I need a little help...

I was asked today as part of my in depth research into finding a job whether I had used SAP!... I might have told a fib, not sure I have or not so said I was rusty!!!!

Anyway, they want to interview me now and so I feel I should have some very basic knowledge of the beast...

I've used so many other systems that I imagine it's just another to pick up but can anybody give any idea how easy it is? It's for a logistics company...

SAP is a one of the largest enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, according to Wikipedia. I don't know if you can wing this one. It is commonly used in manufacturing organizations and basically is a transactions processing system eg. it can take your orders, process them, invoice them etc. Google SAP, there is a lot of information on this

I think you might get by by saying that you believed one of the old companies used SAP but you were a light user, and would need to brush up on that but have good experience with a range of systems, and don't believe it would be an issue.

Good luck DandNHill.

Haha, thank you... I kind of blagued it by saying that I think I used it in the past but I would be a bit rusty as it's been a while... I'll just have to WOW them with my personality and they'll forget even to ask me!! lol

If you have any sort of computing and logistics knowledge then you'll probably be able to wing it...

each company has different ways to use it and different protocols but the basic system is simple as its GUI is pretty much WYSIWYG for the most part

I did some database conversions for SAP applications; mostly Oracle but iirc some Sybase and some Informix. It was slightly troublesome that the column names and whatnot were in German. I understand that it's not helpful but SAP gave me rather a nice wallet which I use to this day; a top ten gift giving company.

ERP systems in my experience are pretty similar - different screens and quirks but a Purchase Order is a Purchase Order, a Sales Order is a Sales Order etc etc.

You don't say what your "logistics" job is but I'm responsible for Purchasing & Logistics at a company & we're presently going through the utter joy and bliss of a SAP implementation. Something I haven't been a part of for 10 years or so.
So we'll be using SAP for everything to do with Selling stuff - Sales Orders, Customer Masters, Invoicing etc, everything to do with buying stuff - Purchase Orders, Goods Receipt, everything to do with inventory planning - item master, demand planning etc and everything to do with physically managing stuff - warehouse management, picking and dispatch. Plus of course all the finance back end of accounting, general ledger etc etc.

Someone coming into a role with direct SAP experience is valuable for a company as they will be familiar with screens and navigation - although implementations will vary from company to company. However, if you have experience of the role and using systems to fulfill the role then you'll be fine with a bit of training. IMHO I'd rather have someone knowledgeable on their subject and a good team fit who has to learn the system than a SAP whizz who is no good at the other stuff.

It's a surgical supplies manufacturer and distributor. Basically the role is Account Manager although they call it something else... As you said, when you have used several such databases learning another isn't a huge hardship...

Tomorrow is D-day... after getting that interview I then lined up another so I go straight from one to the other