SAP Consultant ..wondering what they are?

Besides Con + Insult people (that’s what we think about ourselves, just kidding J), it’s pretty grey area for people out there to really understand what we actually do. As I explained in my previous post, we are a hybrid between IT & Business. We try to enhance business processes in SAP context, the ultimate target is to eliminate unnecessary manual processes and improve efficiency and productivity. So you could have more time to be productive/decisive rather than wasting time doing manual and routine jobs. I hate to say this, at one point I feel guilty of trying to automate everything because eventually, people could be redundant and lost their job. Is technology guilty of reducing job opportunities? Is technology benefits highly skilled workers only? I read one article on this issue and the author said, we couldn’t blame technology because lets face it, it improves our life tremendously. We need to recognize that there is shift in paradigm in today’s economy, the knowledge economy. Everybody has the responsibility to upgrade their skills so that they won’t be left out. But it’s still frightening to see only 20% of Malaysian workforces can be considered skilled workers. I guess this need to be sorted out a.s.a.p!

SAP is a stranger to most people, not like Microsoft, Facebook, Google all are household names. One thing, SAP is not a consumer product but it's a business product. While you might imagine the fact that it’s highly advanced technology it should look good like Google, you’ll be laughing to see their user interface (see below), it’s pretty dinosaur. At least, it’s true for user with first time impression. Doesn’t do any justice to SAP J.

But don’t judge book by its cover. The strength of SAP is not by its look. It’s the brain that matters. Typical Germans! Mercedes or BMW might not be as fancy as Kia/Mazda i.e Japanese + Korean, but we could be sure the performance & reliability of the German Cars. It took me years to really appreciate the strength of SAP. Let me try to illustrate what it does to my company:

Being a downstream palm oil company, it’s pretty clear it has complex business processes. As depicted above, we fully utilize the functionality that SAP has to offer. The whole processes of Sales, Production, Purchasing, Quality (not appear above, but do exist), Finance & Controlling in the companies all over the world (Amsterdam, Rotterdam (Europe), Egypt, Ghana (Africa), Shanghai, Pasir Gudang (Asia), Canada, US (North America) are integrated in one single system. The key here is Integration! The whole business processes are integrated, thus you can be sure to get a real time data anytime, anywhere as long as you are connected online. The SAP system is very complex to the extent that it requires army of consultants to implement and support the system. For Sales, we need SD consultant (read Sales & Distribution). For Purchasing, we need MM Consultant (read Material Management). For Finance, we need FI Consultant (read Financial). For Controlling, we need CO Consultant (read Controlling). For Production, we need PP Consultant (read Production Planning). For Quality, we need QM Consultant (read Quality Management). There are many other abbreviations in SAP and people do get confuse all the time. Anyway, this SD, MM, QM etc are Functional Consultants. They gather business requirements from business owners and translate them to SAP Context via Configuration (Remember SAP has provided standard solution based on best business practice across all business processes, therefore all Functional Consultant needs is to configure in the system accordingly) .If they can’t achieve the requirement via Standard Configuration, then come SAP technical consultant (ABAP, Workflow) to save the day. The techie will customize SAP system (via programming in general) based on business requirements that Functional has gathered from business owners. So the job basically flows like this:

Business Owner (For instance, Delivery) -> Functional Consultant (In this case SD) -> Technical Consultant

There is also a new role recently in SAP world called Techno-Functional Consultant. The role is reserved for new SAP Solution like Business Intelligence (BW/BI Consultant) and Process Integration (PI/XI Consultant). This role is rather challenging as it requires both technical and functional skills. 

And the last but not least, the one that in charge of the whole SAP Infrastructure or known as SAP Basis. This role is a technical role, these folks can be considered as SAP Administrator or the Big Brother. They make sure SAP is running smoothly all the time, they do the upgrade, patching, improve the performance and many administration stuffs. These guys work quietly behind the scenes.

So, where I’m standing currently? Currently I have multiple roles i.e SAP ABAP, Workflow, BW/BI, PI/XI which I find very challenging, fulfilling and certainly fun.  

And where SAP Consultants can land him/herself a job? Plenty but can be narrowed down to two, Consulting or End-User. In Consulting, SAP Consultants can work across different industries. For instance, when I was with Axon & IBM before, I worked in Utilities, Document Management, Manufacturing, and Retail industry. The two biggest consulting companies for SAP are Accenture and IBM. They have the capabilities across most industries. And if you are tired with demanding schedule in consulting, and tired of working across different industries, you can settle down at End-User companies basically doing internal implementation/support and most importantly focusing only on one industry. Most of Fortune 500 companies have SAP system running, why not The Best Run Businesses Run SAP (SAP tagline) J. You name it, Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Apple or even our Petronas, Sime Darby, TNB, Telekom, Felda all run SAP. So there are plenty of jobs for SAP Consultants globally and locally.

What’s the market in Malaysia? Well, it’s picking up and growing I must say. The pay was premium 10 years back, I was told due to niche skills. But today it’s still above average. From JobStreet, early 30 folks can earn something like this:

But be noted that these folks might have more than 5 lifecycle implementations (complete end to end project). Yeah, in SAP World, lifecycle implementation is the measurement of how experience you are. You can opt to contract job as well rather than permanent. The pay is based on experiences of course, in the range of RM500 – RM 2000 per day, and yes it’s PER DAY!

How to enter? Force your way or you are lucky folks! To force your way, MDEC does offer some SAP courses for bargain and once you are certified, you can try your luck in any consulting companies. Not all willing to absorb fresh consultants but hey, it’s all depends on luck and timing. The other known route is if you are lucky enough to be in End-user Company that is planning to implement SAP and you are part of the team. Once project is done, these lucky folks will jump right away to any consulting companies who are happy to absorb them due to 1 lifecycle implementation already in their CV and at the same time doubling their pay J.

So you still wondering? Let me know J.