Thursday, April 4, 2013

Tips Passing Certification SAP FI


 Passing Certification 


People who are going to attend the certification exam kindly concentrate on the TFIN50 and TFIN52
Tips for people who are going to attend the exam:
  • Understand the concepts. Don't memorize. 
  • If possible kindly practice the configuration part (Not mandatory).
  • Do the preparation based on the syllabus not based on books. {You will be getting 99% from the syllabus} 
  • You have to cover all the chapters. 
  • No straight Questions. 
  • You will be getting chapter wise questions like AA, Masters, APP, NEW GL and so on.............. 
“But one thing I can say if you are through with syllabus 'YOU' can easily pass”.
Take the certification date only once you finish one round of study of all books.
Two types of Questions:
  • Single answer questions {SAQ will be around 10 - 15 questions and remaining will be True/False} 
  • A statement will be given. Based on that 4 to 6 options. You have to select each option is True or False.
Subject - No of questions  Approx number of questions asked 
Asset Accounting - 13 questions  2 questions on depreciation area, 3 questions on asset class, 4 questions on asset transactions and depreciation 
Closing Operations in Financial Accounting   - 5 1 question on M/E closing, 3 on Balance confirmations 
Document and Posting Control - 14 Main questions on cash discount, 1Q on Cross Co.Code, 1Q Doc Reversal, 2Q on Foreign currency, 1Q on authorisation, 1Q on FSG, 1Q on posting period, 1Q on tolerance group,  NO questions on TAX. 
Evaluation Options in Reporting - 7 2 Q on list viewer and 3 questions on drill down report 
Financial Accounting Master Data - 15 3Q on Bank, 4Q on Customer, 3Q on Vendor, 2Q on GL 
Payment Program, Dunning Program, Correspondence, Interest Calculation - 6 3 questions on payment program 
SAP Overview  - 5 2 Questions related to MM, 1 on navigation 
SAP Solution Manager - 4 2Q on Roadmap 
Special General Ledger Transactions, Document Parking, Validation & Substitution - 6 1Q on Park & Post, 2Q on Splgl, 2Q on Substitution & Validation 
The New General Ledger -5 1 on Basics, 2 on document split, 1 on reports 
I think this information will be helpful for all of YOU.
*-- Venkat

SAP Certification

Certification, in itself, is important for suppliers that want to see knowledge and skills standards reached 

while using their products, as well as for customers who want to have service providers who are knowledgeable and skilled. 

The challenge for all suppliers is to ensure that those standards are reached during the certification process. 

For example, the P.E. exam requires not only standard testing, but also a level of experience in order to attain this distinction. 

The challenge for all customers is to understand what should be expected from a person with a certification as opposed to experience within the marketplace.  

This is exemplified with the trouble of having "certified" people who don't have experience.
Simply put, certifications, in most cases, are the result of an individual who had the ability to pass a multiple-choice question test which often-times has questions that would be considered "tricky" or irrelevant to the real experts.  In some cases, certification is not proof that the certified person is able to handle situations that someone who has lived through the experiences could.
Overall, I am a true believer in certifications. Certifications provide a standard structure to expectations. I would encourage all customers to fully understand what the certifications mean though.
For those who are contemplating to either work and gain experience versus becoming certified, I would encourage them to do both. Experience will get you prepared for what you will live through more and more. 

Certification will force you to learn a lot of material that can provide a foundation to be better prepared for the variety of experiences you will live through.
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I do not completely agree to what you are saying.  Certification has its own importance.  One need not be made to understand the difference between Management from IIM's and mgmt from some Local mgmt school.  The difference is seen all by itself.
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Experience is no doubt more valuable is agreed but then if that is the case why do people go for management studies after graduation.  They should have directly gone for attaining experience in the market.  I hope that this illustrates the value of Certification.
Struggle and hard work is required everywhere whether it be a Sapient College or a non ATC.  

