SAP Faq
- 1. NEW TO SAP EDUCATION? WE CAN HELP SAP Education offers a range of courses covering the whole SAP and SAP BusinessObjects portfolio. If you are new to SAP Education, choosing what to study and how can be confusing. Please check the following Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for information. If you have a question that is not answered below, please contact Education Customer Services on: Freephone UK: 0808 243 7095 Freephone Ireland: 01800 882092 Overseas: +44 (0) 20 8917 7602 Fax: +44 (0) 870 608 7050 Email: [email protected] Who or what is SAP? What about SAP BusinessObjects? What sort of people use SAP software? What does SAP UK Education do? I do not have any experience, where should I start? What is certification? How long does an Academy track take, and how much does it cost? Will attending SAP courses, or passing certification, guarantee employment? Does SAP offer job placements or career advice? How do I book an SAP Education course? How do I pay for courses and what are the terms and conditions? I need a visa to attend training in the UK or Ireland. Can you help me get one? Where can I get my own version of the software? Which 3rd party training providers do you recommend?
- 2. Who or what is SAP? SAP is the world’s largest business software company, headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, with offices and customers all over the world. SAP provides enterprise software applications and business solutions for every aspect of business: financials, human capital management, sales, purchasing, production, planning and analysis. SAP applications are generally built around a technical platform called SAP NetWeaver. SAP provides software for large organisations and small and medium size enterprises, a variety of specific industry versions and, through SAP BusinessObjects, a set of tools and applications to optimise business performance. There are a number of different component systems and SAP solutions, and there is not enough space in this FAQ to explain them all. For more information, see www.sap.com/solutions/index.epx What about SAP BusinessObjects? SAP BusinessObjects has a portfolio of solutions focussing on business intelligence, information management, enterprise performance management and governance, risk and compliance. BusinessObjects is an SAP company. For more information, see www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/index.epx What sort of people use SAP software? Organisations use SAP software and solutions to manage and optimise their business processes. Each organisation customises or configures the software to reflect their particular requirements. Solutions are implemented by a project team, typically including business process experts, technical support and application consultants (who specialise in customising). Once the project is complete, end users use the appropriate functions to do their normal jobs, and a support team functions as a helpdesk for their queries. What does SAP UK Education do? We offer education solutions in a number of areas. Project team training: education for project team members who will customise and implement SAP and SAP BusinessObjects software solutions. This includes ‘application’ team members who focus on customising solutions to support business processes, ‘developers’ who use programming to fine-tune the solutions and ‘technical’ people who are responsible for system administration, database administration and interfaces. In the UK we have a range of more than 200 courses, scheduled throughout the year. Courses are arranged by subject area curriculum, for example BW (SAP NetWeaver Business Information Warehouse) or FI (SAP ERP Financials Financial Accounting). Project training is delivered in a standard classroom format, through live online sessions called Virtual Live Classroom or through e-learning. Not all courses will be offered in all formats. These courses will range from 1 to 10 days in duration. Customer specific training: for groups of people at a single organisation. Where a group of team members want to attend the same training we can tailor courses to suite and deliver them as private events at their site or at an SAP Training centre. This is an economic option for groups of 6 or more participants.
