The SAP consulting market is experiencing a growing disconnect between the reality of projects and the criteria used to select talent. Today, a consultant with over fifteen years of experience—capable of leading S/4HANA rollouts or resolving critical production incidents—can be cut from a process in a matter of seconds. The reason is usually the same: not having a current certification. This situation does not respond to a technical necessity, but rather to an overly rigid interpretation of what “guarantee” means in an SAP project.
Certification as a market-imposed filter, not an SAP one
It is worth clarifying from the start: SAP does not require individual consultants to be certified to work on projects. Nor does it mean that end clients require certifications as a prerequisite for access.
The problem arises elsewhere: it is the end clients themselves who have turned certification into a selection filter, using it as a quick mechanism to reduce perceived risk and standardize hiring processes. In practice, many consulting firms replicate this criterion to avoid being disqualified from bids, even though they know that certification is not a sufficient indicator of real competence.
Consequently, certification has shifted from being a technical validation element to becoming an administrative requirement that conditions access to projects, even when it provides no relevant information about a consultant’s ability to solve complex problems.
The consultant vs. the market filter
Many independent consultants point out that this trend affects them significantly. Not because SAP demands it, but because end clients and consulting firms have adopted certification as an immediate screening criterion. According to industry testimonials, their real value—the ability to resolve complex problems autonomously—is sidelined in favor of a criterion that functions more as a sales pitch than an indicator of competence.
In practice, three effects are observed:
- Hiring bias: It is common to see certified profiles selected to justify spending to procurement departments, leaving aside senior professionals whose track record validates their effectiveness better than any exam.
- Devaluation of experience: Requiring current certificates from consultants with decades of background is, in practice, a questioning of their adaptability, when these are precisely the people who have lived through the most technological cycles.
- Operational paradox: Many companies seek profiles capable of solving urgent problems but apply filters that exclude those who have already solved those problems repeatedly in real-world environments.
This trend is not anecdotal. In professional communities and freelancer forums, numerous consultants note that they have lost opportunities for not having an active certification, even when their experience is far superior to that of newly certified profiles.
The real evolution of SAP certifications
The SAP certification system has evolved. Current exams are no longer just multiple-choice tests. SAP has incorporated practical cases, scenario simulations, and the “Stay Current” model, which requires consultants to update themselves with micro-evaluations after each S/4HANA Cloud release.
Even so, in practice, certification remains a partial indicator. It validates up-to-date knowledge, but it does not replace experience in real-world environments, where decisions must be made under pressure and where errors have a direct impact on the business.
Regaining technical criteria
Companies that truly lead in SAP implementation tend to revert to the technical interview as the definitive filter. They evaluate judgment, architecture, analytical capacity, and incident resolution—not the validity of a seal.
Continuing to use certification as the sole access filter is, in the opinion of many professionals in the sector, a race toward irrelevance. If the Spanish SAP market aspires to be competitive and attract talent, it must stop treating the consultant as a standardized part and start valuing what really matters: the capacity of someone who knows how the system works when the data matters.
