SAP SD experience before gaining SAP CRM certification?

Have you been advised by training institutes, experienced consultants, SAP advisors or random people on forums that you need to be having extensive SAP SD (Sales and Distribution) knowledge or experience to be successful in gaining  SAP CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Certification. Well if you have and are still confused then read on.

This is one of the many questions that has been haunting individuals willing to embark into a career within SAP CRM. I was personally in a dilemma whether to  get certified or experienced in SD before moving into CRM. And this has been mainly due to the hundreds of unending discussions and debates on forums online with no concrete answers except a few.

Well having successfully gained certification in SAP CRM 7.0 with some basic configuration experience in SD whilst at University, the straight forward answer is NO. You do not need to have any experience or knowledge of SD but it is beneficial if you already have it as you would be learning various topics which interrelate with SD, but if you don’t there is no need for you to learn or know about it beforehand as everything that you need to know, starting from the basics is covered within the SAP CRM 7.0 course structure.

To elaborate further SD mainly deals with the logistics of Sales and Distribution and incorporates topics such as Sales Order Processing, Pricing, Billing, Organization Management, Transaction Processing etc.

CRM incorporates all of the above mentioned except the logistics aspect and also includes Pre-Sales activities such as Marketing, Opportunity Management and Post-Sales activities such as Service Management which are one of the core benefits of a CRM implementation within an organization.

The prerequisite I would advise is to have domain experience within CRM, having a basic understanding of the business processes within Sales, Marketing and Service. For Ex. In Sales – the stages involved from conversion of a lead to a customer. There are some technical aspects such as integration, basic development concepts required for enhancing the User Interface,therefore being from an IT or computer science background would be an advantage, but otherwise can be learned through dedicated practice and hard work.

Since it is a purely Functional certification course, the emphasis on the technical aspect is quite minimal. It would be relevant based on the role you embark on after completion of the course. For Ex. If you are on a project that requires you to be writing enhancement codes which are called BADI (Business Add Ins), then you would be required to have some basic development background.

Therefore in conclusion SD is not a mandatory prerequisite to embark on gaining a CRM Certification. With relevant domain experience, strong academic background, sheer determination, hard work and being trained by an established trainer with strong subject knowledge nothing can stop you from gaining the SAP CRM Certification.

Please do leave your valuable feedback in the comments section and let me know if there is any particular topic that you would like to be covered on this blog in relation to SAP CRM 7.0.

Disclaimer: All the information provided on this Post is purely based on personal experience and has no affiliation with SAP AG  or any SAP Training Institute or SAP Consulting Organization.