- 3. End user training is focussed on the users, rather than the implementers of a system or the support people. Every organisation will customise the software to match their own business processes, so the detail of how it is used will vary from one customer to another. However, we are now able to offer core end user training, based around the most common business processes, scheduled through our delivery partners. For more information on scheduled end user training see: http://www.sap.com/uk/services/education/public-scheduled-training/end-user- training/index.epx We also offer e-learning courses that focus on business processes. We have a team of people who will manage an end user training project within an organisation, including design, development and delivery of training specifically created for that organisation. Education tools are software tools which support the creation and management of education programmes. I do not have any experience, where should I start? Firstly, nobody can be an expert in all areas of SAP solutions: the portfolio is too large to do that. You should choose an area in which you already have a sound business understanding; for example, if you have experience in the financials market, it makes sense to investigate Financial and Managerial Accounting courses. If you have no relevant background or previous employment, you will find the courses more challenging, as you will be trying to learn both the business processes of that market as well as the core system training. For SAP solutions, if you have little or no SAP experience at all, you will need to attend an overview course. There are two entry-level curses, the SAP01 SAP Overview and SAPTEC Fundamentals of SAP NetWeaver Application Server. The SAP01 is the functional overview course for delegates who aim to become application consultants and the SAPTEC is the technical overview course for those who would like to become technical consultants, e.g. programmers or system managers/administrators. You should choose which course best fits your overall objectives. It is important to remember that most SAP Education (other than our end user training options) is most appropriate to people interested in implementation f SAP solutions, not to people who will be users of the system. Both courses are three days in duration and are priced at £1200 + VAT per person. For further course information, check www.sap.com/uk/education and use the course search box to look for SAP01 or SAPTEC. Once you have attended the SAP01 or SAPTEC, you can progress through an individual course curriculum, at the end of which you may choose to sit the consultant certification exam. For SAP BusinessObjects solutions there is no single overview course. You should follow the curriculum path for the solution you are interested in. For more details see the SAP BusinessObjects area of the SAP UK Education website at: https://training.sap.com/gb/en/courses-and-curricula/business-objects
- 4. What is certification? Certification is available for many SAP and SAP BusinessObjects solution areas. If you sit and pass a certification exam, you are welcome to describe yourself as ’certified’ for the particular area, and to make use of the logo which asserts this. Most people would attend some form of training in at least some areas before they attempt certification. The topic areas and their respective weightings for each exam are published on our website, along with a note of which course includes the relevant topics. Course contained within a certification path are often describes as an ‘Academy’ track. However, certification exams are open to all, and attendance on formal training courses is not mandatory in the UK. If you feel that you have the relevant experience in all areas you are free to attempt the exam without attending SAP training courses. This level of certification is properly referred to as ‘Associate’. In many areas a ‘Professional’ certification is also available. The content of a Professional exam is not based on course material, but on experience – these exams are designed for people who have a reasonable amount of real-world SAP experience. You may only attempt an exam at any given release three times. Each exam has a passing percentage based on its specific content. If you fail the exam, you will be given information on your weaker areas, and pointers to courses/materials which may support future revision. For further information on certification, see: http://www.sap.com/uk/services/education/certification/index.epx How long does an Academy track take, and how much does it cost? A typical SAP Academy is five to six weeks in duration. You can attend in one of two ways: through classroom training or via an e-Academy. Classroom courses (which may be delivered via our Virtual Live Classroom) typically run between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm, primarily at our training centre near Heathrow. The courses cannot currently be attended in the evenings or at weekends. The cost of SAP classroom courses is on average between £450 and £550 per day, so you can expect to pay in the region of £10,000 to £12,000 for a full Academy. In the UK we run academies (with the exception of the BW Academy) as individual component courses so you do not have to attend 4 or 5 weeks of training consecutively as you do in other SAP Education centres. Individual courses are scheduled consecutively, so if you do with to attend them back to back you can. You also have the option to attend one or two events, go away and put the knowledge you have learnt into practice, then return to the next level at a time that suites your commitments or learning style. Whole academies tracks are run around once per quarter, but many of the courses that make up a given track are run 2 or 3 times a quarter. Or you can book an e-Academy: a supported online training programme. You can follow an e-Academy at your own pace, over the course of 3-5 months. E-Academies are booked and charged as a single course, at a cost of between £5,600 and £6,600. For more information about e-Academies, see: http://www.sap.com/uk/services/education/public-scheduled-training/delivery- methods/eAcademies/index.epx
