IS SAP SD MANDATORY FOR A CAREER IN SAP CRM??

[Former Member]

Hi Experts,

This is Alok from Mumbai, India. I've been working with the IT industry for 3.5 years and have been working as a Business Analyst for Amdocs CRM for one year. Since i have a year's CRM experience, I thought it will be great if i pursued my career in SAP CRM after training and certification in the same area. I've been hunting around gathering as much info as i can wrt the same. There are some things I've been having doubts in and i hope some SME's out here might help me out.

1) Is it practical to get trained and certified in SAP CRM directly? I have been told that SAP CRM is sort of an enhancement in the SAP SD domain. So is it essential to do an SD certi first? I do not have any direct sales experience as such.

2) If at all i decide to go ahead with CRM, is it quite comfortable to get a job in the same domain or the industry asks for sales exp or an SD certi? This is quite crucial as CRM certi alone would cost me a fortune.

3) I have been to a couple of training institutes in Mumbai which are globally renowned. Is it wise to spend that much money over there? (INR 400,000 / $ 8900) or is there any other practical and a more economical and effective alternative.

4) Anything else that i should know or think about?

Thanks in advance for going through my queries and answering them if you have.

Regards,

A.

[satish_talikota]

Alok,

Since you are already into CRM, it makes sense for you to understand theoritical concepts of SAP SD for a while. You can get lots of material from the net and get aligned with an SAP SD Consultant for a while. Once you get some idea or background, you can get on with SAP CRM.

If you should take an optimum fit in your current situation, I think this approach might work.

Regards

Satish Talikota

[Former Member]

Hi Alok,

1)Yes, it is very much possible and practical to go ahead directly with SAP CRM 7.0 certification. SAP SD work experience/ training/ certification is NOT mandatory, though it is advantageous, if you have worked on SAP SD. Basic functions from SAP SD (Pricing, Partner Determination, Incompletion control etc) are advanced further in SAP CRM. However, with good functional experience in sales/ marketing/ service areas makes it simpler to go ahead with SAP CRM certification directly.

2) Pure SAP CRM certified consultants too get jobs based on their basic business process understanding/ functional experience. Again having SAP SD certification/ experience is advantageous but NOT mandatory.

3) SAP certified training institutes in India, namely, SIS, Genovate and NIIT charge almost same amount for SAP CRM training and certification. These are classroom based trainings. Unfortunately, there is no e-learning training available for SAP CRM in India, as on date.

Regards,

Vijay

[Former Member]

Whats going on? , Lithan genovate Pune informed me that its mandatory.