Managing SAP Career

[former_member208541]

Hello,

Iam from India and with 12 yrs exp in SAP SD. SAP SD is not a critical skill any more since there are too many SAP SD consultants in the market. I keep on applying but do not get calls. Could be due to 3 months notice period in IT companies in India and companies do not want to wait for three months for a candidate to join

But I also feel that instead of hiring someone with 12 yrs exp, companies hire someone with 8 yrs exp. I strongly feel there is no major difference between a consultant with 8 and 12 yrs of experience in providing solutions in SAP SD (or any other core module like MM etc ).

Companies expect a consultant to become a manager after so many yrs in Consulting role. But I want to be in consulting line . Is this correct thing to do ? . I really like doing Config, providing solutions. But the issue is the same can be done by a person a few yrs junior too.

So what to do ? May be learn some skills like SAP EWM/SP Hybris to differentiate from other consultants ? One irony is that SAP India does not provide trainings on these modules too !

Can someone pls advice ?

regards

sachin

[Former Member]

With 12 or more years of SD experience, you cannot expect to do configurations and get good money.

You need to design the solution, take on client facing roles (requirement gathering etc.), leading SAP SD projects in which you will be responsible for delivery of all objects (output, pricing, interfaces, reports etc. etc.) but actual realization will be done by analysts with 8 years of experience.

Also have strong MM and ABAP skills. Which you will not use but will help you in design and during realization.

[Lakshmipathi]

Yes it is quite true that once you have 10+ years of experience in IT field, employer would expect you to do managerial roles. But once you accept for that role, you have to not only manage SAP related projects but non-SAP related projects as well and obviously, you will be out of consulting.

So really if your HR or Project Manager are open to an alternate options, you give a proposal to them that your role would be like 60% into consulting and 40% into managing the show or the percentage may vary depending upon the project you accept. In addition to that, you should also project yourself to HR and top management that you have the skill of giving standard solutions to any Business process from SD point of view. For that, you need to convince them that you can give Value-Add to other SAP projects that your employer are handling. Your Idea can be in the areas of Cost Optimization, Cycle Time Reduction, Process Improvement etc., If you take, support projects, you can explore of automating some existing manual process which takes longer time from the users perspective.