Asking for help and guidance

Many of my reader are asking me question about how to start a career with SAP. I'll post in this blog some of my answer in case anyone has the same questions.
This is the email I received from Sin Ong Chea from Malaysia:
"Hi there
I get your e-mail address from your site: http://sapro.blogspot.com/ I am new in SAP world and i hope i can have a friend who has a good knowledge in SAP like you. :-)

Please let me introduce myself. I am an IT fresh graduate from Malaysia, thinking to start my career in SAP. I just recentlly took ABAP Workbench course and i passed the exam. Now, I have another chance to take new course(FICO, SD, MM, BASIS or HR) for free.

I have a few questions as below:
a. What is the basic difference between SD and MM?
b. If you have a chance to take the training or certificate exam, which one will you choose? (or you prefer any other choice i stated up there)

Thanks. I hope that you can help me as I am a newbie in SAP.

Thanks.

Regards,
Sin Ong"


This is my reply:

"Hi Sin
I'm glad that you wrote to me asking for help. I like to tutor fresh starters in SAP.
Now back to your questions.
First of all it'a a good thing that you learned ABAP and you are comfortable with programming because it will help you a lot in your SAP career especially if you choose to became an functional SAP consultant (that is to learn one or more SAP modules).

Basic difference between SD and MM:
SD manages the sales part of a company. Here you manage sales order, bills and invoices, shipping of the producs, pricing procedures and so on. So it manage the interface with the company's customers.

MM manages the inventory part of a company. In MM you manage request for quotation, quotation, purchase orders, good receipts, invoices and stock inventory. This is the interface with the vendors (purchasing part of MM) and the inventory management of stocks.



Q: If you have a chance to take the training or certificate exam, which one will you choose? (or you prefer any other choice i stated up there)

A: It depends on what you like and what expertise do you have. For example for FI/CO you must know accounting and controlling otherwise you will not undersand anything.
SD and MM can be aproached withouth any business knowleadge but you must learn not by yourself you must have a tutor to teach you the basic processes of this modules and how they apply to the real business.

Good luck and we keep in touch.

Daniel"

Feel free to ask me any SAP related question. If I cannot answer I can ask others for an answer.