SAP professionals today have come to be associated with fat pay packets and lucrative job opportunities, thanks to a steady build-up in deployment of SAP across industry verticals over the past few years. In the current scenario, there is a huge shortage for SAP professionals in the country; while SAP and its partners train around 6000 candidates on an annual basis, close to eight or nine thousand get trained by unauthorized institutes dotting the major metros. In all, if one includes those trained in-house by SAP’s customers and business partners, the number of SAP professionals emerging from India annually could well cross 20,000, say sources in the company.

If you are among those who have been fascinated by the ‘SAP wave’, as a trainer at an unauthorized training center puts it, there are a few things you need to consider before taking the plunge into the course.

Where to train?
Where to train and at what cost? These are two questions that weigh on the candidates’ mind the most with regard to training on SAP.

An entry level course from the company’s authorized education partners (Siemens and Genovate, in case of India) costs Rs 2.5 lakhs (taxes extra), plus another Rs 25,000 when one sits for the certification test on completion of the five week training period. In case one fails to clear, he will need to fork out another Rs 25,000 for each subsequent attempt at the test. Anand Ekambaram, Director, SAP education services, justifies the high fees saying “There is a lot of investment that goes into preparing the course material; besides those who train at designated centers are given access to servers in Germany.”

To come around the price barrier, and also reach out to small towns and semi-urban regions, SAP recently launched e-learning modules. Spread over anything between 5 weeks to three months, “as the candidate spaces it out”, an entry-level e-learning module costs Rs. 1.2 lakhs and is rolled out through designated partners. But even this price tag seems high in comparison to rates charged by the numerous ‘unauthorized’ institutes around the town, which is around Rs. 15,000-18,000.