What are the 5 key qualities looked for in candidates building a career with SAP® technology?

Peter Voss was recently challenged by a VOCO candidate to articulate what are the key qualities required today to build your career with SAP technology. To compile this study, Peter interviewed over 12 leading members of the SAP community including SAP Sales Directors, Heads of SAP Solution Practice in EMEA and leading SAP programme managers at Infosys and Capgemini. The most popular qualities articulated by the panel of experts Peter interviewed as follows:

1. Entrepreneurial

2. Innovative

3. Visionary

4. SAP Certified

5. Passionate about SAP.

Each one of these qualities needs careful clarification to understand their relevance to the SAP working environment. So let us consider them one by one.

This is a word widely used in society and conjures up images of a one-man-band successfully launching their own enterprise and making finding financial success. So why is this a quality singled out as important for success working in an SAP Team? “It's about taking full accountability for your role and responsibilities within the team structure”.  The perfect player in an SAP team is the one that not only nails their own responsibilities, but ensures they communicates clearly what they are doing to the other members of the team to ensure their work fits and integrates with the roles and responsibilities of the other team players. In an SAP team, an entrepreneur is the master of their own success making smart decisions that get results for the areas they are responsible for within the team. Working within an SAP environment means providing clarity and documentation for all that you do and ensuring that this is clearly communicated to your team colleagues and line management.

Many people come up with new and innovative ways of doing things – but in an SAP environment, to be innovative means not just coming up with a good idea – it has to be useful and create advantage. Normally, a new innovative process is the result of hours of analysis, thought and determinism to make things better – and being able to involve other colleagues to share their information and test the innovation to be sure that it works. For every 10 great ideas, there is only one which emerges as a complete and worked up solution that helps the organisation gain a true competitive advantage – and the perpetrator of such an innovation is normally the one finding the most career success within an SAP environment.

Through my own broad experience as Head of Pre-Sales at SAP, it comes as no surprise to me that “Visionary” people should find career success more easily within an SAP environment. Many people within a technical job function succeed by locking in on their project, with a blinkered focus on task completion. True visionaries have the ability to comprehend the broader picture – and to understand the commercial goals associated with technical projects and the nature of the inter-linking of their responsibilities with others. This ability arms the visionary to know when is the right time to propose alternative ways of doing things to allow the team to achieve the project goals more quickly or cost-effectively. Individuals that have technical knowledge combined with Business Analysis skills and commercial vision are among those destined to result in being heads of industries leading the successful organisations of tomorrow.

The highest achiever and most career satisfied individuals are normally the ones that make continued training, development and education the corner stone of their working life. The courses leading to certification can be expensive, but the pay-back period can be within months. Even in 2010 there is still a significant shortage in certain SAP areas and industries are willing to give attractive opportunities to the professionals that qualify first to work on their projects. Certification can be one of the fastest ways to jump up the career ladder – to lever you into the positions where your true potential can be realised. At VOCO we offer you the opportunity to talk with successful SAP experienced professionals directly and hear more about how to build a career working with SAP.

For some people, what you do represents who you are – and we all have an enormous amount of respect for charity workers, carers and others whose careers and vocations have a direct, clear and often instantaneous impact on improving the lives of others. To succeed in your SAP career you have to be proud and passionate about what you do and this starts with being aware of the millions of lives that are enriched on a day-to-day basis by the work that you do. Advances in technology are vital to life sciences and pharmaceutical organisations enriching their ability to more quickly find cures for terminal illnesses. Hospitals and charities depend on well organised information in well-architected systems to provide better services to the community. SAP is the world’s leading Enterprise Resource Management technology and you are part of a community that is helping save lives, deliver sanitation, cure illnesses, put out fires and better manage our social environment. Be proud to be a part of that community – and be passionate about working with SAP.

In summary, there is an opportunity for all actual and potential SAP professionals to induce a step-change in their careers. I urge you all to look around your environment for opportunities to take accountability for your own responsibilities; work hard to prove new ways of doing things to achieve a competitive advantage; see the bigger picture and become more commercially aware; get qualified and SAP certified and work with a passion and pride about who you are – and the valuable role you have at the heart of the SAP business community.

Peter Voss. MD of VOCO Solutions

About the Author

Peter Voss has 15 years IT experience and over 10 years experience in SAP Consulting and Pre-Sales across a wide range of solutions and technologies including Business Intelligence, ERP, Business All-in-One, Business ByDesign and Business One. Prior to founding VOCO Solutions, Peter had a successful career working for SAP and two leading global SAP and management consultancy firms. Peter has also held Financial Accountant and Solution Architect roles in an SAP environment.

 

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