Also if Certification was not so important, then why are people running behind it even after they have 2 years of working experience 

And also the companies are ready to spend such huge amount on their manpower for the same..
There are a lot of companies still available (and this list also includes the reputable companies in SAP) who take in freshers from the Sapient.  However, take note that Sapient never guarantees you of a placement.  It assures to help you and has a strong track record to prove it.
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Believe me, the certification is nowadays demanded by the clients for the SAP Functinal Consultants 
 going to implement for the respective companies.  And I would still stress that you have to stray along a bit more for the same and you definitely can succeed.

SAP Certification Experience:
SAP Books on Certification:
Source : www.erpgreat.com


Role of SAP Functional Consultant



ROLE SAP FUNCTIONAL

What are the differences between a functional and business consultant?
The difference between Functional consultant and Business consultant are as follows:
1) A functional consultant is able to configure the system unlike business consultant.
2) Functional consultant know more about business process unlike Business consultant.
3) A business consultant will bring business process knowledge and provide it to functional consultant who in turn used this knowledge to configure the system. 
4) Functional consultant has more configuration knowledge then Business consultant.          *-- Rocky
The responsibilities of a support consultant are:
- Primarily responsible for Handling tickets and application support to the end users
- When an issue comes diagnose, analyse and solve the issue
- Responsible for any enhancements
- Writing functional specs and interacting with Abapers to develop any user exits 
- Training the end users and preparing end user training material                         *-- Sistla 
For those who wished to know the role of a functional consultant.  Below is one view:
A functional consultant evaluates the demands in talking with the customer's representatives, transforms the essence into an abstract and algorithmic business model. Hence, he identifies the use cases and transforms them into logical and technical views. 
Then the main task starts: customizing the respective business area and making sure the system reacts in the manner according to the constraints of the requested use case. 
The consultant documents the settings and prepares proper guidelines that allow other consultants to do further changes or repairs with due efforts. 
The consultant takes care that proper training is given to the users and that the system is usable, performing appropriately and the business flow is complete and correct. 
During go live he assists the technical staff by testing the behaviour of the system. 
After go live he guarantees that the procedures remain usable and consistent in real live situation and proposes enhancements. 
The main duty of a consultant is to transfer external know-how to the client. It is not manpower that counts but intelligence, understanding of processes, a feeling for defects and general a common sense. 
 
Role of a Functional Consultant in an End To End Implementation
When you talk about the role of a Functional consultant in an end to end implementation, I think it won't be possible for me or anybody to define everything but I will try to summarize it:
1. Functional consultant is expected to generate knowledge about the current business process, design current business flows, study current business processes and its complication, in all we can say getting through with current business setup. Flow diagrams and DFD are prepared, most of the time in Vision format, all this forms the part of AS IS document.
2. Everything configured has to be documented as per their categories in the form of predefined templates, these have to be then approved by the team leads or who ever the consultant is reporting to.
3. Mapping and GAP analysis is done for each module, I have seen people defining integration after mapping, gap analysis and configuration is done, but as per my experience in implementation, it is a simultaneous process.
4. Before starting configuring  future business processes in SAP, the DFD/ERD are prepared, this documentation is called TO BE, which can be also said as the result of mapping and gap analysis.
5. Sometimes Functional consultants are also expected to prepare test scripts for testing the configured scenarios.
6. End user manual and user training is also expected from F.Consultants.
The project normally starts off  with a Kick off meeting in which the team size, team members, reporting system, responsibilities, duties, methodology, dates and schedules, working hours which have been predicted are formally defined.
ASAP, it won't be possible for me to explain it here, but all I can tell you about it is that it is SAP standard implementation methodology, which SAP prescribes but is not mandatory for any company to follow, such as IBM follow some blue Methodology, some companies follow typical SDLC steps, ASAP stands for Accelerated SAP, you can find all the steps on SAP site, through google, reading it from there won't give you a great knowledge about ASAP but will obviously get you to know the definitions of various term. 
Tips by: Pascal, Nitin, Sushil Pandey (erpgreat.com)

