Your SAP Customizations Are a Black Box. That's a Multi-Million Dollar Risk.
For global enterprises, SAP is the central nervous system. It runs finance, supply chain, HR, and manufacturing. While standard SAP provides immense power, competitive advantage often comes from customizing and extending it to fit unique business processes. This is the world of ABAP. It is the language that allows you to tailor the world's most powerful ERP system to your precise needs.
But this power comes with immense responsibility and risk. A poorly written ABAP program can bring a multi-billion dollar supply chain to a grinding halt, cause catastrophic data corruption in financial records, or create subtle performance degradations that cost millions in wasted computing resources. The gap between a developer who knows basic ABAP syntax and an architect who understands the underlying SAP NetWeaver stack, modern ABAP Objects, and performance tuning is a chasm.
An engineer who can write a simple report is not an ABAP expert. An expert understands the difference between a BAPI, a BAdI, and a User Exit. They can write efficient Open SQL and know when not to. They can debug a complex business process in a production system. They think in terms of transport requests, system stability, and business continuity. This playbook explains how Axiom Cortex finds the engineers who have this deep, enterprise-grade discipline.
Traditional Vetting and Vendor Limitations
A nearshore vendor sees "SAP ABAP" on a résumé and assumes competence. The interview consists of asking a few syntax questions or about their experience with a specific module (like FI/CO or SD). This superficial approach completely fails to test for the architectural judgment and performance discipline required to safely modify a mission-critical SAP system.
The predictable and painful results of this flawed vetting are common in large SAP environments:
- Performance Disasters: A custom report runs for hours instead of minutes because the developer wrote a nested `LOOP AT` statement that performs a full table scan on a massive table like `BSEG`. They do not know how to use hashed tables or create an appropriate secondary index.
- The "Z-Table" Swamp: Instead of using standard SAP enhancement techniques, the team creates hundreds of custom "Z-tables," leading to a maintenance nightmare and making future SAP upgrades exponentially more difficult and expensive.
- Update Task Failures: A critical business transaction fails and rolls back because a developer wrote custom code that caused a deadlock or failed to handle errors correctly within an update task.
- Transport and Release Chaos: Changes are transported to production in the wrong sequence or without proper testing, causing system-wide failures. There is no disciplined approach to managing the transport lifecycle.
How Axiom Cortex Evaluates ABAP Developers
Axiom Cortex is designed to find engineers who think like enterprise architects. We test for the practical skills and the safety-first mindset essential for developing on the SAP platform. We evaluate candidates across four critical dimensions.
Dimension 1: Modern ABAP and Core Language Proficiency
This dimension tests whether a candidate is stuck in the procedural ABAP of the past or has embraced modern, object-oriented ABAP and the features of ABAP 7.4 and beyond.
We provide a problem and evaluate their ability to:
- Write Object-Oriented ABAP: Can they design and implement a solution using classes, interfaces, and inheritance?
- Use Modern Syntax: Are they proficient in modern ABAP features like inline declarations, constructor expressions, and table expressions to write cleaner and more concise code?
Dimension 2: Performance Tuning and SQL
In a system with multi-terabyte databases, performance is not optional. This dimension tests a candidate's ability to write efficient code that will not bring the system to its knees.
We present a slow-running program and evaluate if they can:
- Analyze Performance Traces: Can they use tools like the ABAP Trace (SAT) or the SQL Trace (ST05) to identify performance bottlenecks?
- Write Efficient Open SQL: Do they know how to write a query that uses an appropriate index? Can they explain the difference between a `FOR ALL ENTRIES` select and a `JOIN`?
- Optimize Internal Table Operations: Do they know when to use a standard, sorted, or hashed internal table for maximum performance?
Dimension 3: Enhancement and Integration Frameworks
An elite ABAP developer knows how to extend the SAP standard functionality safely and correctly.
We evaluate their knowledge of:
- Enhancement Techniques: Can they explain the difference between a User Exit, a Customer Exit, a BAdI, and an Enhancement Spot? Can they choose the right technique for a given requirement?
- Integration Technologies: Are they familiar with building and consuming services using RFC, BAPIs, IDocs, and modern web services (SOAP/REST)?
Dimension 4: ABAP for S/4HANA
With the shift to S/4HANA, the rules of ABAP development have changed. This dimension tests a candidate's readiness for the modern SAP platform.
Axiom Cortex assesses a candidate's understanding of:
- The HANA Database: Do they understand the "code-to-data" paradigm? Can they leverage HANA-specific features by writing ABAP Managed Database Procedures (AMDP)?
- Core Data Services (CDS) Views: Can they build and expose business logic using CDS views, the new standard for data modeling in S/4HANA?
From a Legacy System to an Innovation Platform
When you staff your SAP team with ABAP developers who have passed the Axiom Cortex assessment, you are investing in a team that can not only maintain your mission-critical system but also transform it into a platform for innovation. They will build customizations that are robust, performant, and ready for the future of S/4HANA, maximizing the return on your massive investment in the SAP ecosystem.