SAP Consultants: Sharpen Your Business Skills

By Valeri Wickersham
Director of Human Resources, Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

If your SAP skills are hot, your pay is probably pretty cool. SAP consultants are in high-demand today. Over the next few years, SAP’s new upgrade policy will add significantly to this demand. As more businesses awaken to the reality that constant business process innovation is vital to sustaining a competitive edge, SAP consultants will be increasingly called upon as much for their business knowledge as for their technology prowess.

Deep knowledge of industry-specific business processes is essential to identifying which upgrade enhancement packages or composite applications will provide the maximum and speediest value to a business. Shai Agassi, president of SAP’s Product and Technology Group, stressed the importance of business skills during his TechEd ’06 keynote speech when he underscored the importance of the SAP business process experts’ ability to “manage new and unique business processes in order to differentiate a company in the market.”

To drive business process innovation, an SAP consultant must break through the traditional barriers between technology and business professionals. A consultant can’t be myopically technical, that is, he or she cannot eschew real-world business issues in favor of solutions that use technology just for its own sake.

Understanding a business unit’s specific function, processes and challenges; architecting business processes on a global scale; respecting the importance of financial goals; knowing a company’s overarching strategy and having a strong awareness of the competitive landscape—these aspects of consulting all require business savvy and acumen, and they are all paramount to achieving success.

Moving up the food chain from ‘contractor’ to ‘consultant’ necessitates acquiring the business skills not only to professionally manage a project but also to professionally represent the project to non-technical business leadership, internal and external. The most successful SAP consultants understand that their technical skills are not their greatest asset. Technical proficiency is required, of course, but sharp and proven business skills, coupled with a ferocious dedication to client service, are what create long-term relationships and propel a consultant’s career.