User Manual SAP



Check This Out broo.....
  • SAP MM
  • SAP HR
  • SAP SD
  • SAP PM


Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Standard SAP System R/3



The standard set of applications delivered with each R/3 system are the following: 
  • PP (Production Planning) 
  • MM (Materials Management) 
  • SD (Sales and Distribution) 
  • FI (Financial Accounting) 
  • CO (Controlling) 
  • AM (Fixed Assets Management) 
  • PS (Project System) 
  • WF (Workflow) 
  • IS (Industry Solutions) 
  • HR (Human Resources) 
  • PM (Plant Maintenance) 
  • QM (Quality Management) 
  • CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
These applications are called the functional areas, or application areas, or at times the functional modules of R/3. All of these terms are synonymous with each other. 
Traditionally, businesses assemble a suite of data processing applications by evaluating individual products and buying these separate products from multiple software vendors. Interfaces are then needed between them. For example, the materials management system will need links to the sales and distribution and to the financial systems, and the workflow system will need a feed from the HR system. A significant amount of IS time and money is spent in the implementation and maintenance of these interfaces. 
R/3 comes prepackaged with the core business applications needed by most large corporations. These applications coexist in one homogenous environment. They are designed from the ground up to run using a single database and one (very large) set of tables. Current production database sizes range from 12 gigabytes to near 3 terabytes. Around 8,000 database tables are shipped with the standard delivery R/3 product. 

Advantages SAP

SAP (system applications and products in data processing), is a package which allows more:
1. Flexibility.
2. Customized solutions to suit your business.
3. Highly integrated with other modules.
4. Industry specific modules with a deep insight.
5. Continuous support.
The major advantages of sap erp, is the HIGHLY INTEGRATION WITH OTHER MODULES OF BUSINESS, which is not there in other SOFT WARES.
In other software, you need to have different software's for different module.
e.g. BAAN, ORACLE MANUFACTURING, etc.
There, integration becomes the issue, not all software support some integration's except for SAP, so SAP is clear WINNER .
 
Further Advantages Of SAP ERP
1. Reduction in sales order processing costs.
2. Reduced time to calculate selling price.
3. Increased Cash Flow (one-time event).
a. Savings result due to access to real-time transaction information by all authorized users (visibility),
b. Reduced request-to-quote time.
c. Reduced order-to-delivery time.
d. Reduced delivery-to-invoice time.
4. Reducing the number of days sales outstanding (DSO) by freeing-up capital (I.e., reduced working capital;  free cash flow).
a. Reduce the amount of borrowed funds required.
b. Increase investment potential.
c. Reduction (of DSO) achieved through faster order-to-cash time.
d. Accurate & timely information leads to reduced reconciliation's and better management of the billing process leading to quicker payment and a reduction in accounts receivable (DSO), number of disputes per order.
5. Increased revenues due to less stock outages (reduction in lost sales).
a. Reduced loss of revenue due to items being out-of-stock.
b. Fewer stock outages occur because there are more reliable materials buying processes/procedures in place.
c. Increases customer satisfaction due to the higher availability of products.
6. Reduction in distribution costs.
7. Reduction in freight costs.
 
Additional Advantages Of SAP ERP
1. Vast array of modules, with huge spectrum of functionalities which ARE NOT PROVIDED by other ERP applications.
2. Specific functionalities which are core competencies of SAP while they are not available in other ERP applications, makes it an obvious choice for some specific industries. E.g. Variant configuration and Automobile industry.
3. SAP knowing the demand for special processes for each industry has come up with industry specific solutions which are unheard of from other applications.
4. Not only on the functionality side, but also on the system architecture and landscape SAP is innovating day by day from R2 to R3 to ECC to SOA, to adopt to the business needs, thus adding immense value to the customers.
5. SAP also gets complimented by most ubiquitous office applications of MS namely MSWord.
6. Also SAP's market share gives some certainty of business and hence it is much better than any other smaller ERP applications in terms of career prospects.
Owing to all these advantages of sap erp which are not prevalent in other applications, SAP will obviously become the hot choice for every client who is willing to have a robust and efficient system.

