It’s been a while since I posted to the site, I have really missed doing that. The reason for the short absence is that I have been working hard on a new project in the last 2 months. It is a website that promises to give a lot of valuable information to newbies looking to get into SAP.
You can check out the site here. SAP Unveiled

What will you get from  SAP Unveiled?

Let me give you some background information on why I started SAP Unveiled. I have been getting a lot of questions about how to get break into SAP as a newbie without experience. So I decided to do some research.

• I spoke to current SAP professionals to get their advice on getting your first SAP job.
• I also spoke to career experts on what it takes to get a job in an field where you have little or no experience.
• I have also done some in-depth reearch into the techniques you can use to secure SAP jobs.

What came out of these research have been explained in the articles and videos you will find on SAP Unveiled.

Please click over to SAP unveiled now to get a teaser of what you will get from the site. Make sure you remember to sign up for the series of articles with a valid email address and you will also get notified when SAP unveiled is launched.

I will still continue to provide free high-value tutorials on SAP Business Intelligence on this site
in case you are concerned that it will stop but I have seen two groups on this site, if you are looking
for tutorials on SAP business intelligence, this is where to be. But if you are looking for information
on SAP career guidance, SAP Unveiled will best serve you.

Click here to see the free articles that will be released before the site launches next week.

Thank you for your support, it has been a great motivator for me to continue to give you valuable
information.

This is the final part of the SAP Training online video series on how to create hierarchies. In this video I will explain what hierarchies are and show you how to set them up in SAP Business intelligence.

Let me know what you think of the video, do you have suggestions on what I should include in subsequent videos? Please leave a comment and let me know.

This is part 2 of the SAP Training online video series on how to create hierarchies. In this video I will explain what hierarchies are and show you how to set them up in SAP Business intelligence.

Let me know what you think of the video, do you have suggestions on what I should include in subsequent videos? Please leave a comment and let me know.

This is part 1 of the SAP Training online video series. In this video I will explain what hierarchies are and show you how to set them up in SAP Business intelligence.

Let me know what you think of the video, do you have suggestions on what I should include in subsequent videos? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Today’s post is an interesting one, you have been hearing me rant about my SAP training and module selections for a while now so I decided to shut up and let you guys hear some very good advice from the experts as well.

Who better to hear it from than a 17-year SAP veteran, who is one of the people who moderate the SAPFans forum. She is known as ‘Fish’ to the thousands of SAP newbies and experts looking for advice on the SAPFans forum, here real name Mylène Dorias. She has been an SAP consultant for 17 years, specializing in various modules including Material management (MM) SAP Basis and Security.

She agreed to do an interview and I got to ask her the questions that have been on my mind and on your minds as well. She also gives a reality check to people looking to break into SAP consulting.

Just in case you wondered, when Mylène refers to the ‘Elder race’, she is talking about the member’s moderators on the SAPFans forum who have been doing a great job since 2001. Here is the interview, enjoy.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. what you do? What field of SAP are you involved in?

Currently I am a Basis and Security Admin (SAP) in permanent employment. I have been ‘doing SAP’ for 17 years now, mainly in MM, WM, Basis and Security.

17 years! wow, that is a lot of experience. You must enjoy what you do. Do you?

Of course, I do. Everybody staying in any given job for so long a period would do this only if she/he enjoyed it (always/mostly/sometimes/any given day …).

Can you tell us what is the importance of having a passion in what you to do be able to succeed?

It’s one of the major factors that keep you going, even if success proves difficult at times. Other major factors: persistence; the will to solve problems on your own; the ability to attack problems from different angles; the ability to always learn something new; patience (that being the one buggering me still) …

When/Why did you start up SAPFans?

The ‘when’-part is a bit difficult to answer, since it is no longer traceable and I actually do not remember the year exactly: 1998? 1999? 2000?. The forum crashed in 2002 (see board ‘Announcements) and we all started again in October 2002, which is why you see ‘The Elder Race’ always with a ‘Join-Date’ of October 2002.

