Regards,

Leon

[Former Member]

Hi Leon,

Thanks for the wishes.

In my current company SAP has been implemented since 2004 and in due course the business have changed in its process and thus wanted to map the same in SAP only for the QM module. I am here as an end user support to handle large quantity of master data and end user transactions. Moreover in my company they have in-house SAP specialist as Support employed.

This is the reason why I prefer to go out.

Thanks,

Anitha Pauline

[Former Member]

Anitha,

I need some clarification. It looks to me like you were part of a full implementation through go-live as a junior member of the team, perhaps providing subject matter expertise, not SAP expertise. During that implementation, you learned some SAP. Now you are working for a different company as an employee, not as a consultant, doing a QM redesign. I assume this time you're providing SAP expertise, is that right?

Now that you're certified, you're wanting to change from being an inhouse SAP implementor to an external, SAP implementation consultant. Is that right?

If I'm understanding this correctly, I would wager that at the conclusion of this project you would be successful if you applied to one of the major consulting companies (or perhaps one of the minor ones). With two full implementations plus certifications, you're a prime candidate to start as a junior consultant.

Hopefully I understood your question correctly. Please let me know if I misunderstood anything and I'll update/correct my advice.

Best regards,

  --Tom

[Former Member]

Hi Thomas,

You are absolutely right with your understanding. As adviced I have already applied to both, so called major and minor consulting ones, whereas their demand and preference are to a reputed experienced consultants who has atleast 1 E2E implementation experience, the lack of experience plays a major role in delaying the entry level in SAP domain as consultant and we certified candidates are considered to be freshers though we have our domain experience. The way of recruiting and the demand are on the experienced candidates only, if we are denied with opportunities then we may remain to be freshers as long as the trend changes, which at times makes to feel that I have chosen a wrong choice.

Thanks,

Anitha Pauline