Where to start?

[Former Member]

Hello,

I'm a business technology consultant, with extensive programming work, thinking of adding SAP to my skills but I don't know where to start.

Is there a road map or something for me to follow to get up to speed and maybe certified to start taking on SAP consulting projects?

Also, can I download demo or learning versions of the products?

[Former Member]

Thx everyone for the information.

I'm going to review the links given and look around the SAP website.

I will award points as soon as I figure out how.

[stephenjohannes]

Rich,

Coffee corner means no points required for answers. The occasional thank you is always enough here. However cases of dublin dr pepper in glass bottles are always welcomed (j/k).

Take care,

Stephen

[stephenjohannes]

Rich,

You can browse the SAP education website to get a good feel of the educational materials, however the key success in dealing with SAP solutions is "generalization + specialization". You should have the "101" view of the SAP solution suite, however have the "masters" experience in at least one area. In other words you should be an expert in everything, yet only know one area well.

As far as getting started, the key is utilizing your past technical/business knowledge. An easy example is that if you have dealt with Human Reources from the business side, then you would probably want to focus more on HCM. If however you are more technical then you would want to learn ABAP and then pick up a few application classes in your area of focus.

You will find also people tend to transition from area to area. I used to be an HR ABAP developer and gradually moved from that to e-commerce and then over CRM technical/functional. My background before SAP, was c, perl, and early web development(pre-java, pre-jsp, think early web starting with text based browsing). My point is that if your base skills are fundamentally sound it should not be hard to transition into the SAP world.

Take care,

Stephen

[mathew_muthalaly]

Hi,

Adding to what Stephen has said, if you choose to go the ABAP way, there is an alternative to attending the Academy courses in ABAP. You could buy SAP software from SAP with a single user license and learn ABAP development yourself. There are good books from SAP Press. I believe it would initially work out to be more expensive than attending the courses, but then you have a full-fledged system in place .

This may be particularly suitable to you as you are a technology person and could learn a lot and have lot of fun, installing the software and getting it up and running. Learning ABAP is easy, providing solutions is more difficult.

See Subscriptions section on the SDN home-page for more details. There is also a blog detailing the experience of an SDNer who bought a subscription.

BR/

Mathew.

[marilyn_pratt]

SAP education is a good place to start looking for certification.

Here's a [link to|http://www.sap.com/services/education/certification/index.epx] get you started.

[Former Member]

Marilyn,

Thank you for the response.

I went to the link you suggested and selected:

Small and Midsize Enterprise (SME)

Applications

Technology Consultant

then I clicked the "Find" button. The response page stated, "There is no certification role that matches your search criteria. Please change or reduce your search criteria to obtain a list of available roles." I find that unacceptable considering I selected from lists and did not enter my own terms.

Coming from software design and development I would think I should learn the "system core", then move on to various modules as clients require them. Can I download some videos or documents with demo or learning versions of the software to start working with the products?

Thank you again for your response. Keep in mind I'm a working professional and need to "get my hands dirty ASAP".

I hope I'm not becoming a nuisance.

Rich

Edited by: Rich K on Jul 9, 2008 6:06 PM

[marilyn_pratt]

I agree with your "less than satisfactory" response from the training site contents. I'll ping education about that pronto.

Our own community website has a good deal of rich media presentations. But I'm not sure it is granular enough judging by your inputs. I took a quick look at [elearning|https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/elearn] and further narrowed the scope to [Software Logistics|https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/softwarelogistics-elearning] which seems a reasonable start place for what you are asking about.

I also perused "the SAP Netweaver for Dummies" which appears to have some sample chapters online....but I think you might find what you are looking for by checking out the rich media and getting some fast "demos".