Why a Job in SAP Basis Administration is a Smart Move

Many people who have studied hard through University to obtain a position in Information Technology find that their positions can become stale without career progression. The job they do can become generic in that they end up supporting or working on projects that cover a wide scope of software. Thinly spreading knowledge over several IT areas often means you never get to master a particular area.

SAP is a global piece of Software developed in Germany, which has certainly been around for a long time and with recent developments in the new business suite and Netweaver platform, it is unlikely that SAP will disappear anytime soon. SAP is literally the Software backbone to major corporate business around the world from pharmaceuticals to oil companies.

In many companies the SAP Technology team is often separate from IT departments and their sole job is to maintain and support SAP systems. Due to their complexity this is a fulltime position allowing the individual to concentrate purely on SAP.

There are many people who have prospered by switching their career to SAP. The simple reason is that SAP skills are in high demand and difficult to acquire. This demand brings with it the benefits of higher salaries for both permanent and short term contract positions.

The employer requirement of SAP skilled individuals varies between each area, Basis Administrators are in short supply and companies find it difficult to recruit them. This gap is often exploited by expensive contractors and or external consultancies who offer their employee services to businesses running an SAP system.

The reason why SAP skills are so hard to obtain is two fold. The first is that SAP is a large piece of software and cannot be downloaded and installed on to a home PC. You cannot simply download the application and learn. The second reason is that SAP training courses are very expensive.

A five day official SAP Administration course will cost in the region of 2,250 GBP and a three day 1185 GBP. Most employers will only send their employees on a handful of courses they think they will need to achieve the correct knowledge. If you are lucky your employee might send you through all the courses to attain certification, which means you will be left with a nice qualification that stands you out from the crowd.

If your employer does decide to train you, do not be surprised if they get you to sign an agreement binding you into the company for a couple of years. You probably can not avoid this and to be honest if you are getting good training, you should not really have any need to move. The only point to make is that you need to be mindful of the duration of the agreement you sign. This agreement should not hold you as an employee for more that two years after your last course. If they do then make sure you get an agreement on your salary increments.

The best and really the only way to get into SAP is through working for a company that run SAP. If you work for a company that has SAP and you work in a different area of the business you should concentrate your efforts on reading what you need to know on the basics and apply for a position internally. Look for guides on Basis monitoring, system checks and introductions to Basis on the web.

If you are successful in getting a job in SAP you may need to take a pay cut if you are starting in a junior position, but within two years you can expect to attain a salary of at least 35,000 GBP. Over four years experience and the salaries become impressive. Contractor salaries are amazing ranging from 300 to 600 GBP a day. Just take a look on the various job forums on the web and you will see that SAP is a very fine career choice.

If you do manage to get an SAP position and the company does not provide training, then it is not all bad. There is plenty of training material on help.sap.com, which covers every area of SAP as it is developed. SAP help is structured in such a way that it is easy to understand and provides examples with some screen shots.

Your aim might be to attain certification, which is a very good decision. Certification does not make up for experience, but it does mean you have studied the SAP area and are competent. Employers do hold certification in high regard and if you work for a SAP consultancy it is often a requirement before you go out to customer sites.

The certification exams are no walk in the park and will require you to study hard to pass. In the later Netweaver 7.0 examinations, SAP provides the courses and topics you need to cover to attempt the exam. This is very useful as it would be extremely difficult to absorb all the information in each course. Attending the courses is not mandatory, but without the correct guidance would be difficult since the pass mark is now 72%.

To summarise, SAP Basis is a career that has progression and once you have mastered the area of Basis you can decide to move onto other areas such as Portals, Business Information and Exchange Infrastructure. You also have the benefit of using a career is SAP to work all over the world.

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Comments

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 at 9:50 AM, by Matsobane B.
Yeah.... SAP is a good move...have been in the IT Support role for ages now and it's almost 2 yrs since I switched to Basis .

The exams yes, they no easy pot and wth hard work hopin to pass mine soon.... and yep in SA the Academy costs around 60K (Rands for 6 weeks) so most companies don't take employees there.

1 day and soon I know it will all payout!!!

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