Hi folks,
Couple of months back I wrote about the training institutes in GTA who are advertising for SAP training with job placement. I again have to compile some words about them. Same old terms - SCAMMERS, FRAUDS!!! Yea, these are the least you can call them. You will find fancy ads of these institutes in newspapers (desi), website (like CanadianDesi.com). They CAN NOT give you proper training, let alone a job in ERP. I know numerous desis who lost $3000 to $5000 dollars for training and certification in SAP - with no 'job luck'.
Just go to those schools and ask them some pretty straightforward qoestions about the program - you will find how lame they are. Interesting fact is that, most of the instructors in these institutes are either doing 'odd' job or mainly 'jobless'. Providing SAP training (just copying the photocopied books) is their job!!!
Look at the websites - you will find lots of FUN!!! Things would be more interesting if you personally go to meet them.

Finally, same old wise words, DO NOT WASTE YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY ON THOSE ERP TRAINING. IF YOU HAVE NO PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE - DONT EVEN LOOK AT THE ADS. LOOK FOR JOB,IN PROPER WAY, IN YOUR OWN EXPERTISE. YOU SIMPLY CAN NOT JUMP INTO ERP OR BI.

no advertising here

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Success is Never Ending and Failure is Never Final.

nero250,

I do realise that you might have ample (valid) reasons for raising these concerns and I'm not debating/ disputing it in any way.

As someone trying to venture out into the Data Warehousing side of ERP (specifically BW), I'm anxious to get some first hand information about taking some training and then being able to break into the field.

A few questions that I did have about those :

\"numerous desis who lost $3000 to $5000 dollars for training and certification in SAP - with no 'job luck'.\"

that you mentioned in your post.

1. Were they absolute newbies in the field of ERP or IT or were they upgrading their skills to include ERP?

2. What were their expectations taking up these courses ? Did they feel confident that they could handle the rigorous interviews (at least in some cases) and finally deliver on the job ?

Having read through your post, I fail to understand if :
1. You're saying that these institutes are crap
or
2. People without prior experience shouldn't consider moving into ERP or BI.

I would think you're trying to do both but more of the emphasis seems to be on the fact that the 'desi training offerings in ERP' are all a scam. Another way to look at the issue that you raised is that \"These people have no idea what they are probably getting into (no due diligence done), are misled by the training institutes, fed with some unprofessional training, and finally thrown into the deep to be a Functional or Technical Consultant\"

In no way do I represent any of these institutes. Just trying to get the right perspective before investing some hard earned money. I'm currently in the field of Data Warehousing and BI (2 years) and am trying to broaden my skill base to include SAP BW.

Any input from folks that are in the ERP area would be greatly appreciated especially in terms of being able to use 'transferable skills in Data Warehousing/ BI\" to get a break into an area like SAP BW. Apologize if I've digressed from the original topic.

Regards,

Jay.

My 2 cents as I am an ERP professional and have researched these ads on behalf of someone who has good educational qualifications and experience (though not in ERP)

I think these ads can help you to get the jobs if there is an acute shortage of ERP i.e. either SAP or PeopleSoft professional. When there are plenty of people with ERP experiece around, nobody is going to hire somebody with just ERP training and no experience. THE DAYS OF ACUTE SHORTAGE OF ERP FOLKS WERE PRIOR TO Y2K. After Y2K ERP has been experiencing decline and there is surplus labor in the market. I have been in ERP field for the past 8 yrs. I got into ERP prior to Y2K where employers would hire you if you had a good educational background and good experience and ERP training. After Y2K, i have not seen any employer hiring somebody without experience. After Y2K, there are many ERP people have left ERP field as there are no jobs in ERP field. For few ERP jobs that get created there is ample supply of experienced newly immigrated ERP professionals in Toronto and they work for much cheaper as they generally donot know the going market rate.

So unless ERP field goes into labor shortage situation, these trainings are not going to help.

Hi lana2005,

Thanks for the reply.

I do agree that it'll be hard for an absolute newbie to hope to get a break into the core ERP market which does seem a bit saturated except for smaller implementations.

Would your views on the market apply to both the general ERP market as well as the Data Warehousing market (which may be catered to by ERP vendors as an extention of the primary ERP product) ?

Here's my understanding of the market from what I've researched. Could you throw some light on this or enlighten me since you're already in the field :

1. The DW and Business Intelligence market is still in the process of maturing and has a long way to go before it reaches any sort of saturation primarily due some of the regulatory requirements like Sarbanes-Oxley and changing (dynamic) reporting requirements that are rarely satisfied by the conventional reporting tools that are part of the core ERP implementations.

