How Can Non-IT Students Pursue A Career in SAP FICO

The acronym SAP stands for System Application and Products in Data Processing. SAP is a leading ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software and curiously enough the mother company shares the name. Due to its liberal and open architecture, there are millions of programmers working around the world to provide interaction between thousands of major software and SAP. These may include creating plugins or sub-modules for added functionality. SAP is usually implemented in phases. The first phase is when organizational structure and accounting components are configured and tested, after which they are taken live in the next phase. Even more modules are in the development phase and are being gradually added. Due to heavy demand in the industry, a quality SAP course is what most students aspire to enroll in.

But what if you do not belong from a technical/ IT background? Will you be able to learn any SAP module and make a great career out of it? Yes indeed! Read on to understand.

The SAP expertise can be divided broadly into two major skill areas :

• Functional (like FICO)
• Technical (like BASIS, ABAP)

If you belong from a non-technical background, like Accounts or Finance you can easily opt for the Functional part of SAP. These days, there is a huge demand for Functional specialists, sometimes even surpassing the same for the Technical ones.

SAP has various modules (25 and counting) that cater to every aspect of the industry. The understanding between SAP end users and SAP consultants often becomes time consuming due to lack of domain knowledge and inadequate experience. So, the educational aspect is of considerable importance when choosing an SAP module.

Let’s take a look at different SAP modules and the desirable backgrounds/ professional knowledge associated. This is important to understand before enrolling for an SAP Course.

As you can see, SAP FI and SAP CO (often functionally merged together as SAP FICO) modules do not require specific backgrounds when compared to other modules.

Don’t get me wrong, while Finance and Accounts are indeed specialized backgrounds mostly suited to commerce students in India, the requisite knowledge can be acquired by Science and Arts students in a relatively short period of time.

SAP FICO – A Brief Study

SAP FICO  is one of the most in demand SAP modules. FI stands for ‘Financial accounting’ and CO ‘Controlling’. SAP FICO is an important module of SAP ERP.

SAP FI & CO both are separate modules of SAP and both the modules store data related to financial transactions.

SAP FI is a module used for comprehensive financial reporting. The main aim here is to record all financial transactions posted by an entity and produce financial statements at the end of the trading period. SAP FI has the following modules :

1. Organization Structure
2. Financial Accounting Global Settings
3. General Ledger
4. Tax Configuration
5. Accounts Payable
6. Accounts Receivable
7. Bank Accounting
8. Treasure management
9. Asset accounting
10. Investment Management

The Controlling (CO) module of SAP helps in providing information to managers in order to understand where the company’s money is being spent. It’s not naturally restricted by any legal requirements as in case of FI. It is essentially an internal cost accounting tool. AP CO module covers following contents :

1. Cost Element Accounting
2. Cost Controlling
3. Cost Center Accounting
4. Internal Orders
5. Activity Based Costing
6. Product Cost Controlling
7. Profitability Analysis
8. Profit Center Accounting

SAP FICO module also allows the integration of other SAP modules like Sales & Distribution (SD), Human Resource (HR), Material Management (MM).

(The Case for SAP FICO – US Salaries – Courtesy of LinkedIn)

(SAP FICO Salaries in India – Courtesy of GlassDoor)

Way Ahead – Learning SAP FICO for a professional career

First things first, functional knowledge of Accounts and Finance is a pre-requisite to pursue a career in SAP FICO. If you’re from commerce background, you’re in luck. If not, you’ll need to gain some knowledge of these stuff through short term courses like our cost-effective CIA course. This is because Finance and Accounting are two vital cogs of almost every business, hence practical skill development training is absolutely essential. 

After you’ve gained some degree of mastery in Financial Accountancy, you’re ready to jump into a full fledged SAP FICO course to lay the stepping stone to what can be a fulfilling career in this field.

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Swagata Ghosh

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