How to learn SAP for free? It is a good question and everyone who wants to find a job in SAP world should be asking this question before considering any paid training opportunities. The official way of learning SAP is SAP training courses provided by SAP Education (a division of SAP that is responsible for training and certification).
However, these courses are quite expensive and not everyone can afford them. Of course there are cheaper alternatives – non-official SAP training institutes that provide SAP training for smaller price. There are two problems with non-official SAP training providers: (1) they are still expensive, (2) there is a high chance of encountering a fraud institute that provides low quality training. So, if you decided that official training from SAP or from third-party institute is not your thing, than what you should do?
How to Learn SAP for Free
How to learn SAP for free? Hmm… Actually, there are many options and we will consider each of them in a separate section.
You should understand that since you don’tpay anybody for conducting the training, you need to be reallydisciplined and determined in organizing the learning process and achieving your goals because there will be no instructor or teacher who could encourage and motivate you.
Getting Started
It is recommended to first get some basic understanding of SAP for beginners. We published an extensive guide for complete beginners in SAP. It can be an excellent starting point for you:
SAP FOR BEGINNERS
SAP Websites
There are a million websites that are focused on SAP. The problem is that it is hard to find a good introduction for people who have zero knowledge of SAP and it is hard to find a coherent introduction where one concept builds on the next (training classes we mentioned in the beginning are better for this purpose). Naturally, the following list of SAP websites is not complete, but at least we strove to include all the most popular. It would be nice to update this list if you guys can write your favorite websites in the comments section.
- General overview of SAP ERP modules
http://www.sap-erp.com/general/sap-module-overview.html - The most general introduction (Wikipedia links)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_ERP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_R/3 - Official SAP websites with documentation
http://help.sap.com– the compete SAP documentation, however, somehow difficult to grasp - SAP community website and SAP forums
http://scn.sap.com– large SAP forum, which is moderated by SAP employees
http://www.sapusergroups.com– SAP user groups for various regions of the world
http://sap.toolbox.com– SAP section of the huge IT-related forum
http://www.sapfans.com– SAP related forum
http://www.saptechies.com– another SAP related forum
http://www.linkedin.com– social network for professionals, which has many SAP groups and communities
http://twitter.com– it is a good idea to follow #SAP hash tag and other people who tweet about SAP, you can also follow us: http://twitter.com/sapcertif🙂
http://facebook.com/erp.certification– our Facebook group, just in case - OpenSAP – Open online courses delivered by SAP. The idea of the website is great but it is geared towards experienced SAP professionals that only need to keep up with the latest product updates and new features of SAP program. If you are a complete beginner to SAP, it might be difficult to understand these courses.
SAP Books
Although books are not free, comparing to the cost of SAP training, their price is negligible. Moreover, you can use them later on for reference as well. On our website there is special section where good SAP books are collected and reviewed. Although now we only have SAP SD books, SAP FI books and SAP MM books, our collection will be expanding in the near future.
Overall, it is possible to find a way of how to learn sap for free, without investing a fortune into SAP training. We will continue publication of useful resources that provide information about all aspects around SAP. This article is only beginning 🙂
Hands-on SAP Practice
Besides theoretical knowledge you also need to practice with real SAP systems. Unfortunately, it is not possible to install SAP on a regular personal computer because this system has high hardware requirements. Also, you need to take care about expensive software licenses. The good news are that you can access SAP remote servers (running SAP IDES) for a monthly fee from a number of companies that offer access to SAP ERP servers with some sample business data. While their services are not free, you for sure can find some money to pay for them (they are not too expensive)and do some practice in realistic SAP environments! You can find our reviews of the companies offeringaccess to SAP servers here: SAP IDESaccess.
Update 1!
We have written a follow-up post about 10 free SAP tutorials available online. They should also be helpful in learning SAP for free.
Update 2!
SAP has launched SAP Learning Hub that provides online access to SAP handbooks. It also has free edition. Make sure to check it out in more detail here: Free SAP Training with SAP Learning Hub.
Update 3!
We’ve launched a number of free courses for everybody who would like to learn SAP. If you ever wanted to learn SAP, this is the best time to join our course and study SAP together with us. The links to the free courses are below.
Free SAP FI Training
Learn Financial Accounting inSAP
Free SAP CO Training
Learn Management Accounting inSAP
Free SAP MM Training
Learn Materials Management inSAP
Free SAP SD Training
Learn Sales and Distribution inSAP
Free SAP HR Training
Learn Human Resources inSAP
Free SAP PP Training
Learn Production Planning inSAP
I hope that this information will be helpful for you and if you have any questions, you are welcome to ask them at our forum. Unlike comments below, all questions posted on the forum will be answered!
