Update your SAP Skills in 5 easy steps

With the down turn in the economy (In Canada at least) now is a great time to update your SAP skills.

SAP has a huge breadth of technical and functional content for anyone to be an expert in.

So where does one get started?

Here’s just one approach I’ve used:

1. Understand your passion(s).  Make sure you take inventory of your passions (What makes you want to get up and come to work).  This will be the skills you need to rank and focus on.
2. Review and study the SAP Product/Business road maps and various online presentations.  Take time to understand where SAP is headed strategically.  This in combination with your passions will help you identify your studies. SAP Roadmaps can be found at http://service.sap.com/saproadmaps
3. Realign your passions to the SAP direction.  It is important to align your passions with SAP’s direction if that is your desire – this may mean re-learning new SAP technology platforms. For instance, if your passion lies in HCM you might consider updating your skills in SuccessFactors instead of focusing on SAP ERP HCM since SAP’s priority is towards SAP Success Factors.
4. Develop your Training Strategy.  Now that you have an understanding of SAP’s direction and your passions, prioritize the products & platforms you need to better understand.  You also may want to estimate and time box how much you are willing to spend on each.
5. Use the following resources to develop your SAP Skills:

• Open Online Courses Delivered by SAP – OpenSAP is SAP’s innovative learning platform and a thought leader for Enterprise MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses).
• HANA Cloud Training – Get access to free online video tutorials for developers, administrators and consultants. Topics range from practical how-to instructions to more conceptual projects to help build out new applications.
• Various Cloud IDES System Providers – Get access to a HANA system in a day for around free – $25+/Month (i.e. WFTCloud.com, hcp.sap.com,…).  This system you can use in conjunction with OpenSAP or other various training tutorials.
• Help.sap.com – Access SAP Master Guides (SAP MarketPlace Account required) to understand various deployment options and scenarios.
• Solution Explorer – A complete list of SAP solutions, associated value maps and solution details
• Innovation Discovery – Requires service marketplace account.  A fast and easy way to find new SAP innovations and functionality by product release.
• Improvement Provider – Improvement Finder helps you discover various improvements delivered through SAP’s Customer Connection program.  Improvements that most customers desire.
• UX Explorer – SAP User Experience Explorer provides information about a subset of all SAP technologies, tools, applications and solutions related to user experience.
• SAP Community Network – allows one to stay up to date with the latest SAP news, projects and features. This includes having access to a social network of SAP professionals and experts.  Provides high level to very detail information for various audiences.
• Americas SAP User Group (Account Required) – ASUG is the world’s largest independent SAP users’ group.  Through national conferences, collaborative initiatives, online gatherings, and user-driven educational tools and material, ASUG provides organizations of all sizes with resources and solutions critical to enhancing business efficiency.

There are many other resources, however that depends on you role. passions, and level of information required.

If you have any inquiries, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Darin Paton
Certified SAP Enterprise Architect
Cornerstone Consulting Inc.
E: dpaton@cornerstone-ea.com
W: www.cornerstone-ea.com