Many people wonder whether they should take the time and spend the money to become certified. Some employers require certifications, some recommend it, and others have no preference. I think it’s a good idea to earn your certification. Almost half of the employers in the SAP market ask for it. Often, consulting companies require certification because they believe it lends credibility to their consultants’ resumes.

The biggest benefit of certification is the knowledge you gain during the process. Once you are certified, you can add this distinction to your resume. It proves that you have mastered the basic concepts associated with your area of expertise. On the other hand, certification takes time and costs money.

SAP Certifications Past and Present

Years ago, the only way that you could take the certification exam was to attend SAP’s academy. Attending the academy training could cost up to $30,000, including hotel accommodations, rental car, meals, tuition, airline tickets, and three weeks away from work.

Therefore, a few years ago, SAP began offering certification courses for individuals who did not attend the academy training. If you had attended individual SAP courses that were offered with the academy training or if you had work experience, you could register to take the exam.

I prefer this system because I think you learn more detail about SAP HR by taking individual courses rather than the academy training. For instance, the academy covers time evaluation in one to two days. The time evaluation course outside of the academy lasts for five days, and its material contains much more detail.

The Fine Print

Like most official titles, restrictions accompany SAP certifications. For instance, if you become certified through a company, your certification belongs to that company. If you work for a company that sponsors your certification and leave that employer, you would have to retake the certification exam under your new employer to continue to call yourself “SAP certified.”

Just because you are certified in one release of an SAP module does not mean that you never have to take an exam again. If you received your SAP certification for the HR module Release 3.0F, you are not automatically certified to work on an SAP HR Release 4.6. You have to take the 4.6 certification exam if you wish to declare that you are Release 4.6 certified.

Each major SAP module has its own certification. If you wish to become certified in multiple modules, you need to take and pass each module’s certification exam. Refer to www.sap.com/services/education/certification/exams.epx for a list of available SAP certifications.

Helpful Hints

If you decide to take the SAP certification exam, consider the following tips:

• Remember that the exam primarily covers your main area of expertise. For example, if you take the SAP Human Resources certification, you will receive mostly HR-related questions. However, the test contains some generic SAP R/3 questions as well. These questions might relate to SAP NetWeaver BI, SAP NetWeaver Portal, or some other area. Because SAP is an ERP system, you must be aware of some of the key integration points among modules.
  
  
• The exam consists of multiple-choice questions. Some questions count for more points than others. The responses are also weighted so that two answers might be correct; however, if one is more accurate, you receive more points for it. When you take the exam, you will not know which questions are weighted questions.
  
  
• When you get your final results, you will not know what questions you missed nor will you learn which questions were correct. If you retake the exam, you may see a totally different group of questions.
  
  
• The exam often contains questions that begin, “Which of the following is the best way to describe …,” or, “All of the following are examples of this except ….” If you do not read the directions or the questions carefully, you might make preventable mistakes.
  
  
• Prior to taking the exam, visit this Web site and read what courses are covered in the exam. SAP changes it from year to year, so just because a co-worker or friend took the course two years ago without answering payroll-related questions, it does not mean that the test that you take this year will not cover payroll.
  
  I like to find out what courses the exam will cover and review the course material (from my library, borrowed from a coworker, or from SAP’s Knowledge Warehouse). I highlight key concepts, and then study my notes to prepare for the exam.
  
  
• You will have plenty of time to take the exam. The test usually contains 80 questions, and you have three hours to complete it. You take the exam on a computer. You can skip questions and go back to them.
  
  
• Many people make the same mistake on the exam: they overanalyze the question. Remember that the certification exam that you take at the end of the academy or on your own is a high-level exam based on concepts. For example: SAP isn’t going to ask you which rule generates quotas in the Time Evaluation schema. A more likely type of a question is to name the Time Evaluation program (RPTIME00) or which of four choices is an example of negative/deviation time recording. People who take the exam often have limited exposure to SAP. If you haven’t worked much with it, then you should study to become familiar with SAP concepts. Experience will help you pass the exam.
  
  
• Don’t beat yourself up if you do not know the answer to a question. Don’t leave a question blank. Remember, this might be one of the weighted questions so you might get partial credit.
  
  
• Don’t worry about memorizing every table name or transaction code within SAP R/3. The test does not go into this level of detail. You also don’t need to know all functions or operations within a schema, although you should familiarize yourself with the main schema names (but not each portion within the schema).
  
  
• Finally, like your high school or college teachers used to say, “Get a full night’s sleep and eat a good breakfast before you take the exam.” Good luck!

Dawn Burns

Dawn Burns is an SAP-certified human resources senior consultant and Quality Assurance Manager and HR Consultant with Howrey LLP. She is a former SAP Human Resources instructor for SAP America and has more than 12 years of experience in human resources and information technology.

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