Sap

[oumahexi]

A friend has advised me to learn about SAP because it's "the" thing that employers are looking for.

My problem is that I'm getting conflicting stories about it. Some people say it's an MIS and others say it's a Personnel package. One thing that does seem apparent is that it is mostly a front end package, is that right? And if so, what would there be to learn, other than how to work yet another database???

I would be pleased for any input on this, recommendations for what level of knowledge might be worth while.

My friend is in Canada and obviously trying to persuade us to move over there

 

[georgedwilkinson]

SAP is an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. It is an entire system complete with development methodology and tools. It can work with any number of DBMSs. Older versions are 3 tier but I believe they have gone to n-tier in the last several years.

ERP systems handle everything that the "enterprise" needs, including personnel, MRP, MES, purchasing, accounting, invoicing, shipping, etc. etc.

SAP is purposefully obfuscated. If you have a table in SAP for your customers, most people would go into the database and look for the customers table. Not so with SAP. The table could be named "AABND" or just about anything else, and the name is not consistent between installations. So, you rely on the development tools (ABAP comes to mind) and the application server(s) to do development.

This is great for the SAP company because it generates additional income from all the training, certification, and tool sales. There is also a complex licensing structure that seems pretty high, in addition to the annual support agreements.

SAP can be likened to Oracle Financials, PeopleSoft, Microsoft Dynamics, JD Edwards, and so-forth. Interesting to note that out of that list, Oracle now owns 3 of the top ERP systems and has been trying to purchase SAP, I'm told.

For now, there's a lot of money to be made in SAP consulting. You'll need to pick a sub-field though, because SAP is just too big to learn it all.

 

[Wayne Cramer]

The utility I worked for transitioned from Mainframe to a PeopleSoft enterprise system. At a rollout meeting I estimated that it would only be a month until management wanted to view information in ways that PeopleSoft could not provide. I was wrong - it only took a week. I made a nice living by pulling enterprise dataserts into Access and generating the queries and reports and adhoc reporting that executives andf management wanted. Now I'm doing the same thing as a consultant for a company using SAP. I joke that the company name reflects what they think of their customers. An interestingh thing about all enterprise systems is that invariably the company goes through this cycle:
Buys the enterprise system
Spends a fortune training in house employees
Does not pay the employees a market wage for their new skills
Lose the employees
Hire consiultants to make sense of the mess

 

[georgedwilkinson]

Buys the enterprise system
Spends a fortune training in house employees
Does not pay the employees a market wage for their new skills
Lose the employees
Hire consiultants to make sense of the mess

That sounds about right.

In 2000-2003, you could graph a large company's profitability vs. a new SAP implementation. Seems that at that time, implementing SAP was a great was to lose money. Not sure how they correspond now.

 

[KenHigg]

SAP:

SAP is software medium to large companies use to run their business. Liken it to QuickBooks. It is deployed in modules. Its core strength is it's financial module referred to as FI. Other core modules focus on things like production and logistics. The main downside is that it is for the most part an off the shelf system and has to either be configured to accommodate the business or custom work has to be done. One opportunity that exists is to become a functional consultant focused on one or more of the core modules. These people make their money knowing how to do this custom configuration and they know how to tie custom programming objects into the native SAP environment. This can be very lucrative work in the hundreds of dollars per hour. Another opportunity is in programming custom SAP in a language called ABAP. This can also pay $100+/hour. There are other opportunities too numerous to go into here. One other technical note is that SAP has in the past run on top of something like Oracle or MS Sql Server but I think they're doing their own db back end now with their latest version.

And you can get free desk-top versions of SAP to train with or you can subscribe to online SAP sandboxes.

Here are some links to help you get started:

http://www.michaelmanagement.com/training.asp

http://www.sap.com/usa/services/education/catalog/erp/index.epx

 

[oumahexi]

Wow, thanks guys. This is extremely helpful. The sites I looked at all wanted you to download information and our policy is no downloads not even for IT staff. So, I'm kind of stuck waiting until the weekend to further investigate.

I used to work with document assembly systems and know how they can make money from consultancy and training (I specialised in the training side). Reading between the lines, while I think SAP might be more intense than, say HotDocs, I think the principle might be similar. I will take a look at the downloads over the weekend.

Thanks for getting me all fired up

 

[Fifty2One]

My friend is in Canada and obviously trying to persuade us to move over there

There is no reason to move closer to work when you can do all the work from home well unless you have 28k dialup then it is a bit slow

However, there is a cronic shortage of good free range witches in Canada with IT knowledge

 

[oumahexi]

There is no reason to move closer to work when you can do all the work from home

Or unless you'd already visited the country and fell head over heals in love with it

However, there is a cronic shortage of good free range witches in Canada with IT knowledge

Hmm, maybe I should practice more to fall into the "good" category