How to choose a right SAP module for Your Career

How to choose a right SAP module for Your Career

Which is Best SAP Module for Me?

Since graduation, we all are excited and fascinated about working in a niche field. By the time we settle with our job, we start hunting for better career opportunities & prospects. We are always in a dilemma of whether to switch a job or upgrade skills required for the most sought after career.
Of all the professional certifications, SAP certification is considered as most valued and has proved its worth to thousands of SAP consultants who are working across the globe.
Having worked with many career consultants, I have come across some typical questions that every SAP aspirant has in his mind. The most basic question is – How to choose a right SAP module to become a successful consultant?

Things to consider before choosing the best SAP module:

  • Educational qualification
  • Domain experience
  • Career goals

SAP has various modules that suit every aspect of the industry. The process understanding between SAP end user and SAP consultants often become difficult and time consuming due to lack of domain knowledge and inadequate experience. So, the educational aspect is important in thinking how to choose SAP module. Let’s have a look at different SAP modules and the associated career paths in them.

Professional experience or educational background needed for relevant SAP ERP module

SAP ERP Component Business Process Knowledge, Educational Background or Professional Experience
FI Accounts
CO Finance
MM Procurement, logistics or supply chain management (SCM)
SD Sales and marketing
PP Production and operations management, Engineering degree in any discipline
PM Maintenance management, Engineering degree in any discipline
QM Logistics or supply chain management (SCM)
PS Project management including PMP certification
HCM Human resources management
BASIS Computer science or computer engineering
ABAP Computer science or computer engineering

SAP Finance (FI):
SAP Financial Accounting helps to boost finance management in organizations. Finance is the vital part of every business and hence perfect management is necessary. It becomes stressful and frustrating to manage the entire financial accounting by human being. If you are an individual who has a commerce or finance background and has minimum 6 months of domain experience, then SAP finance is a correct module for you.

CAs, CIMAs (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants), ACCAs (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), CPAs (Certified Public Accountant), CFAs (Chartered Financial Analyst), CMAs (Chartered Management Accountant) can also undergo training in SAP FI module.

SAP Material Management (MM):
SAP Material Management covers business functions such as procurement or purchasing and inventory management. The procurement can be for materials or for services, and can be both local or imports (foreign procurement). Almost all major manufacturing firms & delivery firms implement SAP with SAP MM module. To become a good SAP MM Professional, the first and foremost thing is to understand the business processes running in material management.

SAP Sales & Distribution (SD):
SAP Sales & Distribution covers business functions such as inquiry, quotation, sales order management, and credit and debit memos. It also includes rebates handling, as well as exports sales. If your majors are in Marketing, Sales & Distribution techniques, channel management, then SAP SD module is ideally a right choice for you. SAP SD module is adopted by a huge number of organizations across the globe.

SAP Production & Planning (PP):
SAP Production & Planning covers all aspects of production, including time it takes to set up machine, the product manufacturing time as well as labour hours consumed in producing a product. Production wastage, scrap, by-products and co-products are all within the scope of PP component. SAP PP is an important module of SAP. It tracks and makes a record of the manufacturing process flow, the planned and actual costs. A prospect must have business knowledge in the area of supply chain planning & Manufacturing.

Plant Maintenance (PM):
SAP Plant Maintenance covers preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance and shutdown maintenance. The PM component enables companies to maintain their production facilities in optimum conditions through timely maintenance. This module allows the user to maintain equipment and enable efficient planning of production schedules. It provides organisations with the comprehensive software solution to do maintenance planning either plant-based or cross-plant. If you are having minimum 6 months of experience in plant operation, maintenance & services, then SAP Plant Maintenance is a right SAP module for you.

Project System (PS):
SAP Project System module covers business processes to effectively manage project of any size, and includes Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), Network, milestones, and confirmation on the progress of project completed. SAP Project Systems(PS) is a technical module that includes project management functionality. Organisations use project management tactics to execute different strategies. The PS module empowers an organisation to gain insight into projects, increase transparency and improve accountability. If you intend to undergo SAP PS module, you must have experience in project management & implementation, along with basic knowledge of processes in logistics & accounting.

Human Capital Management (HCM):
SAP Human Capital Management module offers a complete and integrated set of tools to help you effectively manage your people. With SAP HCM you can automate your core HR processes to significantly improve your workforce performance, improve planning accuracy, streamline HCM processes, cut operational costs and increase margins with meaningful talent intelligence.  If you are proficient in knowledge of business process in the area of Human Resources / Organization Management, then SAP Human Capital Management is the perfect SAP module for you.

Advanced Business Application Programming(ABAP):
ABAP is a high-level 4th generation programming language created by SAP. It is an abbreviation for Advanced Business Application Programming. This is because, it is currently used as the language for programming the SAP Application Sever. The SAP Application Server is a part of its NetWeaver platform that is used for building business applications. The best part of ABAP certification is that you need not necessarily have any prior work/domain experience before undergoing training. What requires is programing and analytical skills with strong hold on database & OOPS concept.

If you work as SAP consultant in a consulting firm, you will get good number of opportunities to travel, meet new clients, implement SAP ERP projects for various industries and learn new features and functionality of SAP ERP with its each new release. With each new project or implementation, you career graph will exponentially rise and so will be your compensation.