SAP Career Questions for B2B Workforce, June 2007 edition I would like to know whether there is any possibilities for doing part-time remote consulting on BW/BPS/IP. Currently I am employed full time, but I would like to know whether there are any opportunities to work extra hours (evening or week end) in a BW/BPS/IP/Portal project? JR: The question of remote consulting in SAP is a popular one, and not just for BW folks. Unfortunately, the interest in remote consulting has never been greeted with enthusiasm by SAP customers. Sometimes this doesn't make much sense. When you consider the money saved in travel and office overhead to have someone telecommuting to a project site, and when you consider the progress made on both broadband access and security, it would seem logical for more companies to go for remote consulting options. So why doesn't this happen more in SAP? One of the reasons may be cultural: there is a perception, accurate or not, that having the team in one place whenever possible is more effective. And there are definitely additional project management challenges involved in handling remote resources. It's one thing to outsource one particular part of a project. But to have workers on mission critical tasks spread out across the country like a spiderweb - a lot of managers aren't ready to take that on. This may explain why remote part-time SAP jobs are hard to come by. One thing I have seen over the years is consultants with long term clients who transition to remote consulting over time. I suppose in this case the trust factor is high and the consultant's ability to meet milestones and understand the needs of the team is established. I have known a number of consultants who have picked up remote clients that way. Perhaps you could too. I can think of no reason why BW couldn't be done remotely in some cases. I talked to a Basis person recently who has done some remote BW support work. So, one option might be to try to set up a remote part-time arrangement with an existing client where you have proven yourself, and then go out and find a new full time consulting gig to compliment that. Remote work is out there, but it's good to keep in mind that not every company is ready for remote consulting. If you know how the market works, your chances of picking up that kind of work improve greatly What is the projected demand for an IP (Integrated Planning) consultant? JR: For those who aren't aware, IP is now part of the SAP BI product offering (BI-IP). BI Integrated Planning replaces BPS as SAP's Business Planning Solution. BPS was originally offered by SAP as part of the SEM product suite. Over time, the SEM suite has been pulled more and more into the BW offering. Integrated Planning consultants are likely to have a background in BW, Portals, and SEM/BPS. So the question becomes: what will the demand be for the new BI-IP? This is a tricky thing to predict. I do believe that those consultants who are working in BW/BPS should have a good chance of picking up projects in BI-IP as they get off the ground. So if you're already in this field, I expect the consulting demand to continue to some degree for expert SEM-BPS people. The question is: will the demand ever increase to the point that new people can break into BI-IP and rates will go up for everyone? There's no way to predict this for sure. They key to a large increase in demand is to see a number of companies proceed with BI-IP projects before there is a good supply of consultants to meet that demand. Historically, there has not been enough need for SEM consultants to drive a significant level of demand. But now that IP has been pulled into the BI platform, which is shipped with every version of mySAP ERP 2005 (running on NetWeaver 2004s), we can expect to see more IP implementations as the functionality ships with the core. Certainly business planning functions are increasingly important to companies. However, IP is not necessarily the only way that companies can go about the business planning process. Third party tools may still be a factor here also. If I were talking to an existing BI-IP consultant, or someone who has the SEM/BW/BPS background, I would certainly say to continue with the BI-IP work, but I would probably encourage that consultant to maintain a broader BI focus as well, just to make sure that they weren't only focused on the BI-IP niche. A broader focus would give more flexibility in case the demand for IP doesn't ever outrun the supply. For the consultant considering breaking into BI-IP, I would say that the IP niche is a bit too narrow for a total focus, but that it might work well as part of a broader BI skill set. The key in SAP is to make sure that you have some narrow niches but have some broadly marketable SAP skills around those niches in case the demand for that narrower expertise dries up. Ask the SAP Career Expert Archive