certification

Before you (Mr. or Ms. SAP Professional) go rushing off to get certified by SAP, it's a good idea to consider the wide range of options available, and determine if certification is even useful.

What certification levels are available today?

Will being certified help you get your first SAP job?

Will it serve as a tiebreaker when you are applying for a position and face intense competition in a declining economy?

Has anyone ever done an objective study of whether SAP certified consultants perform better on the job versus non-certified consultants?

Do SAP clients care about certification?

Employers and recruiters will also benefit from this article—you’ll find some of your previous assumptions about the SAP certification process either challenged or reinforced.

We’ll cover all these questions and more—but first, a little background on the SAP certification program.

Who can be certified and at what levels?

The certification program is available for SAP employees, partner employees, independent consultants, and client employees. Already SAP is ahead of Oracle—Oracle’s certification programs for E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel are only available to Oracle employees and partner employees.

About three years ago, after discussions with both clients and partners, SAP announced three levels of certification -- Associate, Professional, and Master. Currently the associate level and professional level exams are available. The master level is still in development.

The SAP website defines these levels as follows:

Associate: “This certification covers the fundamental knowledge requirements for an SAP consultant, ensuring the successful acquisition of broad SAP solution knowledge and skills.”

Professional: “This advanced certification requires proven project experience, business process knowledge, and a more detailed understanding of SAP solutions.”

Master: “This certification, under development, involves demonstrating an expert-level understanding of a specific area of SAP software and the ability to drive innovation and solution optimization through in-depth knowledge and vision. Certification at this level requires broad project experience, comprehensive SAP product knowledge, and the ability to create a future IT vision within complex project environments.”

The Associate level exams test book knowledge. In most cases, this level does not require SAP implementation experience in order to pass the exams. Questions on the Professional level exams are designed to test the SAP experience of the test taker. The requirements for the Master level involve more than taking exams. As the SAP website mentions, the process of obtaining Master level certification is still being defined.

SAP takes care to point out that you don’t need to pass the Associate level exam before sitting for the Professional level exam. So you get to select which level you think you are qualified for and take that exam.

SAP Public Certification Information

We'll begin at www.SAP.com/usa/services/education/certification/index.epx. The path is Home>Services>SAP Education>Certification Program. (The link and the path may vary for different SAP country sites.)

Here, you’ll find definitions of each certification level, with links to certification training, exam locations and schedules, and policies and procedures.

Let’s start with the “Find a certification” box in the top right corner of this page. I’m a former Sales Order and Pricing consultant, so let’s see what I can find. Under “select solution” I selected “SAP ERP”. Under focus area, I selected “Applications”. Under role, I selected “Application Consultant”.

After I then clicked “Find”, I see a page with links to 32 different certifications, ranging across all the ERP applications, at both the Associate and Professional level. I selected this link: SAP Certified Application Associate - Sales Order Management with SAP ERP 6.0.

Lots of good information is presented, such as links to the exam description, related certifications such as the Professional certificate for Sales Order Management, etc.

Fortunately, I’m guided visually to a colored box that has the certification that I am interested in. I click on the Certification Tests link on the right side of the page, and I see a list of competencies, weightings, topics on the exam and related classes I can take to prepare: http://www.sap.com/services/education/certification/certificationtest.epx?context=%5b%5bC_TSCM62_60%7cG%5d%5d%7c

I then drilled down on one of the list of topics covered by the exam to check out the details. I picked “Availability check” and clicked through to this page: http://www.sap.com/services/education/certification/globaltabbedcourse.epx?context=%5b%5b%7cTSCM60%7c%7c%7c%7c%7c%5d%5d%7c

Unfortunately, what I’m presented with is a course description for one of the standard Order Fulfillment classes. I’d rather see details about what specifically is covered on the exam under the topic of Availability check.

At this point, I need a break to regroup. I walk away with the feeling that SAP might be trying to sell me training classes to prep for the exam. Oh well, at least I’ve got the core list of topics that will be on the exam. (By the way, SAP told me that the intent of the certification pages on the website is not to sell training, but rather to provide information on the content of the exams.)

Some of the exam pages are more detailed than the one mentioned above. For example, the page for the Professional level exam seems to have more detail than the Associate level page: http://www.sap.com/services/education/certification/certificationtest.epx?context=%5b%5bC_TSCM62_05%7cG%5d%5d%7c

Certification Training

Just like SAP software, the SAP website has several ways to accomplish the same thing.

At one point (don’t ask me to retrace all my steps), I clicked through to this page: http://www.sap.com/usa/services/education/certtraining/curriculum.epx?context=%5b%5bSCM5_ORD_SOL_NA%5d%5d%7c

I’m greeted with over 20 days of training at SAP Academy (for consultants).

Are these classes required to sit for and pass the Associate level certification exams? No,they are not required. But if one knew nothing about SAP, then these classes should give you enough knowledge to pass the exams at the Associate level.

Another training option is the public class route: http://www.sap.com/usa/services/education/certtraining/curriculum.epx?context=%5b%5bSCM5_ORD2_SOL_NA%5d%5d%7c:

That path results in about the same number of days of classes, and essentially the same material as the SAP Academy classes.

Certification Guides & Sample Exam Questions

The following link goes to a list of links to sample questions: http://www.sap.com/services/education/certification/schedule/index.epx

I found ten multiple-choice questions on the Sales Order sample. They appeared to be good, solid questions--the kind of questions one would expect to see on a certification exam.

Some of the questions have multiple answers. SAP recently went to a “dichotomous scoring” technique, which means that partial credit is no longer given for partially correct answers. So if a question asks you to identify the two correct possible answers, and you get just one correct, you get no credit for that answer. Using this scoring method has resulted in SAP having to lower the passing score on exams—to sometimes as low as 55%.

Since 10 sample questions can’t give you an idea of the full range of topics covered by a certification exam, you’ll want to review the competency list provided for each exam.