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Hello, My name is Parveen Marks I am pleased to introduce myself as a SAP FICO and SAP Business Intelligence instructor with 10 years of experience. I am writing this article on the request of LearnSAP.com with a hope to help guide new-comers to a prosperous career in SAP BI.
Business intelligence (BI) refers to the use of company data to facilitate decision-making by decision-makers, which means understanding current functioning and anticipating actions for well-informed steering of the enterprise.
In today's economic climate, quantifiable business results such as profitability, growth, and market share are more important than ever and viewed as key measures of success. Organizations need to predict, rather than react to critical business events that affect business outcomes. Integrating and analyzing different kinds of information coming from different sources is vital.
Information is the key to making the right business decisions at the right time. Intelligence tools are based on the use of an intelligence information system, which is supplied with different data extracted from production data, information concerning the company or its environment and economic data. Data warehouses or Data marts are used in the process of extracting data for decision-makers.
A tool called ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) is therefore responsible for extracting data from different sources, cleaning them up and loading them into a data warehouse. Finally, analytic intelligence tools make it possible to model the representations on the basis of queries to create border tables, this is called reporting.
In my classroom I work with students on a one-on-one basis. This is a key factor you want to ensure regardless of where you take your training. For this purpose my classes are as small as 3 to 4 students only.
As a SAP BI consultant you can work for companies like Samsung, BMW, Home Depot, American Army, Pfizer, Nestle, Toyota, Clorox, Shell, NASA etc. I kick off the class with a game-plan, where each student builds a personalized road-map. Educational councilors at LearnSAP help put realistic mile-stones on this map and then closely track your progress to ensure timely execution of the game plan. If you are caught in a situation where you are supervising your own education then you must follow similar standards. Else you run the risk of ending up as a hit-and-run victim, like hundreds of students who give price more value over quality of training.
There are several software solutions which provide comparative functionality but none like SAP Business Objects BI, as it offers a broad portfolio of tools and applications designed to help companies optimize business performance by connecting people, information, and businesses across business networks.
I believe my teaching style is more successful because my curriculum is based on experience from the various SAP FICO and SAP BI projects I have worked on. And when you are analyzing a training partner you should inquire if real-life business scenarios will be presented and whether or not the training includes hands-on projects for you to work on. There is no better way of learning this than actually working on a real SAP system. I use LearnSAP.com systems and they are well maintained and the quality of service is pretty good too. For students who subscribe for several months in advance, LearnSAP.com offers hefty discounts.
The classes are held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and there are breaks every two hours. To illustrate difficult concepts I incorporate plenty of exercises. Students also bring a wealth of value to the classroom by sharing their experience. This is the reason why we let students configure the SAP software for industries of their experience. Teams of students work together to simulate real-life work environment. The environment is conducive to accelerated learning and most students are ready for a project within 3 months.
When I am in between projects I teach during the week as well but that happens very seldom as I have been pretty busy (THANK GOD) but most of the time I teach on Saturdays. I could teach both days (Saturday and Sunday) but with teen age kids I need a day off too. Teaching is my passion and I sincerely believe that learning SAP BI is a partnership where both partners (instructor and the student) have to put in their sincere efforts. I often get students in my class who believe that there are some magical powers in the lectures and just listening to the lecture will cut it for them.
In reality learning SAP Business Intelligence or SAP Business Warehouse is a lot of hard work. Think about it, why would any SAP Job pay you in the tune of $100 per hour if it was easy. The key to success is concentrating on the topic being taught and being proactive with research and SAP self study before even coming to the class. The course lasts approximately four weekends. I say approximately because, personally, I don't go by the hours, rather by the content. I have a target to finish certain amount of content on each class but the objective is to not leave anyone behind. Therefore we go what ever length of time it is required to cover the intended curriculum. Note this point too. Don't let schools rule the course-delivery based on time. Often you will have a person in class who will hold up the class and as soon as the hours are over, these schools tend to pull the plug, regardless if there were topics left over. Unsuspecting students don't realize if they were short changed till long after the course is over. Hence, ask for the curriculum upfront and do what ever you need to do to understand the deliverable.
SAP has done wonders for me and I know thousands more who are enjoying a secure and comfortable career in SAP and you can too. There is room for ten times more and the growth doesn't seem to slow down.
Other SAP Business Intelligence related links are as follows: