Newsbyte: New Services Enhance the Value of SAP Certification

WALLDORF, Germany, April 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced two complementary services designed to enhance the value of SAP certification. The SAP® Credential Manager site is a portal to manage certification credentials and provide benefits and self-service scenarios for SAP-certified individuals, while the SAP® Consultant Registry site is a public registry that helps customers and partners identify SAP-certified consultants based on location or area of competence. Once a candidate passes an SAP certification exam, he or she can use self-service features in SAP Credential Manager to view and track certification progress, receive re-certification notifications, publish verified credentials to employers and update contact details after changing jobs. Certified individuals can opt to publish their credentials so they can be found by customers or partners through SAP Consultant Registry. Both sites are available free of charge.

More than 350,000 people have achieved certification in SAP solutions to date. Growth in SAP certifications is roughly 30 percent year over year, fuelled by the wave of innovations SAP has introduced to the market in recent years, including the SAP HANA® platform, for which 5,000 customers and partners have become certified. The growth of the certified community brings the challenge of having an effective way to verify and identify SAP-certified individuals. In a survey of 250 SAP user group members conducted in 2013 by the SAP Education organization, 70 percent of respondents stated that it is important to check whether SAP certifications from applicants are valid and 80 percent said they would like to be able to search for SAP-certified consultants via a public registry.

"It is essential for us as SAP customers to have a reliable benchmark for ensuring projects are delivered on budget and on time," said Per Högberg, executive secretary of the SAP Swedish User Group (SAPSA), and charter member of the Certification Enablement & Influence Council, an advisory group comprised of SAP customers, partners and independent consultants. "The new credential verification and registry from SAP will give us a sound basis for validating that the people we work with are certified on the latest SAP innovations. It will give us more confidence to drive our projects forward."

The first registry for SAP-certified consultants is now available in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, North America and the United Kingdom; additional countries are planned to be added in the next phase of the rollout. Since its initial roll-out, nearly 7,000 certified individuals have opted in to SAP Credential Manager and more than 700 have opted to be visible in SAP Consultant Registry. The registry is hosted by Credential Manager™, from Pearson VUE, a long-standing SAP partner that administers certification exams at authorized training centers worldwide. Partners, consultants and freelancers can also take advantage of the free courses available in the recently launched SAP® Learning Hub site to sharpen their skills with SAP solutions and get the practice needed to become SAP-certified.

"Along with a strong professional track record and hands-on experience, SAP certification is an important signifier that someone has reached a standard of quality and proficiency in an SAP solution," said Markus Schwarz, senior vice president and global head of SAP Education. "With SAP Credential Manager and SAP Consultant Registry, we can serve the needs of the SAP-certified community as well as our customer and partner ecosystem."

To learn more, see an infographic and watch a video. For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews and @SAPEDU.

Media Contact:
Martin Gwisdalla, +49 (6227) 7-67275, [email protected], CET

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should" and "will" and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110126/AQ34470LOGO

SOURCE SAP AG