Should you get a SAP CPI Certifications

Today I got my SAP CPI certification. I scored 72% on the test so barely passing. I have not tried to study for the certification. So I’m pretty stratified with it. sap-certified-application-associate-sap-cloud-platform-integration.png

I guess it was about time I got it. I have not had an SAP Certification since 2004 that expired years ago.

One of the reasons I wanted to take The certification was to what’s to be able to update my course I could help my students take the certifications.

I do have a number of challenges with the certification

  1. It asks questions about SAP Leonardo, S/4 HANA, Ariba, SAP Cloud offering. Sure it makes sense to have an understanding of the platform. But if it is IPass, BaaS or something else probably does not matter that much for a CPI consultant.
  2. Outdated products that are no longer recommended. Why should I learn about stuff that I should/Cannot deploy anymore?
  3. Patterns that are supported better now. There is a JSON to JSON mapping example, this is supported out of the box now.
  4. Too simple questions since it has to be in multiply questions. The just test you remember what you read.

I also share some of the content from this here

How do I get a certification?

You can get certified online. SAP has a Certification hub where you can register. You need to be certified via a company. Then you can buy 5 attempts for certifications for one employee, I think it is around 500 EUR.  I’m not sure if you can find some organizations that allow you to pay for single certifications.

What is the best way to study for SAP CPI Certification?

The best if you want to know all the answers is to study the SAP standard CPI course, where I would expect that all these questions regarding HANA Enterprise Cloud are mentioned. It may be required to have one or two courses to collect all the information needed.

You can also just go for the simple approach to buying some certificate dumps. You cannot open any forum without finding some strange ads for it. Then you can rehearse on the questions. Is it ethical, legal or fair? No. It is not recommended since if somebody asks you about SAP CPI and the only thing you know is what is in the dump, you will look bad.

Should you hire somebody based on their certificate

No.

It can give some idea of how much they had studied to get the certification. I don’t think you need to have done any practical work to get the certification if you are just good at studies.

I would have my own set of questions to ask, to understand if they know SAP CPI or other platforms they claim to understand.

If you don’t know anything about SAP CPI, ask a consultant to test the employee or contractor. They are better to spot knowledge of the product.

There are things that are much more important like attitude and willingness to learn.

Will an SAP Certification help me get a job

I don’t think so.

If you are unemployed or not working with SAP, then it may be difficult to get a company to sponsor your certification. I would recommend you check out the next chapter, and just show what you can do. It is free and gives a much better opportunity to show your skills.

What is a better approach to learning SAP CPI

I would always recommend my own courses on SAP CPI. I’m trying to make it as simple to understand the topic and how to apply it. My course is pretty cheap and covers the part to get you started a little easier.

You can also just start out with the trial account of SAP CPI suite. Then go from there. SAP CPI is pretty easy to get started one and there are free tutorials on SAP CPI  including some of mine. you can start with it.

Once you have done some tose tutorials you can start creating your own integration. Pick some random products you want to integrate. It can be your using Google Sheets, Salesforce, with some weather service or soccer score site. You just need to be able to get API access. Or anything cool APIs out there you think could be fun to mashup.

Then create a blog on blog.sap.com to show what you have learned or experimented on. The main goal of the blog is to enable you to communicate what you have learned and share it with others. Use the blogs in your CV as a way to show your experiments.

Then create a few different experiments that you find interesting and share them. Then cover the CPI suite.

Why should you get certificates?

If you are an employer then it makes sense to certify your employees. For Service Integrations/Consultancies they need some number of certified people to keep the partner status. It is a way to show how good your company is, and that you invest in your employees to keep them updated.

And for SAP Customers, it is also a good way to invest in your employees. It is a good destination after attending some courses.

Certification in Cloud Integration Suite

I don’t think the CPI certification will be updated.

I expect there will be a course in CPI suite soon, where you learn API management, Open Connector, and Integration Content Advisor. Then it would make sense to have a certification on that.

There would be enough areas inside the suite for a full certification without having to cover other products. I hope that certification will bring some value for employees to understand what the full product suite can do.

Will I change my SAP CPIcourse to help you with the Certification?

My goal with taking the certification was to understand if I would teach people how to pass the certification.

Sure it would be great if I would say by taking my course you will be 100% sure to get the certification. Then I should probably just teach the certificate dumbs or use SAP course as material. I would not do that for two reasons.

  1. Legal
  2. It would be too boring to cover

My goal with my SAP CPI Training course has been to teach people to get started with SAP CPI development, so they can speed up the development process. So they know the tools available and then they are able to use them in real life.

I would love to do an upgrade of the course, there is so much that has changed over the last 18 months. I think some things can be done much easier.

Why write this post?

I’m interested in selling my course, sure. Certification is one of the questions I get most often if the course will help me getting the CPI certification. I hope this gives you some ideas about how to get certifications.

Where I’m I wrong

Please do share if you disagree with me on this in the comments. I did you get a job because you were certified?  I would love to know if I’m wrong on some of the points.