I have come across this question many a times so want to share my thoughts and experiences on it for those who want to switch to SAP SuccessFactors.
Firstly, the answer is yes, it is very much possible. Let me touch the topic on certification first. How to get certified?
You need to buy the subscription of
CER006 (SAP certification in the cloud).
You may get a discount if you work for a partner company of SAP. Example – Accenture is SAP partner and Accenture employees get around 15% discount. You will get 6 attempts in total in this subscription and you will get maximum 3 attempts to clear a particular certification exam. If unfortunately, you do not pass a particular exam in 3 attempts then you have to wait for SAP to come with a new version of that exam. In short, you can attempt one certification maximum 3 times in one subscription.
Every quarter SAP brings new updates to every SFSF module and comes up with a delta exam which you must clear with 100% to keep your certification active. This is required to make sure all certified associates have latest information about the module. You have to buy the SAP learning hub subscription every year to attempt the delta exams. SAP learning hub is the best place for the study material to crack any certification.
Please refer
this for more information.
How does it matter if I am not certified but have a good understanding and even have some hands-on experience in SFSF?
SFSF is made up of Provisioning (backend of your SFSF system) and Instance (frontend of your SFSF system). You can think of provisioning as a tool where you activate and deactivate SFSF modules and its attributes. These days most of the configuration is done in Instance. You can get access to Provisioning only if you are certified in any module. You need to take approval from your customer on email and must attach your active/current certificate while raising request to get access to provisioning.
To work on SFSF Instance you don’t need to have a certification. A user can be created from Provisioning and you can login SFSF Instance with that and can start configuring the system.
Usually in a SFSF project there are couple of functional people who have to configure the system and not everyone takes access to provisioning. Even if one person in team has access to provisioning that’s enough to configure the backend. Rest of the functional team can configure the SFSF Instance.
In this case you can understand that provisioning is not must for everyone in the team. Even if someone is not certified still he/she can work in a SFSF project. There are many people in the industry who are working on a SFSF project but are not certified yet. There are also individuals who couldn’t keep their certification active due to some reason but are still working on a SFSF project.
