Here we go again.
Jon Reed, Dennis Howlett, Martin Gillet, Michael Koch, and Leonardo Di Araujo, collectively known as the Certification 5, have posted a 55-page, somewhat uncoordinated, white paper that explores the need to vastly upgrade the SAP consultant certification process (http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/18849).
The article even earned the attention of Larry Digby, Editor in Chief of ZDNet (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=33369&tag=col1;post-33369).
Given the prominence of all of the above, this work will certainly be scrutinized by SAP, as many still believe that too many of the SAP consultants in the field are short on the requisite skills. As it happens, the whole subject was kicked back into high gear when (then) CEO Leo Apotheker had this outburst in front of reporters and bloggers:
“I don’t give a s**t if it’s Accenture or IBM. I care about the customer. I find it shocking people are walking around talking to customers and have no experience on [SAP]. [Consultants] get hired by people and have no clue. It’s annoying but that’s a fact. Let’s start by certifying people,” said Apotheker. “If we believe [a project] takes 500 days and another partner says it’s 5,000 days I’ll do it for 500 and a fixed fee.”
While I would welcome tighter certification of individual consultants, even the Certification 5 tend to focus on technical skills (DiAraujo elaborately argues against the viability of testing “soft” consulting skills). All the same, I remain convinced that the systems integration firms require certification. We all know that even with a team of highly qualified consultants, a single crappy project manager can drive a project into the ground. This was my argument a few years ago, and it remains my argument today.
If certification is focused on SAP technical acumen alone (without business knowledge), the certified term should not be consultant.
Engineers without business knowledge often build beautiful and efficient bridges to nowhere.
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The lack of talent in the consulting world needs real scrutiny. Additionally, SAP needs to offer an actual transcript service for any consultant who claims to have had training or certification.
For the current crop of high quality training companies out there that offer SAP training, maybe SAP can provide a “certification” or logo program for them and include their classes and training in its transcript service. Something needs to be done to improve the quality of the consulting field, because too many snake oil salesmen have too much hype and not enough skill.
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Republished from Michael Doane’s Web Site:
I need certify sap sd consultant what fees and hw i can do it? where it is possible