Changing Career From Finance to ERP Consulting? | Must Watch #Finance

hi everyone my name is rajesh and in this CashNews.co i’m going to throw some light on whether an erp consulting career a right career choice for you or not now i am a chartered accountant by qualification and i have been working in this erp consulting industry for last eight years

that is where i also have the view of a student who is coming from a Finance background and i also have an inside view into this career of erp consulting which may seem a

little technical or off built career option for the people like charter accountants or company secretaries or cmas or let’s say mba Finance people or the commerce

graduate people and that is where i think this CashNews.co is going to be an interesting watch for you guys to make sure whether this is a right career choice for you or not so watch until the end and do like share and subscribe to our youtube channel for more such CashNews.cos on the interesting

topics around the erp consulting so let’s begin the first thing that we need to understand is now in this erp consulting career you will be on the other side of the table now what do i mean by that in our articleship or in our internship or in our previous jobs we may have been users of the

erp software so we may have used the tally erp or we may have used sap or oracle or microsoft dynamics or any other erp softwares but now as an erp consultant you are going to be someone who is building this erp for the users to use and that is where it gets really really deep wherein you need to

understand the intricacies of how an erp product works and then you need to tie it with the business needs of the end user or the business needs of the client for whom you are implementing the erp now the next point is about the focus in your past career you might have done the auditing work or you

might have been a financial analyst where you used to analyze the Financial Statements you used to analyze the ratios and maybe like you used to give your opinion or give the report based on those kind of analysis or maybe if you are you were an auditor you might be giving the

report based on your internal controls analysis or your stat audit or your tax audit or let’s say your internal audit analysis but now in this particular career of an erp consultant you are going to focus more on internal controls of an organization so you are least interested in terms of the

ratios or in terms of the data of that particular organization or you are not going to audit their internal controls in fact you are going to suggest them that how exactly the internal controls can be built while implementing a sophisticated erp system now you are going to focus more on the basic

transactions or journal entries or creating the books of accounts or creating the reports of a particular client rather than just analyzing the Financial Statements or analyzing the ratios or auditing the books of accounts of the client the third point is the technicalities that

are involved now we all who are coming from a financial background do not have much of the system knowledge or the technical knowledge however this erp consulting career definitely needs some technical understanding of the systems or let’s say the software understanding or the familiarity

with the software as a prerequisite now does that mean that you need to learn coding no these sophisticated erp softwares like sap or oracle or microsoft dynamics they come more as a pre-built or pre-coded software wherein 95 percent of the things are configurable by the front end kind of

configurations or setups for example in your gmail you can set up how exactly you need to have that email view or how exactly the date format looks like or how exactly your compose email box looks like and all of that you can do without any coding that is called configuration that’s the same

thing that is needed in these erp softwares but for doing the right configuration for the needs of client you first need to know that erp software and that is what becomes a little technical so it’s not around the coding but it is around the configuration which can still be a lot technical

thing if you are coming from a non-technical background like Finance so if you are someone who like the systems or who like to deal with the technicalities of the system or

who like to understand how the systems work then this may be the right career choice for you the fourth point is around the right balance of the technicalities or the product consultancy versus the business consultancy now you are not just going to be a management consultant who is consulting or

advising the businesses or companies around their business processes or around their internal controls you are going to do that but along with that you are also going to suggest to the client that how exactly they can implement or use the system in the most correct manner and that’s where i

think this career demands the balance between the software knowledge and the business knowledge now Finance domain experts would be employed in this career just because they

know the business or they know the business processes or internal controls or the needs of the business they can talk to the cxo level people or the managements of the business and can rightly translate those requirements into the system configurations and build the right systems for the business

the next point is around how exactly you are going to cope up with the initial erp training now many a times what happens is when you are shifting into a completely new domain or a completely new career it might feel little uncomfortable initially imagine the days when you learnt driving initially

you might have found it very difficult to manage the balance between the accelerator and clutch and the engine used to shut down and you used to get annoyed that why am i not able to make the correct judgment on the clutch and accelerator but when you learned that driving skill it came naturally

you didn’t even know when exactly you were able to manage the right balance between the clutch and accelerator and then driving became enjoyable so it is something similar when you are getting trained on this erp products you might feel that it is something which is a lot of technical work

and i may not be the right person for that however once you complete this particular training then and only then you will be truly enjoying the consulting part or the business related part of this particular software consulting or the erp consulting the next thing which you need to remember is you