The ‘why’-part is much easier. I found this board whilst searching for a solution for a problem which I wasn’t able to solve myself at the time. I stayed and started giving answers to posts, recognising that I know bits that can help other people. Am still here :lol: and a global moderator now :shock:

Who else is involved with SAPFans, who are your partners?

This question is a tiny bit unclear. I do not own this board, I am just a mod. The owner is Rao Tella, last known to live somewhere in the USA. He doesn’t show up in here (except to read his PMs), but can be reached via the admins or PM.

Otherwise involved. Well, the ‘Elder Race’ of course, some of them permies, some of them consultants (freelance or employed), some of them still showing up, others long gone. Since SAP started their own forums a couple of years ago, the traffic in SAPFans has slowed down considerably.

What kind of help do people come to look for on your site?

From basic to expert questions concerning knowledge of functionality in SAP to advise on their careers or studies (certifications). GD (General Discussion) is open for everything else: jokes, games, receipes, banter and sincere, well meant insults :).

So you have experience in MM and Basis and Security, how easy is it to make a sideways move into a different SAP area?

Easy. The high level of integration in SAP software inevitably leads you through several areas (losely attached ones, e. g. setting up netservices (Basis) and making those save (Security) – or closely related ones, e. g. Account Determination (MM/FI) as follow up for Purchase Order Settings (MM-PUR). Once you crossed the border to a related topic, a complete switch-over is possible (sometimes even considered professional)

What is your view on SAP as a company first? and as a career option?

SAP is a company who developed (and persists to do so) a splendid software solution, that is – IMHO – superior to everything else on the market, due to their concept of high integration of every aspect in a business that needs software-based assistance.

On the downside: they have been growing too fast and show the same signs of degrading support, confusing marketing and product policy and arrogance as every other software giant does (e. g. Microsoft). Their efforts to offshore software development was another mistake, IMO since this caused the standards which were stable within the complete systems, to slack. So did the offshored support. They are about to get a grip on this, though.

As a career option. Hhhmmm. I truly think, that there are too many people, trying to make a career in SAP which do

• a.) not qualify
• b.) cheat their way in and
• c.) trying to go to the top without the experience necessary.

Don’t get me wrong: I am sure that there are lots of people who have the education and are trying to get the experience plus working very hard on a solid base of expertise. There are, however, many others. As a moderator of a board you get to see both types, sadly enough, more of the ‘others’.

SAP didn’t help that matter with their ‘Certification-Made-Easy’ policy – but again: they seem to get a grip on this, also. Hopefully time will filter out all the second-rate consultants and developers and leave the real experts. Wait and see.

A lot of people looking to start a career in SAP, for whatever reasons
From your experience, can you tell us what a newbie needs to know, maybe a reality check that it is not all it is hyped to be or maybe it is… let us know

A newbie to SAP needs to know the software in the ‘area’ (module) she/he is working in, down to the last bit and tool. More importantly though: she/he needs to know the business processes of the company/customer exactly. Plus the business needs, of course. Such is not done, coming freshly from a University and having one or more certificates in SAP. This needs years of experience.

The quality of a SAP consultant shows when she/he is able to match the business processes/needs against the software, whilst keeping an open eye on possible future changes whilst trying not to re-invent the wheel.

Custom made developments may be necessary, hence should be expertly designed, flexible for future requirements and done in a way that enables easy maintenance and or portability. This is not done, coming freshly from … see above.

What you call hype, bases mostly on the assumption that one can come out of school, get a few SAP certificates and start earning the big money. Deadly. wrong. In the long run, this will not work out. Experience is the key to being a successful SAP consultant.

Unfortunately, all the ads of SAP-Education and other institutes try to keep this under the carpet. Which gains them the ‘tarnished’ reputation they have now. Sadly enough, there a enough flim-flam operations out there that ride the wave of the SAP hype and cheat unknowing/inexperienced people out of their money for education/certification … which is why we on SAPFans try to convince freshers to gain experience first, certification later.

