SAP certification - practical experience

SAP S/4HANA is conquering the world these days, so every good SAP consultant I know is investing time, money and a lot of effort into learning the S/4HANA new functionality (trust me, it’s great!). However just a few of them have completed SAP S/4HANA certification. One of the main reasons for that is lack of understanding of the current SAP certification process. I’ve recently completed 2 certifications and found that it’s much easier process-wise now than it used to be when I started my SAP journey 15 years ago.

If you're an SAP freelancer with > 15 years of SAP experience, you probably have completed your SAP certification somewhere around 4.6C or 4.7 SAP version and never ever repeated this experience. Indeed, quite a lot of independent professionals used to have no real need for an additional up-to date SAP certificate, as customers never asked for it. They've always been much more interested in your practical experience. Even now, many consultants think that re-certification is just a competition in total number of certified consultants among top tier consulting companies. Well, SAP S/4 HANA has changed this, at least temporarily, as customers are actually asking for HANA certificates these days.

Back in 2003, certification was a bit of an issue as it required preliminary booking, personal attendance, and there were certain limitations for independent consultants. These days it's quite different: you pay for SAP Certification Hub subscription for a year online, and you can complete tests online, 24/7 with prior reservation, 6 attempts per year, up to 3 per test. It's very convenient.

A few tips on how it works:

- First, you have to buy subscription to SAP certification hub. It’s sold by SAP or by key SAP partners (e.g. K2 Partnering Solutions – they also sell SAP Learning Hub subscription and even have discounts from time to time). Go to training.sap.com, find CER006_10 SAP Certification in the Cloud for your country. It provides you with a 12- months access to the Certification Hub, where you can schedule up to a maximum of 6 exam bookings over your subscription period. Your subscription is valid for all exams available for booking in the Certification Hub. You also can take each exam up to a maximum of three times. The exams are remotely proctored via a webcam on your PC or laptop and you can schedule your exam 24 x 7 via the Certification Hub.

- Once you complete the paperwork and receive access to certification hub, you can schedule an appointment for your exam. Schedule your appointment a bit ahead. In some cases, you can schedule it in 1.5 hours, but that's not always the case.

- Prepare for your exam. You need a laptop with camera, microphone, good internet connection and Questionmark Secure browser. Make sure you disable your antivirus and zoom internet explorer to 100%, as they can bring extra issues. You also need a nice quiet room, where no one will disturb you for a couple of hours. Deck should be clean; no second monitor or other laptops are allowed (monitor can be switched off). Phone must be switched off.

- Around 15 minutes prior to scheduled time you can try to connect to your mentor, who'll supervise the certification. He should be able to see and hear you for the entire certification. He'll read you the rules, ask you to show your government-issued ID and to show him the room with your camera (you'll have to rotate your laptop a bit). After that, you'll have to click a few checkboxes to confirm you agree with the rules, and that's it, you can start the test.

- During the test you can navigate between questions, mark some of them for further review and return to any question through navigation window. You may find it useful to mark the questions where you have doubts, and review them again after you’re done with all the rest. Once you’ve submitted your test for review, you see your result immediately, although you have to wait about 5 days for auditor review to get the certificate.

Good luck with your certification!