SAP: Is it worth it?

[honeybee]

Have got two emails inviting me to get some SAP training. It costs a lot to learn it, probably a lot more to master it? Is it really worth?

Just for comparison's sake, an MCTS course would probably cost over a hundred dollars with books and exam fees, and a little under 500 dollars with classroom training. But SAP is a few thousand dollars. Should I look at it as a viable career option?

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[Shaggy Hiker]

Well, it depends on the kind of SAP. Maple sap takes a lot of boiling, but you end up with syrup that is fairly valuable these days. Birch sap produces cough syrup. Those probably aren't the saps you are talking about, though.

On a more serious note: Can you come up with an estimate of how much more you would earn if you got the training? If the answer is less than a few thousand dollars, then your ROI for the SAP training would argue against it. However, if the training would allow you to change to a job that paid X amount more per year, then X can be pretty low and still justify the cost of the training, because it could be compounded across multiple years.

[mendhak]

Technical questions. Not in Chit Chat.

[RhinoBull]

Since I was involved with SAP back in the late 90s I can tell from practical stand point:

- if you want to dedicate your entire carrer to learning and working with SAP then go for it;
- product is rather boring unless you come out of the maiframe shop;
- you can never learn entire system but you will eventually few modules (perhaps MM, SD, etc);
- programming language is so darn primitive is almost disgusting;
- all you will ever do is writing reports (they do have some other as they say "exciting" stuff" but that is just an opinion);
- I personally went through at least dozen of training sessions in 2-3 years all over the States (this part wasn't so bad )
-and so on ...

Just so you know I was forced into SAP world by then employer so my opinion might not very objective.

[BillGeek]

If we are talking about the same SAP here:

Then I would tend to say: Yes. Since it's a "specialized" skill (not many people in the field) you will almost certainly be guaranteed a job.

I'm currently working on Siebel (a CRM package that integrates to SAP) and, having seen the SAP BackOffice application, I can say that there are quite a number of exciting things in SAP. RhinoBull, I'm not contradicting what you said, though I think since the late 90's, SAP has undergone quite a number of key changes, similar to Siebel 6 - Siebel 7.5 (Went from dedicated client - EXE on the machine - to a web-based application)

[RhinoBull]

... Since it's a "specialized" skill (not many people in the field) you will almost certainly be guaranteed a job...

It used to be and no longer the case. Maybe where you are but not in the States.
Fewer and fewer companies are implementing SAP (despite the mentioned changes) - darn thing is so expensive it may bakrupt you before it's fully implemented.
Back in the late 90s there was a company that dumped SAP after spending amazing $250M!
Sorry pal.