Still, current worldwide recession or no – I think, a career in SAP is desirable, if one is willing to work extensively on ones knowledge of the software and on the business experience. This takes years. Every type of expertise does.

Coming back to your advice on gaining experience first, certification later. How does one gain experience first? It is not easy these days to get a company looking to hire a fresher. Is it not better to get some kind of training to put yourself ahead of some of the competition.

Yes and no :| Having had (extensive) SAP training without holding a job to which to apply this training is like training for your drivers license without ever having sat in a car – and with much the same result, I guess. Just to stay with that metaphor: there might be some advantage in trainig first – it’ll give you an edge in interviews and so on, but it surely will not enable you to make a perfect U-turn in a 40 ton truck at 70 mp/h on first try. every employer will still know, you’re a fresher.

Maybe we can agree on this line: training -> experience -> certification. The certificate in itself does you no good, it is (in its essence) a piece of paper stating the expertise you have achieved by training+experience. I am not alone in this: most of the ‘Elder Race’ of the SAPFans thinks like this, search the ‘Education’-forum – one example here:

Of course, you are absolutely correct that these days it won’t be easy to be hired as a fresher. These days you cannot even apply for a SAP job without having a University Degree of some kind … for the ‘Elder Race’ this was different – most of us have never seen a University, we came from all other jobs into SAP. So, there’s merit your emphasising the value of training. But. Theory alone will still not help you with that U-turn

That was the interview and I want to say a special thank you to Mylène for giving us her insights. For me it has been very helpful.

Do you have any other questions you would like to ask? Feel free to ask it in the comments and I am sure I can get her to come back and answer them.

If you want to get in touch, Fish resides at the SAPFans forum as a global uber-moderator. She and the others from the ‘Elder race’ will answer any questions you might have on SAP.

It has been a while since my last post, there have been a lot of questions and emails going back and forth with you all. If you would like to take part in the discussion, and you are not subscribed yet, please do so in the box on the right.

Today, I am going back to basics and continuing the SAP BI training lessons. This is the reason I started this blog but
I have found out that the SAP landscape is wide and people have more questions not neccessarily pertaining to SAP Business Intelligence. Please let me know if you would like to see more posts on SAP BI.

Transformations

The topic of the day is Transformation. Transformation is all about mapping fields from source systems to destination databases. Sometimes, the mapping is one-to-one i.e you have a field in the source table that maps directly to the destination. It is also possible that the fields are not matched up correctly.

For example, length of the fields might be different in both or the way figures are calculated might also be different. A good example is VAT. The amount of value-added tax charged differs from country to country and this needs to be transformed (recalculated).
Transformation rules are used to perform these operations.

Transformation rules

Normally, when mapping fields on the InfoSource to the fields in the InfoCubes,the mapping was always one to one. In real time, this is not always the case. Some InfoObjects are not present in the InfoSource fields but have to be calculated. These calculations are done through transformations.

There are 7 different types of tranformations.

• Direct assignment
• Constants
• Reading master data
• Routines
• Formula
• Time updates
• No transformation

I shall use an example to explain these transformations. Take a look at the table below. It shows a simplistic view of a potential InfoSource that I want to transform to fields in the InfoCube. The InfoSource has the following fields, Product, Sales quantity and Price/unit. The destination InfoObjects are Product, Sales quantity, price per unit and revenue.

Source fields

Destination fields

Direct assignment

This will copy the value in the source field directly into the target field. For example the products, sales quantity will be transformed using direct assignment.

Constants

This transformation rule will fill the target field with a specified value. For example, the import data field can be filled with today’s date.

Routines

Routines are special code written to handle complex cases. There are start routines, end routines and expert routine Start routines are used to pre process the data before transformation, for example they can be used to eliminate empty fields before the process starts. This makes the process efficient when there a lot of records being imported and a handful will be empty fields.

End routines are used to post –process the data on a package-by-package basis. This can be used for integrity checks etc.

