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What is SAP in Information Technology field?

I work in IT, and I am beginning to hear about SAP. I am aware that it is a Germany based software company, but seems like lot of places including federal gov is planning on implementing SAP. What exactly is it? How do you go about learning it and how much time would be expected gain expertise in SAP?

Public Comments

1. SAP, is an integrated enterprise resource planning package. I sit on top of a SQL Server or Oracle Database System. It encompasses all aspects of a business from employee benefits to billing, from CRM to Supply chain management. There are not very many books written about SAP and no one has expertise in all aspects of the program. Usually, you will concentrate on one or 2 modules. and then you can be looking at years, since the only way to be trained on it is either from a 4 year university that has SAP courses or training directly from SAP. There are no 3rd party vendors that put on SAP training seminars. And the cost are very high, for certain SAP training, say a 1 week course from SAP, it could run you several thousand dollars. And that doesn't even include travel, since very likely it won't be held near you.
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3. SAP provides industry specific Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions. Meaning they have different solutions for each type of industry ranging from government organizations to mid sized privet enterprises. The solutions / systems they provide can be customised to suit the needs of each company and could handle the entire business cycle from order to cash. Each part of the solution is categorized by business function and these are called 'modules'. For ex. the part that caters to the sales and distribution needs of a company is reffed to as the SD module. SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software and is the 3rd largest software company in the world, competing with Oracle and Microsoft. Most people consider SAP to be a bit difficult to learn compared to other database systems such as SQL based databases because the database tables in SAP are not normalized. SAP training courses are provided by both SAP them selves and their partner academies. The only accredited SAP partner academies (known to me) that provide SAP certification are Siemens and Genovate. There are only about 2 universities in the world that offer SAP related degree courses. The cost of getting certified in SAP depends on the level of certification you want. Consultant level certification costs about 10,000 USD anywhere in the world. However I would highly recommend getting work experience in SAP before attempting to get certified as it help with passing the exam (Pass mark is 70%). It is not at all necessary to have previous knowledge of SAP to get a job related to it. Going for certification in SAP is required only if you intend implementing SAP solutions as a career. Most employers train people to use their systems soon after being recruited and therefore a good starting point would be to become and end user of SAP by working for a company that uses SAP. For most people it takes about 12 months to understand the whole picture.