Qualified Accounting

[former_member245502]

Is it mandatory to be a quilified accountant to get in SAP FICO consulting role. Can any one share there their views on this?

Kind Regards

Apoorv Apte

[Former Member]

Apoorv,

I'm not sure what you're asking. If your question is "Are there areas within FI that are not accounting?", then the answer is yes, kind of, but mostly FI is accounting.

AA – Asset Accounting
AP – Accounts Payable
AR – Accounts Receivable
BL – Bank Accounting
FM – Funds Management
GL – General Ledger Accounting
LC – Legal Consolidations
SL – Special Purpose Ledger

If your question is "Can I get a job as an SAP FI consultant without an MBA, FI qualifications, or FI experience if I get certified as an SAP FI consultant? Then the answer is probably no.

Think about this from a customer's perspective. You're implementing SAP. You have built up your company over years of hard work and effort. You are now going to translate your current business processes into SAP. In many cases, you are already following best business practices, but in some areas, you may have pain points, things that are not running as smoothly as you'd like. You need someone to give you options, pros and cons, as well as the ability to translate those decisions into SAP configuration.

Now... you're going to hire an SAP FI consultant to help you do this translation. Who are you going to hire? You'll have many options from which to choose. Most will have 8 to 20 years of experience in Financials, with or without SAP. Most will also have an MBA and several FI certification (CPA for example). Most will have SAP certifications. All will have multiple SAP implementations under their belt. The SAP FI market is fully mature, so don't kid yourself, there are MANY folks out there with exactly the qualifications I've just described.

So... who do you hire: an accomplished professional with decades of experience in FI, general FI certification (MBA, CPA, CFA, etc), SAP Certification, and multiple projects on their resume or a guy with no qualifications, maybe an MBA and an SAP certification?  Are there successful SAP FICO consultants who are not CPAs? Probably, but they have other areas (work experience or other qualifications) that compensate for that deficiency.

I wrote a blog post on the generic path that leads from recent college graduate to a career in SAP if you're interested.

Hope that helps!

Best regards,

  --Tom