Routines are mostly written by ABAP consultants, you as a BI consultant will have to supply the specifications for the routine you would like to implement.

I will explain the rest (Formulas, Reading master data and time updates) in a later post. Do you have any special area of SAP business intelligence you would like more explanation on? Please leave a comment and let me know.

I sent an email last week to you, the people subscribed to my blog. I asked you to let me know about any questions you may have on the ‘Beginner’s guide to sAP’ report and also questions on SAP in general. I have received a great deal of responses from you and I would like to thank you all for sending in your questions.

In this post, I will pick some of the questions that came up more than once and publish the answers I gave to the people who asked the questions.Here are your questions.

How do I know which SAP module is in demand?

This is one question which I always see coming up again and again. This does not come as a surprise because the SAP landscape is broad. With more than 25 industry solutions and more than 6 business process solutions, choosing which SAP module to start your career in can be a daunting task.

I did tackle this question in a previous post and I have had a lot of feedback in the comments on that same post. Feel free to go back and read the post but the main points to consider are

• Choose a module that is core to most company’s business processes and
• Choose a module that is needs similar skills to what you currently do or have a passion in doing

You can check for demand using job boards and research agencies. If you live in the UK, you can use ITJobsWatch. I have chosen SAP Business intelligence because it fits into the picture after considering both points.

How can I get hands-on practice for SAP certification?

There were two variants of this question. Some people wanted sample questions to pass the certification tests and some wanted to actually try their hands on SAP software. SAP offers sample questions on their website. Click here for the SAP sample questions. That is a great resource for anybody looking to take certification exams on the topics listed.

Getting hands-on experience with SAP software is also a must if you want to break into SAP consulting. There are companies that offer access to SAP software for a monthly fee. You can find more information in a previous post here. The price range is about $99.00/per month.

Some want to buy SAP IDES images from ebay. This is really not the way to go. Most of those images are either scams or images of really out-dated software. Not to talk about it being illegal. To get the job you want, is $99.00 too much of an investment to make? I don’t think so.

Where can I find affordable SAP training?

This is a question I asked myself a couple of months ago when I was looking to get SAP business intelligence training SAP training from an SAP academy is prohibitively expensive, running into thousands of $$. I found an institute here in London that had a good offer and threw 6 months of SAP IDES access in as well. I took the course and I loved it.

I have decided to develop a training course/study guide that will focus on SAP business intelligence and offer it to a limited number of subscribers of this blog for a massive discount. I am hoping these poeple will help me shape the course into the best SAP online course there is out there. I don’t want to go into too much detail but this is the first time I am announcing it and it is work in progress and if you want to more information,  you will have stay tuned and make sure you are subscribed to my mailing list.

I already have SAP training, how do I get a job?

This is another question that comes up very often. It is hard for freshers to get a job in SAP. There are no step-by-step rules. Let me give you one small tip though.

The world is changing, we are entering into the age where social media is becoming a part of our daily lives. The days of sending out CV’s and hoping that someone calls us for an interview are over. The best way to get a job in this economy is to stand out by getting into a discussion with the people that are working for the companies you want to work for. SAP has a community network SCN where a lot of SAP consultants, employees and newbies hang out. Join the SCN and take part in the forums, answer some questions, build your profile, be the person that is always willing to help.

After a while you will get noticed by people and when you decide to ask these people for a job, they will be happy to help. This is a strategy I am currently pursuing. It is a long term one, but if it takes 3 months to let my CV sit in a public database and wait for calls, I might as well get on networking site and build my profile in the same time.

Update: I just found this very interesting post from David Bann on how to find SAP jobs. There is a lot of useful information in that one post.

Wow, this post has ended up being longer than I expected. There were so many questions that came in and I am sorry if I haven’t highlighted yours here but I am sure I replied to every one personally. Thanks for sending them and please keep them coming. I will answer them if I can. We are in this journey together. You all are the reason why I do this and thank you for your support.

