SAP as an ERP Tool offers several types of Job Opportunities or careers, infact which are well paying or even fat paying. SAP as a Career also opens the doors to the world and take you to various countries and cultures (only if you are the best in your trade with great communication skills), But does it make sense to give up your existing career in Manufacturing or in Sales to take up fresh SAP careers and risk it all !!!

We have tried to put together some SAP Careers and their minimum required prerequisites in the below sections

SAP BASIS

The first is as a SAP system administrator who installs and maintains the SAP hardware. The job offers pretty good salaries and career. The SAP System administrator is called a SAP BASIS Consultant. The qualification for a SAP BASIS is a background in hardware maintenance - a system administrator. 

Having a background in system administration of a non SAP ERP system in a manufacturing organization, in a retail firm or a service providing corporation, can be a great advantage. 

Prospective resources may get introduced to SAP BASIS, when SAP projects are being implemented in their respective organizations and as a part of hand holding the core team is trained to take forward the fort. 

The other kind of SAP BASIS consultants are born out of certification courses offered by SAP or any other non-certifying training offered all over the world by various training firms, such resources may be college graduates. 

Educational Background Required, for the Job of a SAP BASIS consultant, in the order of preference:

a) Engineering Graduates 

b) Master in Computer Applications 

c) Bachelor in Science 

d) Bachelor in Commerce and Arts - These graduates are really not preferred untill and unless they are really the best in the field of SAP BASIS and can really convience the interviewer.

e) SAP Certification is not a Educational qualification, but having one gives you a sure advantage in getting a job. 

Should I leave my existing Career Profile and take up SAP BASIS:  

Moving from an existing job profile to IT based job profile can be really interesting, Though one should really weigh the salary that you would earn with respect to the salary you are earning now or you may have to weigh the job satisfaction you may end up deriving vis-a-vis the job satisfaction you are deriving now. I would say that if the weight age is more in the SAP career, then go for it, you would really not loose anything in this transaction. 

Though there is one point to note here - if you are currently serving in a very good designation, in a very big organization, in a non-SAP career, you should think twice when coming out of such a profile, for a merely taking up a SAP BASIS consulting job profile.  

SAP ABAP

The next Career in SAP is the SAP technical consultant; these are the group of people who are in charge of writing the software in a language called as "ABAP". The language seems to be very easy to understand programming language and can be easily picked up to shape a great career. A nice background in programming should help you to move in to SAP ABAP. 

Resources taking up SAP ABAP can be from industries who operate on SAP software  and are trained on the job in such companies, while the other kind can be the bored programmers who need a change and they  get trained on the job. And the third kind are college graduates who are in search for a lucrative career, the third kind are trained at training institutes. 

Any of the above types can be successful in SAP ABAP provided they know the subject and have a great interest for programming. 

Educational Background Required, for the Job of a SAP ABAP consultant, in the order of preference: 

a) Engineering Graduates 

b) Master in Computer Applications 

c) Bachelor in Science 

d) Bachelor in Commerce and Arts - These graduates are really not preferred untill and unless they are really the best in the field of SAP ABAP and can really convience the interviewer.

e) SAP Certification is not a Educational qualification, but having one gives you a sure advantage in getting a job.  

Should I leave my existing Career Profile and take up SAP ABAP:  

Moving jobs to SAP ABAP for a programming job profile can be really interesting if you are really interested in programming and derive interest in getting lost in endless codes and code loops. Though one should really weigh the salary that you would earn with respect to the salary you are earning now or you may have to weigh the job satisfaction you may end up deriving vis-a-vis the job satisfaction you are deriving now. I would say that if the weightage is more in the SAP career, then go for it, you would really not loose anything in this transaction.  

Though there is one point to note here - if you are currently serving in a very good designation, in a very big organization, in a non-SAP career, you should think twice when coming out of such a profile, for a merely taking up a SAP ABAP consulting job profile. 

Please note that if you are not a programmer in the existing job profile, things can become really difficult and boring. 

It is normally observed that the SAP ABAP technical consultants eventually get bored of programming and they try to switch jobs to SAP functional consulting. So a question still lingers that if one is eventually going to switch careers to SAP functional consultancy, then why do they take up ABAP language programming; the only reason that I could guess is that getting in-ways in to functional consultancy is not easy and requires business process experience backed with higher educational background, but it becomes easier for an experienced ABAP'er (with around 5-7 Years of experience) to gain business process knowledge and then try their hands in functional consultancy 

The Third type of SAP career is the most asked for career and it is know as SAP Functional consultancy career. The Functional consultant drives the implementation of business processes in SAP and maps them using the SAP software. He or she should understand the respective business process and at the same time they should be able to use the system and should have the knowledge of configuring the business processes in SAP.

SAP as an ERP software is used to map business processes in material's management, production planning, purchasing, finance and costing, plant maintenance, quality management, project systems, supply chain management. Therefore the resource striving to be SAP functional consultants should have a background in the business sector and should be well trained in the respective SAP functional modules. 

Consulting Organizations demand atleast 3 to 5 years of SAP Functional consultancy along with preferred SAP certification in a business module. So all said and done, getting roads in to SAP functional consultancy is difficult. 

It can confidently say that the job of an SAP functional consultant offers new inviting challenges and it never gets monotonous in nature and remains interesting and satisfying for a pretty number of years.  

Educational Background Required, for the Job of a SAP Functional Consultant, in the order of preference:  

a) Masters in Management 

b) Engineering Graduates 

c) Bachelor in Science 

d) Bachelor in Commerce and Arts - These graduates are really not preferred untill and unless they are really the best in the field of SAP ABAP and can really convience the interviewer.

e) SAP Certification is not a Educational qualification, but having one gives you a sure advantage in getting a job. 

People moving in to SAP Functional Consultancy are normally management graduates or people who are serving at higher ranks; so a question arises in my mind - why would you give up such good ranks in your existing job for SAP and start a new career right from the roots. May be its the money that lures people. It should be noted that even industries are now-a-days paying very good salaries. 

If Salaries are not the constraints and the existing job profile is not in a higher rank, then you can daringly leave this career for an SAP functional consultancy. 

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