SAP Consulting

[kev374]

Why does SAP consulting pay so high? A friend of mine is an SAP consultant, his pay is almost $200,000/yr with bonuses here in Orange County, he does have to travel though. But, what is so special about SAP that it commands such a high salary?

[no_such_reality]

ERP typically hits Finance and the core business Operations.

Those same groups, typically try to penny pinch on other IT projects and typically then get mediocre results. So when it comes to their primary work flow tool, they feel like they need to buy quality.

The projects often go completely off the rails and projects then get sponsored to fix the problem with the app affecting the core business, they’ll pay even more for that.

Honestly, I’ve seen companies just lose their minds with major ERP implementations, literally, little companies, sub-billion, sub-$500 million spending $20-$30 million on ERP armies of off-shore consultants 70-80 developers customize code to work. Insanity. And of course, it works like a cobbled together mess because the businesss refuses to think that they don’t have a ‘best practice’ that they are insisting on being customised.

But in the end, the companies go with the ‘safe’ big house consulting solution, pay through the nose for it and the houses know it, so that decision makers minimize being the scapegoat for what ultimately will be a failed massive expenditure, because many business stakeholders approach it with the same realism that approach things like dieting.

/cyncism.

And a jaded IT guy would ask if $200K is enough to watch a slow motion train wreck unfurl over a year knowing the whole time, you’ll be the primary target of blame and will have to defend it and fight to then continue getting your company paid?

[livinincali]

It’s written in a language called ABAP that not too many people have experience with and most SAP business application deployments have a fair amount of customization in them. It’s a specialized role that can ebb and flow with economy. Lots of SAP deployments and customization you have people desperately trying to hire you. Slow down in the economy and nobody wants your ABAP skill set anymore.

[Coronita]

Not many people know how to do it. Specialized skillset.

$200k was what SAP consultants were getting 10 years ago too.

[Coronita]

[quote=no_such_reality]ERP typically hits Finance and the core business Operations.

Those same groups, typically try to penny pinch on other IT projects and typically then get mediocre results. So when it comes to their primary work flow tool, they feel like they need to buy quality.

The projects often go completely off the rails and projects then get sponsored to fix the problem with the app affecting the core business, they’ll pay even more for that.

Honestly, I’ve seen companies just lose their minds with major ERP implementations, literally, little companies, sub-billion, sub-$500 million spending $20-$30 million on ERP armies of off-shore consultants 70-80 developers customize code to work. Insanity. And of course, it works like a cobbled together mess because the businesss refuses to think that they don’t have a ‘best practice’ that they are insisting on being customised.

But in the end, the companies go with the ‘safe’ big house consulting solution, pay through the nose for it and the houses know it, so that decision makers minimize being the scapegoat for what ultimately will be a failed massive expenditure, because many business stakeholders approach it with the same realism that approach things like dieting.

/cyncism.

And a jaded IT guy would ask if $200K is enough to watch a slow motion train wreck unfurl over a year knowing the whole time, you’ll be the primary target of blame and will have to defend it and fight to then continue getting your company paid?[/quote]

Funny part is that about 10 years ago, I was at a then startup company that IPOed that was providing EAI/B2B integration to such ERP systems. We built datasource adapters to SAP using ABAP and SAP IDocs to our integration server that allowed people to use a GUI to map data from SAP ABAP calls and IDocs to other data types (for example, a relational database, or another backoffice system). We also included a workflow and data transformation engine. Company made good money doing this. The pitch was you didn’t need a specialized SAP consultant to do this…Well sort of… You needed a consultant familiar with our EAI platform that was costing about the same as the ERP consultants did…LOL…So I think most companies ended up ditching these middlemen products, especially after the big companies (SAP, Oracle,etc) started to provide much cleaner interfaces to expose their data.

Those SAP $200k consulting jobs aren’t going away anytime soon. Just like you still have people hiring to do COBOL.

