Hot Oracle Skills Advice to Advance Your Career Tips

Oracle ERP jobs aren’t just about mapping business processes. There's a lot of nuts and bolts work to be done, and this means that the skill of application developer is going to remain relevant for a while to come. An Oracle application developer can expect to build or demonstrate skills in PL/SQL, Oracle Workflow, and Oracle Forms. You’ll also be expected to know open interfaces and to be competent in development environments and general programming.

The real question is whether, despite the work likely to be available in this realm of Oracle consulting jobs, you should focus on being the best application developer you can be or keep one eye on project management. The answer to that question will depend on your individual competencies and goals, but in general, it’s a good idea to leverage application development experience to move up the Oracle ERP consultant ladder. Your experience as a developer can give you first-hand skills to apply to a later career in project management and, in the meantime, it’ll keep you employed.

Applications project management is an excellent next step up for an Oracle ERP consultant with business analyst experience, communication skills, and some experience with (or interest in) working with implementation teams. This is a job description that will most likely require at least a decade of experience, but it’s never too early to start aligning your skills for this position.

In terms of skills, think of applications project management as demanding everything required of a business system analyst, at a greater level of mastery. On top of that, you have to be a people person with the ability both to listen and to make yourself heard. For some consultants, communications and leadership skills are innate, while others struggle. Rest assured that, if you are considering either project management or management, you should already be building the ability to communicate and the ability to lead, as they will remain "hot" for as long as ERP consulting lasts as a profession.

Oracle Business Intelligence is, by some standards, the hottest Oracle ERP skill. Pay for Oracle BI consultants started spiking in late 2006, and has been on an upswing ever since, even in the face of a global recession. BI is a hot Oracle skill, as it is a hot ERP skill, because companies have already invested tens of millions of dollars in enterprise systems and are now focused on getting the maximum value from their investments.

BI is the feature that allows companies to pore through all the data captured by ERP and isolate the information that will be of most value to the business; everything from customized reports about daily sales in different geographies to performance tracking of products and assets can come through BI. For this reason, the Oracle BI expert is in possession of one of those rare skills that is of strategic value for any ERP end user.

Working as an Oracle ERP business systems analyst requires the coordination of a number of skills—including the ability to work with end user teams to translate business requirements into functional terms, the ability to write and quality-control functional specs, and being a whiz at the Oracle Application Implementation Method, which is not only an implementation methodology based on the experiences of past Oracle ERP customers but also a set of tool-based skills to get Oracle applications up, running, and manageable.

Going beyond the technical skills, an Oracle ERP business systems analyst is going to earn his or her money by taking tools and input from end users and turning it into business process-oriented solutions. In this approach, Oracle ERP becomes a tool to support processes such as order to cash. Crafting business process solutions to spec isn’t easy and requires skills in different areas, but there should be strong demand in this part of the Oracle ERP universe for some time to come.

Oracle ERP, like SAP ERP, is increasingly favoring the Java/J2EE development environment. In Oracle, this commitment manifests itself in Oracle JDeveloper as well as the J2EE Application Development Framework. Any developer working in an Oracle ERP environment, or even a functional consultant looking to add some technical credibility to his or her resume, would do well to brush up Java skills accordingly, as employers are likely to find this experience meaningful.

A benefit of Java skills that is not specific to Oracle ERP is that Java is portable to other careers. A Java expert is increasingly employable, not just in ERP contexts (including Oracle ERP and SAP ERP), but in a wide variety of IT positions. For this reason, ERP consultants with a technological bent should consider either getting into Java or building their Java skills, which are hot in a growing number of contexts and likely to remain so in the near term.

Every ERP suite has its core module, the one that end users simply can’t get enough of. For Oracle ERP, financials is the hot module, which is reflected by the fact that Oracle ERP Financials consultants tend to get paid more than any other type of Oracle ERP module expert.

Oracle Financials isn’t one body of skills, but several. The module breaks down into processes, such as procure to pay and credit to cash; analytics; reporting; and typical financial management functionality such as travel and expense management and general ledger. The best Oracle ERP consultants in this domain will understand and exhibit some degree of competence across more than one domain within Oracle Financials, although each deployment will have its unique functional emphases. Since there are many sub-modules within Oracle Financials, it could pay to develop very deep expertise in some of the emerging categories, such as Oracle Financials for India.

Oracle ERP has carved out a distinctive name for itself in banking, where the Oracle for Banking application is being used by many of the world’s largest banks. Although the banking industry as a whole has shrunk due to current economic conditions and the new legislation on banking practices, this is still a huge industry where Oracle has a lot of traction.

For this reason, the Oracle for Banking consultant will find himself or herself highly employable, not merely in the context of adding value to existing deployments, but also as a potential team member for brand new implementations. As Oracle for Banking gains more global traction, there will be new work for Oracle for Banking consultants, which should make you take this module seriously. Someone coming into Oracle from the world of banking or finance would be especially well-advised to build their skills in this module.

We have already established that Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) is a hot category, as is Oracle Reports, which is closely related to BI. Think of Oracle BI as the entire business intelligence environment, and Oracle Reports as the component of the offering that is responsible for, in Oracle’s terms, accessing, converting, and publishing the information so that it becomes useful to the enterprise.

Without robust reporting technology and interfaces, BI is a bunch of data that seldom gets seen or accessed by those who need it most. For this reason, an Oracle ERP consultant specializing in Oracle Reports will find himself or herself to be an integral part of any Oracle BI team. If you can combine general expertise in the BI module with Oracle Reports skills, so much the better—you’ll be an attractive two-for-one catch to any Oracle hiring manager looking for BI consultants, and Oracle recruiters will be beating down your doors about positions such as PeopleSoft job openings.

If you think you’ve maxed out your earning potential as a technical or functional consultant, or if you think it’s time to pass on some of what you’ve learned, consider adding Oracle training to your skill set. As a trainer, you’ll be in the position of working directly with end user groups to set up Oracle ERP training programs, writing manuals, and following through to ensure positive learning outcomes.

Oracle training skill can’t be picked up by just anyone. You need to know your technical and/or functional skills cold, and you need to be a great communicator as well. However, if you satisfy those two requirements, you can branch out your career into training for Oracle positions such as Siebel jobs. Helping others to understand Oracle ERP can be both personally and professionally rewarding, and it could be a very hot skill given how many companies are either implementing Oracle ERP or looking to improve their end user skills.

One term that you will hear more in Oracle ERP jobs than in SAP ERP jobs will be the neologism “techno-functional.” Simply put, this means that a lot of Oracle ERP jobs blend technology and functional expertise, perhaps more so than SAP ERP jobs. For you, the Oracle ERP consultant, this means balancing your functional and technical skills and realizing that, while the future will tip more heavily to the functional side, the present will also require you to get into the nuts and bolts of Oracle technology.

To that end, an Oracle technical analyst with some functional ERP chops will do better than a purely technical person. Getting the balance right will depend on the specific job opportunity, but this is a great chance to tap into an Oracle ERP recruiter’s expertise to learn more about how hiring managers’ requirements are trending, and how you can tweak your skill set accordingly.