Starting in October, SAP is expanding the Stay Certified experience with new ways for certified professionals to demonstrate current knowledge, including AI-powered roleplays grounded in real-world customer scenarios.
What the cloud introduced, AI has only accelerated: constant software updates, new capabilities, and a faster pace of innovation. For professionals working across the SAP ecosystem, keeping pace with that change is becoming an increasingly important part of maintaining their expertise.
For consultants, developers, architects, project managers, and sales and presales professionals, staying current means understanding not only what has changed, but how those changes apply in their work and in the customer situations they encounter.
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SAP Certification has evolved alongside this changing technology landscape. As cloud solutions introduced faster release cycles, regular Stay Certified assessments became part of the certification journey, helping professionals keep their knowledge and credentials current.
Building on this evolution, SAP is reimagining the Stay Certified experience. Across more than 100 certifications, certified professionals will have greater choice in how they demonstrate that their knowledge remains current. Alongside a knowledge-based assessment option, learners will be able to complete short, practical, AI-powered roleplays designed around real-world customer interactions.
From a stand-alone assessment quiz to scenario-based roleplays
The evolution of Stay Certified reflects a broader shift already taking place across SAP Certification: moving beyond assessing what someone knows toward validating how they can apply that knowledge.
AI-powered roleplays bring that principle into the annual certification renewal experience.
Rather than only responding to questions about SAP products and capabilities, learners can work through simulated customer interactions built around defined knowledge goals. The scenarios are grounded in content reflecting the latest SAP product releases, helping learners demonstrate applied, up-to-date knowledge. After each assessment, learners also receive immediate, personalized feedback highlighting what went well and where they can improve, specific to the scenario rather than a generic score.
Learners who prefer or require a non-AI pathway will continue to have the option of completing a stand-alone assessment quiz.
Keeping pace with SAP innovation
As SAP products evolve, so does the knowledge required to work with them effectively.
The reimagined Stay Certified approach is designed to keep renewal closely aligned with those developments. Assessments are grounded in content reflecting the latest SAP product releases, helping learners focus on the knowledge and capabilities that have changed since getting certified or the latest certification renewal.
For professionals, this creates a clearer connection between maintaining a credential and maintaining relevant expertise. For customers, this means credentials can continue to reflect hands-on, up-to-date expertise aligned with current SAP product capabilities.
The approach builds on the broader evolution of SAP Certification toward practical, skills-based validation. SAP has expanded certification beyond traditional multiple-choice exams to include practical, performance-based assessments designed to validate how professionals apply their expertise.
Stay Certified now brings more of that same focus on application into the ongoing certification journey, alongside greater flexibility in managing certification renewal. A new 90-day Stay Certified renewal window will allow learners to pass their Stay Certified assessment within the 90-day window, and their certification continues seamlessly based on the original expiry date. Personalized, time-bound reminders will help learners understand when action is required, while improvements within the My Learning section on the SAP Learning site will provide clearer visibility into renewal deadlines and certification expiry.
Bringing hands-on validation to SAP TechEd
SAP is also exploring how other practical learning experiences can play a greater role in staying certified.
At SAP TechEd in Berlin, SAP will pilot an event-based approach that allows eligible learners to fulfill their Stay Certified requirement through participating in on-site, hands-on sessions.
The approach reflects the same principle behind the new roleplay assessments: practical product knowledge counts. Participation in hands-on sessions can be credited toward certification renewal, providing another way for learners to demonstrate current knowledge.
Staying certified in an era of continuous change
Earning a certification represents an important milestone. In a technology environment that changes continuously, however, expertise cannot remain static.
New releases, capabilities, and AI-powered ways of working mean professionals need to continually revisit what they know, understand what has changed, and apply that knowledge in new contexts.
Reimagined Stay Certified brings that principle more directly into certification renewal.
AI-powered roleplays and the hands-on pilot at SAP TechEd expand the ways learners can demonstrate practical, up-to-date knowledge as part of the Stay Certified experience.
As SAP technology continues to evolve, staying certified is about more than maintaining a credential. It is about demonstrating that the expertise behind it continues to evolve, too.
Diana Alexandra Roesner is head of Certification Transformation at SAP.
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