In my recent attempt to cut expenses, it’s forced me to take a look at a lot of the things I took for granted. My relationship with SAP is one of the biggest expenditures I have each year. For the record, I’ve been an SAP Partner and a member of their ICC program, which entitles me to one certification per year. And for the price tag of 10,000 Euro’s a certification, I finally realized this required a bit more examination.
So, the process of certifying an ABAP Add-on, which is what SAP calls anything designed in ERP that isn’t an interface or smart phone application, is a lot like ISO9001. If you’ve ever worked in a manufacturing company, you’ve probably heard of this. The whole process seemed rather interesting to me. The short story is that it certifies that you wrote down your process, and then follow what you wrote down. This seemed like a strange thing to be proud of to me. And I’m sure there had to more to it than that… but SAP certification is a lot like that. You give SAP your code, you tell them how to run it, what to test, what to press, and if it all works, they certify you. They don’t really perform an in-depth code check, beyond what that AAK does for you (this is the software SAP uses to make their own Add-ons and support packs), they trust what you do. After that, they give you some official looking paperwork and post you on their Add-on website, which I believe you need to be an SAP customer to even see, and until I certified my first application, never knew existed.
So… that got me to thinking… what is a certification really doing for my small business? right now, certainly not 10,000 Euro’s worth. Will I consider doing it in the future? absolutely… if a customer asks for it. Otherwise, it hasn’t been something I’ve benefited from. If there is anyone out there that has had any experience with certification, I’d love to hear from you. Maybe I’m just not utilizing some resources that I was unaware of.
Thanks for reading,
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike