I'd like to retrain myself as a CRM consultant in London, I have 10 years marketing exp.How should I start?

Question

I'd like to be an Oracle, SAP or Microsoft CRM consultant and I'm not sure what's the most effective way of doing it. I know, there are courses, but I can't invest all that money now, however I'm ready to pay some amount. I've been working as marketing professional for Oracle and IBM in HUngary, now I live in London.

Any good idea, experience, suggestion is welcome ! Thank you all !

Answer 1

Where can you find a training in UK
Source : http://www.sap.com/uk/services/education/locations/index.epx

SAP UK Training Centres

SAP strives to deliver our education programme in convenient and comfortable surroundings, offering our delegates facilities and services which ensure an enjoyable training experience.

With classroom facilities in London, Birmingham, Dublin and Leeds we hope that we can minimise your need to travel and maximise your opportunity to learn. Our training facilities run a broad range of project team training across the SAP solutions giving you the most complete and accurate information about our products that you can find. You will be learning together with other SAP customers who are going through the same process as your selves giving an excellent opportunity to network with people and organisations facing the same challenges.
SAP UK Headquarters

Our flagship training facility

* London Heathrow (SAP HQ, Clockhouse Place, Feltham)

Official Partner Sites

These specialist training facilities are operated by our official training Partners PPI Learning and OlasIT.

* Birmingham (PPI Learning)
* Leeds (PPI Learning)
* Ireland (OlasIT)

Remote Sites

SAP training is delivered at the following locations, courtesy of Regus.

* Bristol
* Cambridge
* Glasgow
* Manchester
* Southampton
* Stockley Park (Heathrow)

Answer 2

I am in the IT Recruitment specializing in supplyinh IBM, SAP, Siebel consultants. My suggestion is this. Please take note

1) Don't invest in any courses, whether it's SAP CRM, Siebel or Oracle CRM.

It wouldn't help by attending these courses. Companies want CRM consultants with hands on implementation experiences. Attending these 3-5 week courses that cost 6,000-15,000 pounds
is just splashing the money down the drain.

The big vendors like Oracle are already working on SOA, Service Oriented Architecture where softwares will be integrated as a component. What it means is...instead of using SAP R/3 and using SAP CRM, you can now use NetSuite or SalesForce.com

So my advice is for you to drop the idea. Instead, you might want to invest in smaller amounts in training CDs and do a installation of the applications on your own server. That way, you learn it hands on. If you have difficulties, always try to join yahoo groups that specializes in your field of interests.

http://groups.yahoo.com

Then when you are competent, you could try to take the CRM certification exam in the various authorised vendors worldwide. Trust me, all the different countries manage their own databases and they will have no way to track whether you had spent 10,000 pounds attending their CRM training courses.

Even if you don't have the certification, it's not a big problem. The biggest and most important thing is whether you know the stuff.

After you know the stuff, you also need a Professional Resume Provider that knows what a Job Winning CRM Consultant Resume look like. Trust me, there's not many of those around. And if you talk about 200% Money Back Guarantee, there's only one company that I know of right now.



Regards,

Edmund Ng
CEO, Founder
Infinique Technologies
http://www.infinqiuetech.com
http://www.itjobs.com.sg
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SG_IT_Jobs
http://www.purchaseresume.com
The No.1 Professional Resume Provider with 200% Money Back Guarantee.Guaranteed Job Interviews with Fortune 500 Companies.

Answer 3

Some easy start up things are to read the web sites. Marketing is a great start to CRM, but what do you know about the back office of trouble ticketing? About scripting in customer service?

Just get the regular brochures of all of the CRM vendors and read some "white papers" on the theory behind it, and implementation of it.

Find a company that will see your potential (after you know the language of a full CRM solution) and away you go! You know the best teacher will be on-the-job.

good luck