Barlas: That helps and it's a good clarification for our listeners. Moving forward to something else that can be a little confusing: university-based SAP training. In my mind, and certainly in the minds of some other folks, it isn't fully clear until your statements now what kind of certification track this has been, and I think interrelated to that is a question of whether there's a master list of universities that work with SAP and how we can gather more information about what goes on in these courses so we can make our own comparisons about their value.

Martin: We do have our University Alliances program, which I would say fits into the foundation side, so it's within our Associate layer, but it's still on an academic level. It's primarily going into overview to help people get good insight into the overall SAP picture, and it doesn't really go into the in-depth that you would have, say, at an Associate level. It's really a support for university graduates to make career decisions, so it gives them a good overview of all of the different areas and allows them to identify where to go on from there. They would then move into the Associate level.

Barlas: Is there some kind of opportunity cost involved therewith? The energy that goes into this effort, is there any way in which it may be detracting from energy focusing in other areas of certification - people who are already out there in the marketplace who aren't just recent graduates? Or would you say that the separate resources SAP is committing don't really make this an opportunity cost issue?

Martin: I don't think it's an opportunity cost issue at all. I think we have a separate University Alliances program that's an area that we find extremely important for us as a strategy, and it doesn't detract from our certification group efforts, which are focused fully on our partners and freelancers out there in the market. We don't compete for budgets.

Barlas: That's the meat of it. Finally, we talked about efforts that are ongoing in terms of other folks who are certifying in the ecosystem. Can you dig into that a little bit more for us? Is there an official body that's already mulling over auditing principals and the criteria for certifying the certifiers, or is that still in the planning and talking stages? Where are these efforts?

This is part of regulating the ecosystem, and maybe a way to narrow the question down is to ask what some of the criteria are that will be used to align partner value, people who are talking about providing any kind of related services. How are you going to assure that these people are delivering that value?

Martin: We have our own quality criteria programs. You mean in terms of certifying the trainers so that we have certified trainers on board. This is still quite different from region to region. Some of our regions already work together with training partners, and in other regions it's still quite a new concept.

We do actually ensure that any of the trainers that we do have out there are certified, and the test center providers that I was referring to before, Pearson VUE, they have very strict secret shopper programs, for example, and they report to us on a monthly basis in terms of any security breaches that they've identified.

We have the ability to identify particular regions or particular test centers; they go through and evaluate results. If pass rates are particularly high in one region or test center, the alarm bells go off immediately and we sit down together with that test center provider and try to identify if we're talking about particularly clever people or if there's something we should be looking into. There are areas where you can identify if there's something wrong or if there's a security breach. We have test security guidelines; whether it be test-taking at an SAP education center or a review test center, the security guidelines are the same, so we shouldn't have instructors proctoring exams, etc.

Barlas: Thank you for that; those are great answers. Jon, I'd like to turn it back over to you now.

Reed: We're running short on time, but I still want to give you a brief chance to tell us what's next for SAP certification, TechEd and beyond - anything you want to note as we're wrapping here.

Martin: One of the things that we're really excited about is TechEd. We rolled out our initial professional exams at TechEd last year, and we had almost 2,500 people who actually took advantage of the certification opportunity and we are doing a similar sort of thing this year.

What we've done in the EMEA regions - so there's the TechEd at Berlin and the TechEd at Las Vegas - what we found last year was that offering certification during TechEd was a little bit of a challenge or a conflict of interest, let's say, to people who wanted to take advantage of the multitude of TechEd sessions. The feedback we got was that a discount certification opportunity was absolutely superb, but if people have to decide whether to go to a hands-on session or whether to take their certification, they'll probably decide to go to the hands-on session, since they can take certification tests anytime.

So what we've done this year is put a different model into place apart from in Bangalore. In Bangalore, we've decided to continue with on-site testing because that continued to be very popular. In Las Vegas and Berlin, we're giving people a 50% discount on certification tests but allowing them to basically get that 50% discount at any testing center of their choice within that particular region - so North America and Canada for the Las Vegas attendees, and throughout EMEA for the Berlin attendees - in a four week period after TechEd.

We opened up registration for TechEd in the U.S. about five weeks ago, and we are asking people to opportune whether they'd like to take advantage of that certification opportunity and we've been really pleased with the response we've gotten. We opened up the Berlin registration last week and it looks as if we're getting exactly the same level of response throughout EMEA as well so we're very happy.

Reed: Great, and it goes without saying that folks can get more information on SAP certification at SAP.com in the Education section. In fact, I noticed you guys have some nifty certification logos you're rolling out as well for those who achieve the different status levels. Those are going to be available soon?

Martin: Yes, we have logos for each of the individual levels. Looking at the other certification programs and the wish list, that was one of the things that people came out with. Another thing that people asked us for was help in terms of certification guides. They felt that we needed to improve in terms of providing more opportunities, so we're working together with SAP Press to bring out a series of success guides for each of the new exams, and they'll be rolling out in the fourth quarter.

I think generally we're also rolling out the personalized certification web site. I don't know if you've heard about that, Jon, but one of the items on the wish list was the ability to communicate with peers and to have access to more information, etc. So what we've set up is what we're calling a personalized certification web site, which, if you take your exam, you get a welcome message and a link to your own personalized certification web site which tells you which exams you have, certification history; it shows you where to go from here, it shows you recommended tracks for the next steps on your certification ladder; it personalizes the content that you would get.

If I'm interested in CRM, for example, and that's where my certification history really is, I'll get more personalized content in terms of how I can prepare, etc. It also gives you discounts on SAP Press books and a whole variety of other benefits that we'd like to give to the people who've successfully gone through the certification route.

I think, looking at the survey results, 92% of the survey respondents came back when we went to them in January 2008 and said that we'd really moved the needle and that SAP certification is on par or superior to other certification programs. We asked them in 2006 to compare us with others, and we asked them in 2008, and we're now at 92% who feel that we're at least on par, if not superior. So we just need to talk to the other 8%!

Reed: Well, that will give you something to do. Good luck with that last 8%. As I expected, we've run out of time all too quickly. We got some great information from you today, and best of luck with the team at TechEd and beyond.

I'd like to thank our listeners for joining us today for this podcast interview on SAP certification. This podcast was a joint venture between SearchSAP.com and my site, JonERP.com, bringing you career answers for SAP professionals.

Barlas: It's time to complement your new insights into SAP certification policies, and thoughts on the third-party certification marketplace, by reading the SearchSAP material link to on the main podcast page. By going through this content, SAP specialists will be able to choose between certification options and acquire more precise control over their careers. We thank you for having joined us.

Editor's Note: This interview is not a verbatim conversation from the podcast. It was edited for clarity and readability; however, no content from the original conversation was removed.

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