HISTORY SAP

     
SAP was founded in 1972 in Walldorf, Germany. It stands for Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing. Over the years, it has grown and evolved to become the world premier provider of client/server business solutions for which it is so well known today. The SAP R/3 enterprise application suite for open client/server systems has established a new standards for providing business information management solutions.
SAP product are consider excellent but not perfect.  The main problems with software product is that it can never be perfect.
     The main advantage of using SAP as your company ERP system is that SAP have a very high level of integration among its individual applications which guarantee consistency of data throughout the system and the company itself.
In a standard SAP project system, it is divided into three environments, Development, Quality Assurance and Production.
     The development system is where most of the implementation work takes place. The quality assurance system is where all the final testing is conducted before moving the transports to the production environment.  The production system is where all the daily business activities occur.  It is also the client that all the end users use to perform their daily job functions.
To all company, the production system should only contains transport that have passed all the tests.
SAP is a table drive customization software.  It allows businesses to make rapid changes in their business requirements with a common set of programs.  User-exits are provided for business to add in additional source code.  Tools such as screen variants are provided to let you set fields attributes whether to hide, display and make them mandatory fields.
    This is what makes ERP system and SAP in particular so flexible.  The table driven customization are driving the program functionality instead of those old fashioned hard-coded programs.  Therefore, new and changed business requirements can be quickly implemented and tested in the system.
Many other business application software have seen this table driven customization advantage and are now changing their application software based on this table customizing concept.
In order to minimized your upgrading costs, the standard programs and tables should not be changed as far as possible.  The main purpose of using a standard business application software like SAP is to reduced the amount of time and money spend on developing and testing all the programs.  Therefore, most companies will try to utilized the available tools provided by SAP.
What is Client? What is the difference between Customization and Configuration?
The difference between cutomizing and configuration is:
- CONFIGURATION: we will configure the system to meet the needs of your business by using the existing data.
- CUSTOMIZING: we will customise or adapt the system to your business requirements, which is the process of mapping SAP to your business process.
- CLIENT: A client is a unique one in organizational structure, can have one or more company codes. Each company code is its own legal entity in finance.
Configuration  vs. Customization
When considering enterprise software of any type, it is important to understand the difference between configuration and customization.The crux of the difference is complexity. Configuration uses the inherent flexibility of the enterprise software to add fields, change field names,modify drop-down lists, or add buttons. Configurations are made using powerful built-in tool sets. Customization involves code changes to create functionality that is not available through configuration. Customization can be costly and can complicate future upgrades to the software because the code changes may not easily migrate to the new version.Wherever possible, governments should avoid customization by using configuration to meet their goals.Governments also should understand their vendor's particular terminology with regard to this issue since words like "modifications" or "extensions" often mean different things to different vendors.        *-- Sivaprasad, Sonali Sardesai
What is SAP R3?
    We know that SAP R/3 is software, it particular it is client-server software. This means that the groups/layers that make up a R/3 System are designed to run simultaneously across several separate computer systems. 
    When you install Microsoft Excel on your PC, each component of Excel (printing components, graphing components, word processing components, and etc.) is stored, managed, and processed via the hardware of your PC.   When a company installs SAP’s software each component (or "layer” in R/3’s case) is stored, managed, and processed via the hardware of separate and specialized computer systems. Each of the various layers is capable of calling upon the specialty of any of the other installed layers in order to complete a given task. 
Those components/layers that are requesting services are called “clients”, those components/layers that are providing services are called “servers”.  Thus the term - “client/server”. *-- Shailesh Kumar (shailesh_das@yahoo.com)
What is meant by SAP ECC?
    SAP is an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) module, ECC is the version of SAP, like 4.6, 4.6c and 4.7 in that series new version is ECC-6. Its known as Enterprise core component.  (erpgreat.com)