Last week, SAP host­ed the first-ever dig­i­tal Glob­al Part­ner Sum­mit. The event was geared toward the soft­ware provider’s exten­sive ecosys­tem of more than 21,000 part­ner com­pa­nies. These part­ners work with SAP to build on the company’s soft­ware or pro­vide knowl­edge in imple­ment­ing SAP solu­tions for cus­tomers. The con­fer­ence fea­tured a keynote address high­light­ing some of the biggest changes and inno­va­tions in the SAP part­ner envi­ron­ment. Atten­dees also had access to 36 break­out ses­sions, which pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion on changes to the part­ner ecosys­tem and guid­ance on new ways to bet­ter serve SAP customers.

“Every­one at SAP has to under­stand that cus­tomer suc­cess is not just about the point-of-sale,” said Chris­t­ian Klein, CEO of SAP. ​“We have to con­tin­ue across the cus­tomer life cycle. And across the life cycle, our part­ners are play­ing a vital role in that.”

The online SAP Glob­al Part­ner Sum­mit—which is avail­able to watch on-demand—fea­tured some inter­est­ing news and announce­ments with sig­nif­i­cant effects on SAP customers.

SAP Part­ners Focus­ing on Customers 

Cus­tomer suc­cess took the front stage at the SAP Glob­al Part­ner Sum­mit. Through­out the entire con­fer­ence, speak­ers and thought lead­ers remind­ed atten­dees that the suc­cess of cus­tomers depends on col­lab­o­ra­tion between SAP and its partners.

“We need to work togeth­er to ensure cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and hap­pi­ness in the adop­tion of our solu­tions,” said Ralph Stem­ler, senior vice pres­i­dent, co-lead of glob­al busi­ness devel­op­ment and ecosys­tems and head of the indus­try ecosys­tem at SAP.

Dur­ing the keynote pre­sen­ta­tion, Mar­ty Mru­gal, glob­al head of cus­tomer suc­cess at SAP Glob­al, dis­cussed SAP’s Cus­tomer First ini­tia­tive, and the impor­tance of that mind­set. Part of putting cus­tomers first means work­ing in tan­dem with partners.

“SAP’s mind­set is all about cre­at­ing the best cus­tomer expe­ri­ence in the soft­ware indus­try,” Mru­gal said. ​“Ensur­ing that we have the best cus­tomer expe­ri­ence means we have to have the best partners.”

With that in mind, the event detailed new changes that will assist part­ners as they devel­op con­tent in coop­er­a­tion with SAP and gave guid­ance on how to best reach and serve SAP customers.

Accel­er­at­ing Cloud Implementations

One of the ways SAP is try­ing to help both its cus­tomers and part­ners is by focus­ing on busi­ness out­comes using the cloud. As a result of the COVID-19 out­break, imple­ment­ing SAP prod­ucts into a company’s IT ecosys­tem has become more com­plex. But many of these deploy­ments can be done in the cloud as opposed to on-premise in response to the chal­lenges of sup­port­ing a dis­trib­uted workforce.

To illus­trate this point, Mru­gal explained how Vistaprint, an SAP cus­tomer, was able to com­plete its deploy­ment of SAP S/4HANA for sup­ply chain and finance dur­ing the epi­dem­ic with help from SAP and Cloud4C, an SAP part­ner and cloud man­age­ment service. 

Indus­tries Mov­ing to the Cloud 

As cus­tomers become more com­fort­able with using the cloud in their tech­nol­o­gy stack, SAP announced two cloud-based inno­va­tions. First, as the com­pa­ny looks to address the needs of all its cus­tomers across all indus­tries, SAP will have entire indus­try-spe­cif­ic clouds for its users.

“This will allow out our cus­tomers to run their entire busi­ness in the cloud,” Stem­ler said.

This offer­ing will include indus­try-spe­cif­ic solu­tions from part­ners cov­er­ing 25 dif­fer­ent indus­tries and 125 sub­ver­ti­cals. This ini­tia­tive would not be pos­si­ble with­out the SAP part­ners who build ver­ti­cal appli­ca­tions and solu­tions on SAP platforms.

Sec­ond, SAP has com­mit­ted to assist with the tran­si­tion if a cus­tomer decides to move onto a cloud provider like Google or Ama­zon.

“Hyper­scalers are a huge force in the mar­ket,” said ​“Stem­ler. ​“If a cus­tomer has decid­ed to move its plat­form or work­flows with a par­tic­u­lar hyper­scaler, then will make sure that [the plat­form or work­flows] run on that infra­struc­ture successfully.”

SAP App Curation 

Some of the biggest changes announced at the SAP Glob­al Part­ner Sum­mit were cen­tered around apps. The SAP App store fea­tures more than 1,500 part­ner solu­tions cov­er­ing dif­fer­ent indus­tries and prod­uct lines. To increase the num­ber of qual­i­ty appli­ca­tions fea­tured in the store, SAP unveiled its Part­ner Solu­tion Progress frame­work. This will allow part­ners to bring their solu­tions to mar­ket soon­er, while also giv­ing a path­way for the appli­ca­tions to be val­i­dat­ed by SAP.

“Cus­tomers will see that we have vet­ted solu­tions and are putting a lot of thought into how to enrich and enhance the port­fo­lio,” said Mani Pirouz, senior vice pres­i­dent and glob­al head of part­ner inno­va­tion at SAP.

Part of the Part­ner Solu­tion Progress is the SAP Endorsed Apps ini­tia­tive, which was announced dur­ing the event’s keynote. This des­ig­na­tion is giv­en by SAP and sig­ni­fies to cus­tomers that the app in ques­tion is a qual­i­ty prod­uct and has been vet­ted and test­ed by SAP.

“We want to make sure [part­ner apps] are at the high­est lev­el of qual­i­ty for cus­tomers,” said Tom Roberts, senior vice pres­i­dent of the glob­al part­ner orga­ni­za­tion at SAP.

Cus­tomer Suc­cess Isn’t About Sales

While the SAP Glob­al Part­ner Sum­mit focused on the soft­ware company’s many part­ners, the event still gives cus­tomers an insight into what SAP is think­ing and how it is striv­ing to make the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence better.

“Cus­tomer suc­cess is not about dri­ving soft­ware sales,” said Marc Rolfe, senior vice pres­i­dent and co-lead of the glob­al busi­ness devel­op­ment and ecosys­tems at SAP. ​“It’s about deliv­er­ing end-to-end solutions.”

Read ASUG­’s research on SAP S/4HANA cer­ti­fi­ca­tions of third-par­ty appli­ca­tions. You can also catch up with the lat­est cus­tomer sto­ries at ASUG­FOR­WARD. ASUG mem­bers can reg­is­ter at no charge today.