Sitesh Pattnaik
Career in the System Applications in Data Processing (SAP) is a rewarding job. It is highly unlikely to experience slowdown in the market; rather the graph of SAP is consistently seeing an upward growth. Today SAP is being implemented in almost all companies from SMEs to large MNCs. Hence there is a boom in requirement of SAP professionals who can work on the openings.
Inception
Necessity is the mother of all inventions, whether profitable or not is open to debate. But innovation, on the other hand, requires a vision with profitability of the enterprise at its heart. Back in the 1970s different companies, big and small, used IBM machines for their business needs, and built management programmes on them. Five system analysts at IBM observed that everyone was basically building the same management software for themselves, programming on similar lines by investing lots of money on in-house programming. They thought that if they could provide a solution to answer these needs of different enterprises, it would be more profitable and the set up time for these companies could be drastically reduced. Hence these five IBMers, Dietmar Hopp, Klaus Tschira, Hans-Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner and Claus Wellenreuther devoted their nights and weekends to developing market standard enterprise software meant for real time data processing to integrate all business processes. As a result of their efforts, SAP was born.
SAP as an ERP
The need was felt for an integrated software application which could relate and manage the business flow of different areas starting from production till balance sheet. ERP came to the fore with the approach of a one-stop shop for business applications. The common ERPs were SAP, BAAN, People Soft, Oracle Aps, JD Edwards, Oracle Financials, BPCS to name a few. But SAP now has become the numero uno ERP software. Though it is mainly meant for manufacturing organisations through constant research and improvement, SAP now is the best ERP in the market. Most world renowned organisations run in SAP.
SAP users
International: Pepsi, Nestle, Cadbury, Adidas, Siemens, British Airways, British Petroleum, Shell etc.
Indian: Almost 95 per cent of Indian companies including ITC, Reliance, Exide,, Emami, Visa Steel, Vedanta Aluminium, Tega Industries and India Foils Ltd are running in SAP platform.
Market demand
In SAP there are two of types of jobs: functional and technical. For functional jobs a person with industry experience with training in SAP is the ideal candidate to get an entry into the market. For technical jobs like programming and system administration the opportunity lies with the technical people. The programming language is ABAP which is a fourth generation programming language supports SQL. Demand of ABAP is very high in the market. Functional area consists of FICO, SD, CRM, MM, PP, HR, QM and PM.
Eligibility
n ABAP (Advance Business Application Programme) — MCA, BTech, BCA , BSc IT or graduates with programming knowledge
n SD (Sales and Distribution) – MBA or graduates with sales and marketing experience.
n MM (Materials Management) — B Tech mechanical, civil, electrical or graduates with experience
n FICO (Finance and Controlling) – CA, ICWAI, M Com, BCom
n PP (Production Planning) – BTech with experience in production
n BASIS: Graduates with computers networking knowledge
n HCM (Human Capital Management) -— MBA, PMIR
n BI /BO — (Business Intelligence and Business Objects)
(The writer is Managing Director, Futurecareer Solutions Pvt Ltd,