If you have any comments, please leave them below. I look forward to hearing them.

I got an email last week from Jim Stewart about his new book. For those who don’t know who Jim is let me give some background information. Jim is the author of a lot books in the Breaking into SAP series. His books are targeted to newbies in the SAP field and the books help to answer a lot of the questions that newcomers to SAP have.

So back to the new book. It is called SAP training and tutorials : Introduction and Basic skills I was very interested in this information so I went over to his website and bought the book. I would like to give a review and tell you what I think about it.

The introduction

I really like the introduction into the book. The author goes ahead to reveal some issues that newbies face when talking to current SAP professionals about getting training. They always come with a reluctance to release information.

Another issue spoken about in the introduction is the problem of getting initial work experience. Most people you talk to give you the advice of getting a company that will employ you and train you as a way of breaking into the SAP world but these so-called “I will train you” companies are nowhere to be found. The book highlights these issues and more which resonated with me.

SAP GUI Walkthrough

The book then goes into an introduction to SAP and then after that shows you how you can navigate through the SAP GUI which is SAP’s software portal to configure and implement SAP solutions.

I haven’t gone through the whole book yet but till now I am liking what I see. If you want to get the book, you can go over to the SAP Cookbook site. This is not an affiliate link and I am not getting any compensation for referring you. I am just sharing resources I am personally using to get my SAP training.

If you do ge the book, I would like to know your thoughts. Please come back and leave a comment. If you already have some books from Jim or the SAP cookbook site, let us know about your thoughts as well.

You have decided to start a career in SAP, you have heard how rewarding it can be. You have done some research to find out what it takes to become an SAP consultant, now you have discovered there are many career paths you can choose .   FICO, HR, MM, BI, CRM, SCM, SRM. There are too many 2/3 letter abbreviations that you can possibly process in your mind. Now you are faced with the task. How do I choose the best SAP module for me?

In this post I will give you some things to consider when choosing an SAP module for your career. After that I will use this tips to explain on how I chose SAP business intelligence for mine.

Why you must get it right at this stage

Simply because this is where the game is won or lost. You want to give yourself the best chance at succeeding. Some people base their choices solely on how much money they are likely to earn in the future. This is very wrong, why?

Simply because for you to earn good money, you have to be good at what you do, and to be good at what you do, you have to spend time practising and perfecting your skills. For you to want to spend hours in practising a task,  you have to like what you do or at least have an interest in it. So you see from this chain of occurrences, the money comes at the end. You are likely to fall by the way-side before you even get to the money.

Choose a SAP module that compliments your current expertise

Take a deep look at what you are doing now and choose an SAP module that will need those skills, if you are just graduating or have no experience, choose a field that you have an interest in.

If you are a developer, consider starting your career in ABAP, if you can develop in java, that means you already master half the skills necessary to develop in SAP’s web application server Web AS.

Are you are an accountant or studying finance? SAP Financials should be your first module to consider.

Why this is important is because you need to reduce the number of obstacles in your path where you can. You already have the obstacle of having to learn something by getting to know SAP, you do not want to add the other obstacle of learning what a general ledger is if you want to learn SAP Financials with no financial knowledge.

Choose a module in demand

You need to choose an SAP module that is demand. Remember the main goal of this post is to increase your chances of success at the initial stage. Face it, when you get on the job market, you will be competing with other consultants for the same jobs. If there is only one job in the marketplace, the odds are you won’t get that job. Now if there are 500 jobs on the market at that point in time, the odds are definitely better. It is all a numbers game.

SAP SRM has not been in demand and some people might argue that is better to be a specialist and thus your worth is more. I will say this to them, who can be a specialist without mastering the general skills? who can be a dentist without going to medical school?

You are just starting out in your SAP career, so get the basics down and when you are successful you can decide to increase your worth if you specialise in a more tightly focused areas like SAP security.

There are two ways to determine demand. One is to go through your local job board and see which SAP skills are being advertised for. If you are in the UK, you can use ITJobsWatch to determine demand.

