SAP this month launched a new Part­ner Com­pe­ten­cy Frame­work, char­ac­ter­iz­ing the framework’s first iter­a­tion as ​“the most sig­nif­i­cant enhance­ment” and a ​“big change” to improve how cur­rent and future SAP cus­tomers find and eval­u­ate part­ners across the SAP ecosystem.

The ini­tial frame­work con­sists of three des­ig­na­tions — essen­tial, advanced, and expert — that rep­re­sent part­ner expe­ri­ence, skills, and exper­tise across sev­en com­pe­ten­cies and 21 spe­cial­iza­tions. The frame­work, devel­oped col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly by cus­tomers, part­ners, and admin­is­tered by SAP, is a more sophis­ti­cat­ed, detailed approach to move beyond cur­rent sil­ver and gold badg­ing designations.

“We want to make sure that cus­tomers, when they are look­ing for a part­ner, have clear, rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion,” said Karl Fahrbach, SAP Chief Part­ner Offi­cer. ​“This frame­work lets cus­tomers look for the skills, expe­ri­ences, and exper­tise they seek — what’s rel­e­vant to them. Part­ners can dif­fer­en­ti­ate and dis­tin­guish them­selves. We’ve made it easy for cus­tomers to understand.

“When a cus­tomer wants a solu­tion for a spe­cif­ic prob­lem, we’ve ampli­fied what a part­ner is real­ly good at. And the des­ig­na­tions are real­ly the SAP seal of approval,” he added.

Cloud-Focused Frame­work

The frame­work is aimed at orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing SAP solu­tions and part­ners with cloud, hybrid, and cloud-tran­si­tion expe­ri­ence. In gen­er­al, the com­pe­ten­cies are tiered. Com­pe­ten­cies reflect sev­er­al sets of cri­te­ria asso­ci­at­ed with key ele­ments to demon­strate a partner’s exper­tise and skill sets with a par­tic­u­lar SAP solu­tion and/​or in each indus­try or line of business.

The cur­rent com­pe­ten­cy set includes:

• ERP
• ERP for small and mid-sized businesses
• Sup­ply chain management
• Human cap­i­tal management
• Spend man­age­ment
• Cus­tomer rela­tion­ship management
• SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Platform

Des­ig­na­tions Reflect Glob­al Scope

The spe­cial­iza­tions, mean­while, are not tiered and fea­ture exten­sive details relat­ed to part­ner exper­tise and skill sets at the prod­uct and process lev­el, accord­ing to Beth Glasstet­ter, SAP VP, Glob­al SAP Part­ner Edge, Design and Readi­ness. Glasstet­ter called the spe­cial­iza­tions ​“build­ing blocks” for the com­pe­ten­cies while empha­siz­ing that the new des­ig­na­tions are glob­al in scope — a plus for multi­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing part­ner support.

She also not­ed the frame­work will evolve and that cur­rent top­ics that may be added in the future include indus­tries, the Intel­li­gent Enter­prise, secu­ri­ty, and sup­port collaboration.

SAP lead­ers also said part­ner per­for­mance and achieve­ment are key dri­vers to attain and rep­re­sent com­pe­ten­cies and spe­cial­iza­tions. Part­ners must doc­u­ment and report to SAP relat­ed to its knowl­edge base (solu­tion con­sul­tants, project man­agers and plat­form experts), cus­tomer suc­cess (deliv­ered projects, cus­tomer ref­er­ences), and pro­fi­cien­cies (mul­ti­ple spe­cial­iza­tions and SAP port­fo­lio cov­er­age, part­ner IP based on BTP).

In the frame­work announce­ment SAP includ­ed new brand­ing com­po­nents, mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als and logos that part­ners may begin to use to eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy des­ig­na­tions, com­pe­ten­cies, and spe­cial­iza­tions. Once part­ners doc­u­ment and gain approvals under the new frame­work rubric, cus­tomers will begin to see the new infor­ma­tion and details in SAP Part­ner Find­er and with­in part­ner profiles.