- 5. Will attending SAP courses or passing certification guarantee employment? Does SAP offer job placements or career advice? SAP is unable to offer placements or specific career advice. We recommend you investigate the job market and speak to a local recruitment company for job opportunities and career advice. SAP certification cannot guarantee employment. However, being a certified SAP consultant does add value to your CV, particularly when combined with previous experience of an industry or market. How do I book an SAP Education course? See our website www.sap.com/uk/education for our full curriculum, scheduled dates and prices. Note that, from July 2011, SAP BusinessObjects courses for version XI3.0 and below will be delivered exclusively by our network of authorised partners, not by SAP directly. You will need to check the schedules for your most convenient partner, which can be accessed from our website as above. Once you have decided which course to book, you will need to complete a registration form, which needs the details of your course(s) and your payment information. See http://www.sap.com/uk/services/education/pdf/registration_form_standard.pdf for the form. If your organisation has an existing account with us, you may be able to book courses online. Please note that SAP UK Education is unable to reserve places provisionally and that courses bookings can only be made with full payment information. How do I pay for courses and what are the terms and conditions? SAP UK Education operates pre-payment terms for all courses and exams. If you are booking through your organisation, customers with an existing account with SAP Education can arrange to pay for training via a purchase order and invoice. For courses booked close to their start date we reserve the right to require a credit card for bookings. Where you have a large programme of training to book, we can offer a pre-payment scheme, our preferred card. Based on the value of the preferred card you buy, SAP Education grants a bonus. More details of the preferred card scheme are available at: http://www.sap.com/uk/services/education/essential-information/preferred-card/index.epx As an individual, you can pay for SAP courses using a credit card; we accept VISA, MasterCard/Eurocard or American Express. Unfortunately, the only debit card we can accept is a Visa debit card. We can also accept cheques. We now have a Learning Passport scheme, designed specifically for individuals. Purchasing a Learning Passport entitles you to a sliding scale discount on courses, starting at 10% and rising to 25% for your fourth and subsequent courses. You also benefit from selected free e- learning and events, and a discount on certification exams. See http://www.sap.com/uk/services/education/learning-passport/index.epx for information about the Learning Passport. Please note that if you wish to cancel or rebook your course or exam to a later date, you must inform SAP in writing or by e-mail at least 14 days prior to the start date. If you contact
- 6. SAP within 14 days of the course start you will incur a 50% charge, and if within 7 days a 100% charge. SAP UK Education do not offer any discounts on published course prices other than those allowed through the Learning Passport scheme. All prices quoted are exclusive of VAT. The VAT will be charged for all training and services with the following exceptions: Training delivered in Ireland Training delivered in the UK or Ireland to VAT-exempt organisations (we will need to see copies of your VAT exemption documents) Training delivered in the UK or Ireland to participants from organisations based outside the UK All other training participants, including individuals (not representing organisations) normally based outside the UK, must pay VAT. I need a visa to attend training in the UK or Ireland. Can you help me get one? Once you are booked onto a training course in the UK or Ireland we can issue an invitation letter which you can use to support your visa application. Please ask us for an invitation letter if you believe you need one. We are unable to issue invitations to anyone other than training participants, this includes friends and family you may want to travel with you. We cannot enter into other correspondence directly with consulates or embassies. Application for your visa is entirely your responsibility. As such, non-attendance on a course due to visa problems is treated in the same way as any other late notice cancellation, according to our terms and conditions. Please allow plenty of time to get your visa – if you do not manage to obtain a visa in time to attend your course you will not be refunded your course fee. Where can I get my own version of the software? There are no individual free/demonstration versions available for SAP, as the scale of the solution would make this impossible. Neither can we provide practice or ‘sandpit’ access to our training systems to individual participants outside of the course schedule. Which 3rd party training providers do you recommend? With the exception of our authorised partners delivering SAP BusinessObjects training, and scheduled end user courses, in the UK SAP does not authorise or certify any 3rd party Education providers. Nor do we license training materials or access to our software for delivery of customer training to any 3rd party. We are aware that there are some organisations offering public training on SAP topics and understand that some of these falsely claim to be ‘authorised’ or to have some other connection to SAP Education. We receive regular complaints regarding quality of training from customers of some of these organisations, but are unable to intervene as these are completely unconnected to us. We cannot vouch for the quality of course content, material or delivery of any 3rd party training provider, nor for their financial fitness and stability. SAP is the only source of SAP approved public training.
- 7. If you have a specific question that is not covered here, please contact us on: Freephone UK: 0808 243 7095 Freephone Ireland: 01800 882092 Overseas: +44 (0) 20 8917 7602 Fax: +44 (0) 870 608 7050 Email: [email protected]