Another way is to answer a fundamental question, which companies will need this module? Which departments will use this module.
If you can safely say that almost all companies implementing SAP can potentially make use of the module in question, then you can already determine demand.

Let me give an example SAP financials is a module that all companies can make use of. All companies large or medium sized have a financial department that SAP FI/CO can help optimise. Another good example is human resources, every company has a HR department and that is a reason why SAP HR is in demand

On the other end of the spectrum is SAP SRM which helps largely retailers with lots of suppliers and vendors and helps manage the relationship between the two. SAP Oil and Gas is an example of an industry specific module. The number of companies implementing these modules of SAP will pale compared to SAP Financials.

Why did I choose business intelligence.

I will now take you through the two points I made above and relate that to my choice of SAP business intelligence.

First of all, I am currently a software developer, I develop applications that help make day to day activities easier. I have worked in many industries and I decided for SAP business intelligence because I have a lot of the skills needed in BI. I have done a lot of database work which helps to understand the concepts of data warehousing better. I develop applications that display reports so I can also appreciate the background processing needed to create the reports that BI give you out of the box.

The second main consideration is, which companies can make use of business intelligence and my answer is almost all. BI is a component of SAP Netweaver which is the technology base of any new SAP installation.

Companies implementing FI/CO will need to determine which departments are profitable from the reports that BI produces, those implementing SAP sales and distribution will need to determine which products are lagging, those implementing HR will need to know how many employees are being recruited over time. And the list goes on and on.

Now you have my reasons for choosing SAP BI, please use these tips to choose a module that you can relate to and you can be sure that you can start your SAP career with the assurance that you have thought it out and have a better chance at succeeding at it. I would love to hear your comments on which SAP module you would like to pursue and how you chose it.

Today’s post is about the ETL process, which forms the basis of data flow in the SAP BI system.I will go into detail on what the E,T and L stand for and how they are tied together to move data into BI and up into the the point where it ready for reports to be made on that data.
The ETL process brings data from external sources into the BI system which will be used later for analysis. There are three stages in this process, which is derived from the abbreviation ETL
•    Extraction
•    Transformation
•    Loading

Extraction

Extraction is the process of bringing in raw data from a range of supported source systems into the persistent storage area (PSA). The two objects that are active in this process are the source systems and the PSA, which is sometimes referred to as the datasource. The PSA stores the data temporarily before the transformation process begins
There are lots of supported source systems which can be used to bring data into the PSA.

• XML, you can post data from web services that support the SOAP protocol to the BI system
• Data can also be extracted from custom databases. For example Oracle or SQL server databases. These use the DBConnect/UDConnect adapters
• Flat files like excel can serve the BI system with data using file interfaces
• Data can also be retrieved from SAP systems like HR, MM, SD, CRM. These connect using the BI service API

ETL PSA Soure system

Transformation

After the data has been extracted from the source system, it has to be cleansed and transformed into something meaningful for the BI system.  After the transformation has been done, it can be stored in the InfoObjects.
InfoSources are used for transformation. It serves like an adapter between the source systems and the InfoCubes.

All the fields in the source system are mapped to the corresponding fields (InfoObjects) in the InfoCube. For example customer name will correspond to client name InfoObject.
The InfoSource serves to make the InfoCube independent of the source system. When a source system is swapped for another one, only the InfoSource gets to change. Transformation rules are be applied to the InfoSource. This can be either direct correlations, formulas or combinations. I will discuss more on transformation rules in a later lesson

Loading

The next step in the process is to load the data into the end target. The end target referred to in this case is the InfoProvider of which there are many types. The load process will be different depending on which type of InfoProvider is being used. You can either have records being added and records being updated with some change management going on.
Now that the data is loaded, the stage is set for reports to be made. This is the reason why BI exists, to display reports for intelligent business decisions can be made.

There you have it, the ETL process being a major part of getting data ready for reports. If you have any questions, I would love to answer them, so leave a comment.