First some thumb rules, that will hold true in most cases:-
1. You can work towards becoming a Functional Consultant if :-
a. You are from an Accounting Background
b. You were a Super User for Financials/HRMS Manufacturing Modules for many years. You may even consider taking up a Support Analyst role.
c. You have never written a "Hello World" program, regardless of the programming language.
d. You are a MBA from a non-technical background
e. You don't mind spending most part of your day in meetings & writing documents.
f. You understand the overall ERP system very well, and how it all hangs together knowing the dependencies between various modules.
2. You must work towards becoming a Technical Consultant if:-
a. You are from a technical background, regardless of the stream i.e. Electrics/Comps etc. Even a Civil Engineer can make into a good Oracle Apps Technical Consultant.
b. You want to be a technical Oracle Apps consultant but you fear whether you can succeed. Remember, fear is important, as it gets the best out of you.
c. You find writing lengthy documents very boring.
d. You like to get a feeling of having achieved something each day.
e. You do not have much patience(like me), then surely you must not be a functional person. Some of the end users can really test your patience to limits.
f. You don't mind taking difficult challenges at times.
g. You can't be bothered to know how say Order Management links with General Ledger.
Pros of choosing a Technical path
1. For each Functional person, there are at an average 3 to 5 technical consultants. Hence more job opportunities for Technical Oracle Applications Role.
2. If you are an immigrant, then you face lesser comptetion from local workforce in western countries. For example, in UK I notice there are more Brits doing functional job than the number of Brits doing technical job. So much so that, I have seen some of my old techie friends to switch to functional roles latter in their career.
3. Not much emphasis on educational background. This holds very true in Europe, where you will be recruited(provided you have some experience) purely on the basis of your technical skills & technical knowledge.
Cons of choosing a Technical path
1. You have to keep up with ever changing technology and toolsets.
For example tools like Oracle Forms may be totally redundant after 5Years from now.
2. More and more work in Oracle Apps is moving to Functional domain. To give an example, prior to introduction of self service personalizations, a developer was required for any single change to the layout of the screen. However now, a functional or even a business super user can be trained within half a day to do Self Service Personalizations.
s to invest in a Oracle Apps Training course.
Pros of choosing a Functional path
1. Legislations and business rules do not change as often as does the technology changes.
Hence your knowledge can be carried forward from one version of Applicatiton to another.
Cons of choosing a Functional path
1. Boring at times, because too much time gets wasted in meetings.
2. It is almost impossible to keep away from office politics.
Another stream
One ignored stream is Support Analyst. But the reason I haven't discussed this streat here is because you rarely become Support Analyst in your first job. However, to become a good Support Analyst you must know a little bit of SQL.
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