My journey from fresh ABAPer to SAP certified FI consultant

Like many SAP family members here in this forum, I too started my IT career as novice with millions of dreams and empty knowledge box about IT industry.

Joined Infosys as campus recruit in end of 2006. After completing world class training at beautiful Mysore campus, our batch was sent to Hyderabad and put into ERP stream. As soon as we heard the buzz, many people were talking about SAP SAP SAP. To be honest, I never heard of this name before. I was bit scared and embarrassed of not knowing anything about IT industry and technologies. Started thinking whether I have chosen right path or not!!

While many confusions running in mind, the day came when our batch was split into different ERP technologies. After long wait, fiiiiinally my number has come (As my name starts with V, I have to wait till end at all instances (Be it Lab Viva, written test, interviews etc. 🙁 ). Suspense has come to an end and I found I was put into SAP-ABAP training. After hearing a lot of buzz about SAP, I was so happy to see myself in to SAP journey. On successfully finishing the ABAP training, entered into the real battle field called “Project” on day one itself. It is quite surprising to say I don’t know what is “Bench” means in 6.5 years of IT experience 😯

Project work started and so the pain to understand what our functional folks and team lead is expecting me deliver. I felt, I was left in some other planet and asked to find the route back to home by interacting in alien language. This pain in turn forced me to come early and leave late from office. After dedicated efforts and hard work, I started understanding the language. But things were never easy. Here comes the evil “timelines”. Project timelines used to be very tight. With very limited understanding of ABAP, the struggle still continues. That’s the time I heard about SDN (Now renamed to SCN). I registered immediately with only motive to get solutions to my issues. But after spending a month time in SDN, I realized I was wrong. This is just not a place to get solutions but we find thousands of desperate minds coming together to share knowledge, help others and be updated with up to date trends in SAP.

As time passes, things came handy and I was comfortable with ABAP. Used to finish things in advance and started spending spare time to help others in the forums. This has become interesting day by day as helping others not only gives pleasure and satisfaction but also great learning. Because, If we give a solution to a problem, there are many experts who give most optimistic and reliable solutions. This wonderful aspect motivated myself to spend more and more time in SDN. At a point, I was so addicted to SDN that, SDN has been my browser home page for couple of years 😉 . Things were going great both at work and learning in SDN. After spending dedicated effort for 3 years, Luck has knocked my door in 2010 to send me to “Heaven in this world” called Swiss for onsite assignment. Swiss being my dream land from childhood, butterflies were flying in my stomach. Used to check the Visa portal on daily basis though it is known that it will take around 2 months to get permit and Visa 😛 . Formalities were done in 2 months and traveled to client location.

Being the only ABAPer at onsite, handling work pressure was not an easy task. Typical IT employee schedule started (Packed up for 5 days and chill out on weekends). Being in the dreamland, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to roam around Swiss and Europe. I was on mute in SDN for about an year. During this period, with help of my functional colleagues, I started realizing my passion to shift to functional consultant. But then the million dollar question “Which module” has raised!! 😕 As I was doing good in ABAP related to SD, FICO and MM, respective functional counter parts suggested to move to individual modules. Finally it is me who has to decide. I was comfortable in SD, interested in FI and MM was in midway. At this dilemma stage, got a chance work in SABRIX (3rd party Tax interface) for 3 months. This is the transition stage where my interest in FI has changed to confidence and then to comfort level. After travelling back to India in 2011, immediately moved to FICO stream. The routine schedule as in case of ABAP started here again. Same pain to understand finance terminology, same alien business language (This time with users 😉 ), Hunt in SCN for solutions and learning (As I shifted from developer to consultant, SCN also changed the name from SDN to SCN 😎 ) etc…

Since FICO was my area of interest , I picked up quite fast in this area and onsite bell rang again in 2012 to same place and same client. Fortunately (As I got other chance for Europe tour)/Unfortunately(As I have to be away from SCN/Second home), all went well again. But after couple of months, I started thinking different to differentiate myself. So, decided to prepare for FI certification. Being at onsite with loads of work, lotz of places in hit list to visit 🙂 , Guidance from fellow SCN folks, I managed to prepare for certification and clear the test in first attempt with flying colours. This has tremendously boosted my confidence level to do more wonders in FI. Apart from this, certification earned me more respect and visibility at work place too.

I would proudly say, without SCN, I couldn’t be at a stage what I am today. Simple thanks to SCN and SAP family wouldn’t be enough here.  Would like to spend more time at this amazing knowledge base, help others, learn from experts and on one day, become an expert 😉

Special thanks to SCN moderators who constantly put their efforts to filter out junk and maintain the quality content in the site.

Thanks to my functional counterparts, managers and friends at work who constantly backed me with my decisions.

Comments, critics and suggestions are most welcome.

Best regards,

Vinod Vemuru