Who Can Be SAP Certified and At What Levels?

The certification program is available for SAP employees, partner employees, independent consultants, and client employees. Already SAP is ahead of Oracle—Oracle’s certification programs for E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel are only available to Oracle employees and partner employees.


About three years ago, after discussions with both clients and partners, SAP announced three levels of certification: Associate, Professional, and Master. Currently the associate level and professional level exams are available. The master level is still in development.


The SAP website defines these levels as follows:


Associate: “This certification covers the fundamental knowledge requirements for an SAP consultant, ensuring the successful acquisition of broad SAP solution knowledge and skills.”

Professional: “This advanced certification requires proven project experience, business process knowledge, and a more detailed understanding of SAP solutions.”

Master: “This certification, under development, involves demonstrating an expert-level understanding of a specific area of SAP software and the ability to drive innovation and solution optimization through in-depth knowledge and vision. Certification at this level requires broad project experience, comprehensive SAP product knowledge, and the ability to create a future IT vision within complex project environments.”


The Associate level exams test book knowledge. In most cases, this level does not require SAP implementation experience in order to pass the exams. Questions on the Professional level exams are designed to test the SAP experience of the test taker. The requirements for the Master level involve more than taking exams. As the SAP website mentions, the process of obtaining Master level certification is still being defined.


SAP takes care to point out that you don’t need to pass the Associate level exam before sitting for the Professional level exam. So you get to select which level you think you are qualified for and take that exam.

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