2. Due to the need to satisfy the reporting requirements from diverse data sources that co-exist with the ERP suite of products, these data warehousing projects are pretty complex and requires expertise/ knowledge/ experience that may (sometimes) be mutually exclusive of the expertise/ knowledge/ experience in the core ERP product.
Eg : An SAP BW installation could be built around the core SAP R/3 (and its associated modules) but could also derive data from CRM applications like Siebel or Legacy mainframe applications that may be part of the company's environment. Likewise for a Oracle's BW product.
So a person implementing BW may only need working knowledge in the core ERP product on which the Data Warehouse/ Data Mart is built (although it'll be great to have some solid experience)

lana, a couple of additional questions as well :

1. From your long association with the market, how would rate the chances (say on a scale of 1-10) of getting a break into the Data Warehousing/ Business Intelligence side of a person with around 11 years of IT experience, 5 years in Canada (primarily with Application Development/ Maintenance, an SAP certification and 1 full implementation dating back to 1998/99 (and none since - yup, I'm one those that left the field, primarily due to some personal commitments that couldn't wait for the market to pick up)), about 2 years experience with Data Warehousing/ Business Intelligence projects using Business Objects, Cognos)
NB : In this case, I was hoping to market myself based on transferable skills that I bring in.

2. Are you on the project side of ERP (eg : configuration) or do you provide prduction support to existing implementations ? If the latter, how would you view the permanent job market ?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Other ERP gurus on the forum, could you please air your views as well. It'll definitely help some of us aspiring ERP professionals

I rarely post on these forums, but decided to do so because you are either misinformed or are part of the

institutes that you failed to mentioned in your post.

Regardless, here's what the Toronto ERP Institute landscape looks like today.

a) It's infested with trainees who are looking to SCAM the our Government's Education Funding System, often offering institutes to split their grants with them. You have trainees taking courses in SAP MM, SAP SD and SAP BW
as part of their Back to Work Program. How do you except someone to be an expert in each an every module.

The $3000-$5000 that you claim they lost - They merely stole it from our government from the taxes that we paid. They failed to attend classes, took vacations and failed their certification exams and now are crying SCAM.

b) Next, You have group that has no clue of what they want. Their cousins in the US are in SAP and so they would like to get into SAP. To them Data Warehouse means working in a Warehouse. Its going to take a lot longer for them to break into the market - but its NOT impossible.

3) and last - you have a group that cannot afford to pay the $11000- $16000 that SAP charges for the courses. These are people of various backgrounds of Engineering, Finance or Computers Sciences who know what they are
looking for ? They've done their due deligence in the courses and even their institutes of choice. They are also smart enough to realise that \"No JOB is Guaranteed\" .. even the full-time job that they might have today. However
this is a career choice that they have to make - to have a better life.

Ultimately - How do you judge these institutes ? By the jobs their students get ? Do you know how many U Of T, York and Waterloo masters students are without jobs ??? I know - I hire them.

We have SAP Certifications to measure the knowledge of trainees regardless of where they've studied SAP. If trainees can successfuly get certified at a much affordable cost then these institutes have done their job. Don't you think ?


The reality is that there are more jobs in the US than in Canada.So a 'Job Guarantee' in the US is quite practical. For students who study SAP/ERP/DW in the US - 99% of them get to work on a project for atleast 6-8 months, getting them into the workforce. For us Canadians, we do have to be able to make some sacrifies - like MOVE, Travel and GO LIVE IN THE US.

If you cannot MOVE - DON'T BLAME THE INSTITUTE.
If you don't have the proper immigration - DON'T BLAME THE INSTITUTE.
If you cannot communicate and handle an interview - DON'T BLAME THE INSTITUTE.


My thoughts on the DW Market - I believe that there is still a lot of room to grow and there is a shortage of resources. However my advice is to focus on the concepts of Datawarehousing. SAP BW, Cognos, Informatica etc etc are all merely tools. The reason why companies choose one over the other are political or how good of a job a vendor's sales team did.

Learn to evolve yourself and be able to relate your knowledge to ANY BI/DW Tool. With mergers and acquisitions being very common - you really do not want to get stuck with a single tool.

As they say :
Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.


I'm with GSC, one of the institutes that you mentioned in your post.

Now that \"gsc\" has presented some views from the perspective of training providers,
can we have some views from the point of view of professionals who are in the field (technical or functional).

One of the specific points that I would like some views on (of course in addition to some of the questions that were raised in the previous posts ) is that :

Data Warehousing is unlike its bigger cousin/s, the core ERP products - SAP R/3, Oracle Applications...... and can be viewed as a separate entity to a certain extent.

If you have the knowledge and experience in Data Warehousing in general, you can adapt to any of the tools out there (with a reasonable effort, of course) and do not have to be tied to a specific vendor. From my personal experience, I'm finding that concepts like Multi-Dimensional Data Modelling/ Cubes, ETL, etc are synonymous across any of the off-the-shelf datawarehousing or business intelligence products.

With due respects to the original poster who I personally feel has opened up a can of worms and has since abandoned the thread , can we make this a discussion along the lines of :

\"The ERP market - The Myths and the Reality\"

Moderators, pls advice.

I'm sure there will be a lot of propective ERP professional who would get an insight about the field and those in the industry who would be able to share some of the challenges and reality on ground zero.