SAP Certification in the Cloud Goes Live!

“The times,“ as Bob Dylan once astutely pointed out, “they are a-changing.”

Of course, if Bob had been in the Enterprise Software business, he wouldn’t have needed to call attention to that fact. If there’s one thing everyone involved with designing, producing, and using Enterprise Software can agree on, it’s that the pace of change has accelerated to an astonishing degree. No wonder a recent book on “the speed of change in the connected economy” is titled Blur

If you’ve been following developments at SAP lately – and if you’re reading this blog entry you most certainly have – you know that exciting changes are underway – SAP’s introduction of SAP S/4HANA and its migration to the cloud are probably the most important changes we’ve seen in a decade. (read more)

And in order to keep up with those changes, SAP has introduced the new SAP  Certification in the Cloud program, which goes live at the end of this month.

  The new program meets two intimately related goals

1. ensuring our partners & independent consultants are up-to-date with the latest developments
2. providing SAP customers with a source of consultants who absolutely know their stuff.

I asked Sue Martin, who has spent the last three years of her working life developing the program, why SAP decided to make dramatic changes to its already successful certification program.

“Well,” she responded, “we decided that certification had to play a bigger role in the quickly developing solutions.  It became clear that a certification that
lasted for two or three years didn’t cut it any longer. Everything is evolving so quickly, and SAP has to always support current, validated knowledge.”

Over the course of three years, Sue and her team sought input and advice from customers, partners, and SAP internal stakeholders. She also worked extensively with the ASUG Certification and Influence Council to build consensus and fine-tune the program. Last September, a core group met at SAP headquarters in Waldorf, Germany, to examine key objectives and determine priorities and policies.

The input from these communities helped the team identify another important objective:  ensure the new process placed no additional burdens on our certified consultant community.   Fortunately, new learning technology made that possible. Now that cloud-based SAP Learning Hub is available, SAP
consultants can get the information they need at any time – for example, when a new software release comes out, they can get their delta training right in the
SAP Learning Hub learning rooms. They can even take the Associate exam on line, with no need to go to a testing center. “We needed to make the program more flexible and affordable,” Sue told me, “That’s where subscriptions and any time testing came from. We didn’t want to burden the partners with more time, effort, and cost.”

After a little more fine tuning, the new program is ready to go. When the SAP Certification in the Cloud rolls out globally on 27 March, SAP partners and consultants will be able to achieve what promises to become one of the most highly regarded credentials in the Enterprise Software ecosystem. SAP customers are already embracing the change; those consultants who achieve SAP Certification in the Cloud early will have the greatest opportunity.

For more on the SAP Certification in the Cloud program, please see https://training.sap.com/shop/content/CloudCert