[SK in CV]

Everyone else that’s commented so far seems to think you’re talking about ERP stuff. I spent about a year working with a EPM consulting firm, and most of their experienced guys were making $200K, and many of them significantly more. It was my understanding that the ERP guys didn’t make quite so much. Qualified consultants were hard to find, some of them billing at $400-450/hr. SAP actually had a division that did the work themselves, but their sales side often seemed to prefer to refer the work out to boutiques.

[kev374]

well, is this work that hard that it commands quarter million dollars in salary a year?

[joec]

Knowing college people who did SAP consulting and having some family folks in this field as well, it’s purely just because it’s a very limited specialized skillset that most people would never learn or use in real life. It’s sorta also hard to get into I think unless you get a gig which needed it or you were “hired” early by a consulting house to train/do it.

I did ERP stuff in the past on Oracle/Peoplesoft and I doubt any of the SAP stuff is “hard”, but what in tech really is considered hard given enough motivation/interest?

I think the pay is “decent” (I don’t think 200k is insane), because people who implement these typically have to travel so that lifestyle isn’t for everyone. Most companies would also not want to keep a lot of SAP talent on staff and advancement career wise is limited if you wanted to reach higher levels of management or IPO.

It’s surprising large scale projects like this are still about, but with tons of government contracts and old legacy systems and simply, users wanting to do things their “custom” way, I doubt it’ll go away soon.

If consulting, there is very little advancing pass more pay or management opportunities.

Honestly, the guy doing your yard work or cleaning your house I feel has a “harder” job than most desk jobs out there.

[Coronita]

[quote=kev374]well, is this work that hard that it commands quarter million dollars in salary a year?[/quote]

Its hard if you haven’t done it and are trying to do it now. Hard or no hard is not the issue.

[dumbrenter]

[quote=SK in CV]Everyone else that’s commented so far seems to think you’re talking about ERP stuff. I spent about a year working with a EPM consulting firm, and most of their experienced guys were making $200K, and many of them significantly more. It was my understanding that the ERP guys didn’t make quite so much. Qualified consultants were hard to find, some of them billing at $400-450/hr. SAP actually had a division that did the work themselves, but their sales side often seemed to prefer to refer the work out to boutiques.[/quote]

By EPM, do you mean Enterprise Performance Management or something else?
At that rate, screw Matlab & verilog, I am going to switch. Can’t be that hard to learn that stuff, can it?

[SK in CV]

[quote=dumbrenter]
By EPM, do you mean Enterprise Performance Management or something else?
At that rate, screw Matlab & verilog, I am going to switch. Can’t be that hard to learn that stuff, can it?[/quote]

Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Both SAP and Oracle have their library of products. I have no idea how hard it is to learn. The people I knew who did it were all extremely bright, all with MBA’s, some of them also CPA’s. The one really hard part of the job is that they were all on the road >150 days a year, some of them closer to 250. Right before I left, there was a guy who lived in Atlanta I think, and spent 4 months in Cupertino doing an installation, commuting back and forth every other weekend or so. He was literally the only guy in the world who had ever done what he was doing. It’s a hard lifestyle.

[fun4vnay2]

As a long timer in IT, I have worn hat as ERP Consultant. I was in Oracle Apps and the rates are same as SAP. It is not that hard to learn and is pretty fun. I no more work in ERP but few of my friends work. It’s not an easy work environment with travel all the time and uncertainty.

I thought about going for SAP but looking at the industry trends in general for heavy duty ERP packages, I decided to go for Cloud Technologies.

[barnaby33]

Most jobs, other than surgery, that pay well aren’t particularly hard. You are getting paid for having acquired the skills someone really needs, when they really need them. That and most others don’t have them.

Being a dev I’ve made choices about what to learn and never seriously considered the large SAP type systems for two reasons. I have no interest in being a road warrior and these skills require working in corporate type environments that I find painfully soul crushing. How many corn silk blue shirts do you want to own?
Josh

[Author]

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