ERP Consulting Salary Trends and Expectations Tips

Surveys let you see trends after they have already solidified. ERP recruiters understand the trends as they are happening, in close to real time. Let’s say your ERP skill becomes very hot after a blockbuster acquisition forces thousands of ERP customers to install a product that you know backwards and forwards. The recruiter will know about this trend before anybody else, and will also be in a sound position to tell you the market value of a skill. If you’re going into a recruiting situation, you want to be able to distinguish fair offers from lowball offers, and your recruiter is very well placed to assist you with that.

The benefit of asking a recruiter about ERP salary trends is that you will also get the information in context—such as whether the trend is built on something solid, or what actions you should take to align your own skills with matching ERP salaries.

In the ERP world, some consultants are being paid a premium regardless of their certification status. That's one reason not to take a certification course if you're under the impression that doing so will provide an immediate bump to your ERP salary.

That said, ERP certifications could impact your ERP salary indirectly. SAP offers some certifications of its own that are increasingly popular with hiring managers, and that can teach you skills that will help to advance your career, regardless of whether you can monetize them immediately in an ERP job. The bottom line is that ERP certification should be considered a long-term skills investment, not a sure-fire method of getting larger offers from hiring managers (who will in any case prefer experience to certification).

The same advice holds true in the world of Oracle ERP, where certification appears to exert no influence on salary levels.

David Foote of Foote Partners knows more than anyone in the market about long-term ERP salary trends and expectations, which he has been tracking—at a level of great detail—for many years. Foote, whose data comes from surveys of thousands of IT professionals, is a credible authority in a marketplace otherwise bereft of real and objective information about ERP salary trends.

While much of Foote’s data is very expensive to purchase, he makes very large (up to thirty-five pages) press releases tracking ERP salary trends and expectations freely available on his website, www.footepartners.com. Ask to be put on Foote’s email list so that you can receive quarterly updates of his ERP salary tracker. You’ll find every imaginable IT competency, including ERP specialties and sub-specialties, closely tracked, along with a convenient function that allows you to see hikes or dips in ERP salary demand over the past few months or quarters.

Many ERP consultants get their information about ERP salary trends and expectations from peers working in the field. If the grapevine is your source of information, make certain that the data applies to your position. For example, if you’re working for a large systems integrator, your salary will almost invariably be lower than that of a freelance ERP consultant at the same, or even lower, level of seniority. FTEs should price factors such as job security, health benefits, etc. into their total pay instead of making a dollar-to-dollar comparison with freelancers.

Similarly, you may have heard that others are making more than you at the same kinds of enterprise resource planning jobs. But, are you sure that the object of your jealousy is at the same level as you? Factors such as seniority and project management expertise can have a big impact on pay. So, if you’re tempted to compare, make sure you’re comparing apples to apples.

When digging deeper into ERP salary trends and expectations, don’t fall into the trap of chasing what appears to be the best-paying current opportunity. Sometimes trends are driven by one-off scenarios, such as M&A activity between ERP vendors, and on other occasions there are one-time business drivers, such as Y2K, that will not recur. For this reason, it is vital not to make lists of pay scales as a substitute for an ERP career plan; by the time you catch what you’re chasing, the unique factors that drove pay may no longer be there, and you’ll have wasted your effort.

Remember that ERP salary trends and expectations are just another data point to ERP consultants building their careers. Do not overestimate the importance of salary, or you may end up both misreading the market and sidetracking your career as an ERP consultant. Keep your focus on an ERP career plan and look for the SAP or PeopleSoft jobs that fit you best.

According to Foote Partners, Oracle Enterprise Apps is on the list of the highest paid, non-certified IT skills.

Oracle Enterprise Applications is actually a large collection of separate applications, so don’t be fooled by its having only one line item in the Foote list. Oracle Enterprise Applications consists of the following modules: Business Intelligence, Financial Performance Management, Customer Relationship Management, Procurement, Product Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain Management, Human Capital Management, Master Data Management, and more. Moreover, Oracle Enterprise Applications contains functionality that was acquired from PeopleSoft and the numerous other ERP vendors that Oracle has acquired over the years.

Because there are so many sub-fields in Oracle Enterprise Applications, you would be best advised to work with a recruiter to learn which areas are hotter than the others, and how you can structure an Oracle ERP career accordingly.

SAP recently acquired Business Objects, the world’s largest business intelligence (BI) company. In ERP terms, BI is what allows enterprises to comb through their vast accumulations of data to find important trends to act on, to measure their performance, and to perform other value-added tasks that can help everyone from operations to the C-suite.

ERP consultants who are well versed in Business Objects (and especially in Crystal Reports, a company that Business Objects acquired in the pre-SAP days) are experiencing a boom in demand and are being paid accordingly. The acquisition of Business Objects has also fueled demand for consultants skilled in SAP’s legacy business intelligence products, which have not yet been phased out. The bottom line is that, with major ERP investments stalled because of the economy, business intelligence is a way of getting a return on existing ERP investments and should fuel good paydays for ERP consultants for years to come.

There are special opportunity areas for someone looking for an SAP position. Business intelligence is one such area. However, you should know that all SAP business application areas are receiving premium pay from employers. According to Foote Partners, the following SAP skills are in that category: ERP, NetWeaver BI, Solution Manager, Financial Accounting, HCM, Controlling, PLM, NetWeaver Application Server, BW/BI Accelerator, MDM, SEM, Web Application Server, WM, FSCM, EWM, and IM. As you can see, that’s a pretty comprehensive list of SAP skills that are hot in the marketplace. SAP has no competition, from the salary perspective, when it comes to enterprise apps; SAP consultants are still the envy of consultants everywhere.

If you’re looking for the double whammy, Foote explains that business process management skills and project management are also really hot; if you and/or your recruiter can relate your SAP skills to these methodologies, you’ll be in an even better position to take advantage of ERP salary trends.

For those consultants who are really in it for the money, bear in mind that there’s a ceiling on how much money you can make as an ERP functional consultant or an ERP technical consultant. The real money is in management: project management for a state, and then partnership in a consulting firm. This is the one area of the ERP career universe that can expect to see big pay for years to come.

If you’re interested, moving up to management is not as difficult as you might think, especially if you have some solid years of ERP consulting behind you. The main requirement is a hard working spirit and good communication skills, so that potential customers, business partners, and other managers will find themselves impressed with your ability to lead. If you’re the kind of consultant who has an affinity for managerial tasks and responsibilities, this should be right up your alley.

As soon as some ERP consultants get a look at real ERP pay data, their eyes gravitate instantly to the ERP skills that are paid the best. That’s human nature, and you needn’t apologize for it. However, bear in mind that issues of supply and demand color the data. For example, an ERP skill that’s getting paid very well might not be able to support a large body of consultants. On the other hand, an ERP skill that pays less might employ a large number of consultants. In such a scenario, the lower-paying job might offer more in net salary over a few years than the higher-paying job.

Therefore, when you see the data, keep the issue of supply and demand in the foreground. Not surprisingly, an ERP recruiter can fill you in on these kinds of details based on actual market conditions, so don’t be shy about asking yours.