are going to be a part of service industry because ideally the erp consulting jobs are with the consulting companies or with the it companies who all are in service industry and in a service industry typically the client’s satisfaction is considered as the extreme objective and that’s

where it may not be a typical nine to five jobs so if you want a comfortable nine to five job then this may not be for you there would always be the perks of the it industry but at the same time there would also be the workload however in the initial phase of career i definitely feel that exposure

is something that is more important than the ideal work life balance the next point that you might want to consider is around how open you are to unlearn a lot of things that you have learned in your career so far and to learn certain new things or adopt the new ways of doing the things now why

this is important is because of this erp consulting career is as such a global career so here you may be dealing with some clients across the world in all types of Industries in all the

regions of the world and that is where the way of doing the business or the business processes or the Accounting framework that they follow the Accounting standards that they follow the laws related to the Taxes or labor laws and so on so forth may

be different than what we follow in india and that is where you might need to be quite open to learn the things how exactly those things are done in these various Industries or in these

various regions now again the basic or conceptual part is always going to be the same everywhere however the procedural part like for example tds or for example vat or gst may not be the same in some other country how they are in india and that is where the procedural part in the indian

Income tax or the procedural part of india let’s say gst or indian Accounting standards or let’s say indian laws may not be the same and that’s where you need to have the global view while dealing in this career rather than having limited just to

the indian context so be ready to unlearn a lot of things how we are used to do it in the last few years of our career and ready to accept the new things or the new way of doing things so what generally employers will expect from you as a fresher graduate or a

href="https://cashnews.co/finance" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance graduate who is just entering into the erp consulting career ideally three things are expected one thing is you need to be absolutely fundamentally clear about the basic

Accounting concepts now it may not be needed that you know all the Accounting standards by heart or you are pro with the advanced concepts of Accounting but it may be something which is very very basic that might be required out of you for example

the Accounting concepts or the Accounting conventions or the simple journal entries but you need to be absolutely logically clear about all of these Accounting aspects the second thing that is expected is a decent communication because this is a

consulting job so this is a front facing or the client facing job and that’s where the command over english language or the basic fluency in the language is something that is important and the third thing is absolutely clear logical thought process now the erp is a process oriented software

wherein everything is defined in terms of various processes for example procure to pay process order to cash process record to report process and so on so forth and that’s where you need to have a strong logical thinking ability so that you can think of how exactly these processes can be

defined or how exactly these processes can be built into a particular business while that business is deploying a sophisticated erp software so these three things are absolute necessary the Accounting fundamental knowledge the basic communication or let’s say a decent

communication and the third thing is the absolute clear logical thought process and the last thing that you will need to consider while deciding whether to join this career or not is something which is your long-term intent now why i’m saying that is because the oracle or sap or microsoft

dynamics these softwares are pretty vast so you might take around one or two or three years just to get a basic knowledge or a working knowledge in these softwares and that’s where let’s say after three years or after two years the organization would also start getting the benefit out

of your involvement and you will also start enjoying or growing in that particular domain initial two years or three years it just going to be a learning phase and when the learning phase is going to be that much so obviously you can think that you will need to have a long term intent or a

long-term alignment with this career so you should not be thinking that the erp skills is something that you should be getting just to be a good auditor or just to be let’s say a good management consultant or good analyst if that’s your goal then better do some course as an end user on

that erp to understand the erp but if you are getting into the erp consulting as a career then you should definitely come here with a long term goal with an objective that you want to stay in this career for the long term then and only then it is something that’s going to be beneficial for

you otherwise what will happen is let’s say you spend initial three years in just understanding the intricacies or understanding the details of the erp or learning the erp and then if you think that okay now i want to leave this job and what i want to get into my core

href="https://cashnews.co/finance" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance related career then it might be little difficult or practically impossible for you now again impossible is nothing but it can be difficult because you might need to start again

as a fresher and your this three years of knowledge or four years of experience may not be considered in your core Finance job and that’s where you need to have

absolute long-term intent if you want to make a career in the erp consulting industry so i hope these points give you a better understanding and help you make the better choice for your career thank you everyone for watching this CashNews.co with advent of cloud the erp solutions are becoming more

and more affordable and that’s where even the small and mid-scale organizations are increasingly opting for erp softwares what it means for us is erp consulting as a career option is now more lucrative than ever so if you are a fresher

style="font-weight: bold; color: #1a73e8; text-decoration: none;">Finance commerce and management graduate and want to build your career in the erp consulting industry then go visit www.yourerpcoach.com and hit that inquire button right now