With an estimated 437,000 SAP installations in over 180 countries worldwide, one could easily argue that it is the most popular business software platform on the planet.
SAP is an acronym that stands for “Systems, Applications, and Products.” This context refers to a family of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software programs designed to streamline business processes. SAP applications include everything from finance and human resources to supply chain management and product development and are used by more than 88 percent of Fortune 500 companies.
As noted above, SAP is now a multibillion-dollar software company that offers more than 30 different ERP applications. The two most popular are SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) and SAP Business Suite. Still, there are also dozens of other individual modules that help businesses with specific tasks like product lifecycle management (PLM), supplier relationship management (SRM), compliance reporting, and business intelligence (BI).
A good example is the big oil and gas companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell. When you get hired as a SAP developer at these organisations, you will be required to work on SAP since all the data from their core processes are stored. This means you can’t be an expert in drilling but have no idea how to do basic tasks on SAP.
The same goes for other industries like manufacturing and banking. If you work in any of these sectors, you need to know about SAP Developer.
Hence, there is a high demand for people with SAP knowledge — either developers or consultants. The latter is usually preferred because they have certain skills that IT professionals do not possess.