I was a just a fish out of pond when I graduated from college with little knowledge about ERP software. I was thrown into this ocean of Enterprise Software from SAP. I started off as a ABAP Developer with a SAP Partner company, working on various SAP ERP modules for different vendors, learning different software, applications, services and systems.
And then I was fortunate enough to work for my dream company, SAP itself, where I had an opportunity to develop various products. Customer satisfaction was our primary goal. I was intrigued to learn about how the product could be tweaked according to different customer requirements.
Now I was understanding what enterprise software is all about, gradually also learning about different SAP products like customer relationship management, supply chain management, supplier relationship management, business warehousing etc, which I could relate to the real life scenarios, and that’s the beauty of SAP software. It is simple, understandable and could be tweaked to your business needs.
I had seen both the worlds, the service industry and the product development, I thought why not get into consulting now? I know what customers could ask for, and I know how the SAP software could be tweaked, and I knew what interests me having come across so many SAP products.
I figured Logistics was my area of expertise. And that is how I became a SAP Logistics Consultant. It is a whole different industry altogether, where you are constantly learning and keeping yourself updated with what is in and what is out in the industry. And it’s been a good journey so far with lot of learning. I am amazed to see how each and every industry functions differently, and how we have different products for different industry: oil and gas, logistics, manufacturing, etc. And SAP caters to all of this.
I still feel like a fish in the pond and having understood that the learning or growth never stops. And the day it stops, there is another consultant or product out there to replace you.
So my advice to all the aspiring SAP consultants out there, know what you expertise are, if you are from sales industry you could pick SAP SD or if you are from finance you could pick SAP FICO. There are tons of SAP products out there: SAP MM (materials management), SAP PP (production planning), SAP PS (project systems), SCM, SRM, CRM, EWM and what not. See what interests you, learn it, master it, and jobs will come your way.
This article by Jacqueline Dsouza took part in the joint contest, which SAP Expert ran together with Zinio.