Introduction
In the past, I always used to spend a considerable amount of time while searching for a training or certification program within SAP education site. SAP education page doesn't follow WYSIWYG format. I would click on a training program, a screen would come up with a list of countries the course is offered. I would click a country, next screen would tell me "This course is not scheduled in this country at this time". I used to wonder if the class is not scheduled in that country, why display it in the first place?
With this background, when I tried to check out the details on Cisco's certification process, I was pleasantly surprised with Cisco's user-friendly web page. Cisco's format is simple and elegant. Very well organized. The list of all certifications is displayed in one screen. I decided to blog about this because this difference is not trivial. I guess when someone wants to learn or get certified, I feel the information he/she is looking for should readily be available in a simple format. In my opinion, this should be SAP's first objective towards increasing the quality of SAP certification program.
To illustrate the difference, I captured the screenshots while navigating SAP and Cisco certification pages. They may not accurately reflect the user's experiences so feel free to navigate to those pages yourself to understand what I am talking about.
Cisco's Certification Programs
Screen 1: Searching for Cisco Certification in www.google.com
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Screen 2 - Part A: After clicking on "IT Certification..." entry above, I landed on this page. I am showing it in two parts because of size restriction.
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Screen 2 - Part B: Second part showing the summary of all certification programs in a tabular format
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SAP's Certification Programs
Screen 1: Google search for SAP Certification
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Screen 2: Part A: When I clicked the entry above, I landed on this page. This page provides details on two levels of Certification Associate and Professional.
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Screen 2: Part B provides details on Focus Areas. In order to list the certification programs available in each focus area, one has to click each one individually.
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Screen 3: the list of certification programs available in Focus Area: Technology. This screen shows 4 levels whereas previous page provided details only for two levels. Also I don't know the sorting order of this list so it is not easy to locate what I am looking for. Compare this to Cisco's format, all programs in one page:)
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Screen 4,5 and 6:List of programs available for Focus Area: Application.
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