To address the grow­ing vol­ume and spe­cial­ized busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy needs of its cus­tomers, SAP is shar­ing new and expand­ed tools and ser­vices with its part­ner ecosystem.

In a recent ASUG inter­view, John Sco­la, Glob­al Vice Pres­i­dent, SAP Soft­ware Part­ners, dis­cussed what he hears from SAP users, how part­ners are evolv­ing their capa­bil­i­ties and ser­vices, and what changes and inno­va­tions cus­tomers should expect in 2023.

This is an edit­ed ver­sion of the interview.

Ques­tion: We often start inter­views with this ques­tion: What are you hear­ing from SAP cus­tomers direct­ly, John?

Answer: Cus­tomers ask what they always ask, ​“How can you help solve my busi­ness needs? Can you help in my spe­cif­ic indus­try? Can you help with this hir­ing or ana­lyt­ics issue?” It’s pret­ty con­sis­tent. The oth­er ques­tion is, ​“How can you help me make the most of my SAP solu­tion?” They’re look­ing to dri­ve high­er lev­els of per­for­mance and opti­miza­tion out of their SAP environment.

Q: Are there some specifics that you’re hear­ing more loud­ly in 2023, in terms of busi­ness challenges?

A: Cus­tomers are still on their busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney, but they haven’t yet achieved it. I saw a stat that said, ​“20% of com­pa­nies have achieved more than 80% of their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion goals.” That’s only 20%. That oth­er 80% need a lot of help. And they’re look­ing to our part­ners to help them com­plete the journey. 

Q: One top­ic we want to cov­er is chang­ing cus­tomer expec­ta­tions. Can you dis­cuss that a lit­tle bit?

A: In the cloud, the val­ue propo­si­tion is, ​“This is going to be easy.” So, cus­tomer demand for ease-of-use is increas­ing. They expect solu­tions to work out-of-the-box. That’s where our part­ners come in. Cus­tomers say, ​“Make it work. Make it quick.” And our part­ners are able to do that.

Our part­ners could address cus­tomer needs with cus­tom devel­op­ment. They could con­fig­ure a solu­tion to do what­ev­er the cus­tomer needs. But is that quick? Not real­ly. That could be mul­ti­ple months or a year-long engage­ment in some cas­es. I’m try­ing to say to soft­ware part­ners, ​“Don’t do cus­tom devel­op­ment. Make repeat­able Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty. Make IP so you could be like an SAP and sell your own soft­ware to meet cus­tomer demand.” When a part­ner builds an app, they can inte­grate and imple­ment that app so it works with the envi­ron­ment they’re sell­ing into, as opposed to pitch­ing a big cus­tom devel­op­ment project.

Part­ners that devel­op IP increase their mar­gin and deliv­er what cus­tomers are ask­ing for, which is, ​“Get me up and run­ning quick­ly so I can real­ize the val­ue of what’s been sold to me.”

Q: Can you pro­vide more specifics on what cus­tomers want in terms of out-of-the-box capa­bil­i­ties and ser­vices, and on plat­forms and appli­ca­tions that SAP offers?

A: Cus­tomers are look­ing to dri­ve use of their solu­tions very quick­ly. Our part­ner DataXstream sold a deal to Pacif­ic Coast Sup­ply to stream­line order man­age­ment. Pacif­ic was look­ing to roll this out to all areas and their sales teams. It would take around six months or so to train employ­ees and get the SAP solu­tion up and run­ning. Pacif­ic need­ed to roll it out to all their stores so sales reps could use it as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Six months was too long.

DataXstream came in with their solu­tion, which they built on SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form. They reduced train­ing time from four months to four days, which drove an improve­ment of gross mar­gin of around 1% and drove faster inven­to­ry turnover by 30%. 

That’s an exam­ple of a part­ner dri­ving adop­tion and ease-of-use using their solu­tion and interface.

Q: Are there spe­cial­ized part­ners you are see­ing evolve or surface?

A: We’ve got a lot of part­ners in the HR space. They work with our SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors solu­tion set to devel­op­ing solu­tions that dri­ve bet­ter pro­fil­ing of can­di­dates. Part­ners such as Eight­fold have built appli­ca­tions that mine job appli­ca­tions and do a bet­ter job tying them to skill com­pe­ten­cies. This gives the cus­tomer a bet­ter list of can­di­dates to call and move along the hir­ing process. It’s not new, but it’s def­i­nite­ly in hot demand. 

Con­ver­gen­tIS is a part­ner that came out of the SAP App­House in Cal­gary. They had a pow­er com­pa­ny cus­tomer that was try­ing to fig­ure out how to con­vert old elec­tric­i­ty meters to smart meters so they could stream­line the intake of data and be read via a mobile device. They built a solu­tion based on SAP BTP, which man­ages the return and dis­tri­b­u­tion of the meters. They deliv­ered real-time vis­i­bil­i­ty into how meters were mov­ing, which reduced ware­house oper­at­ing time by 15% and cre­at­ed 100% automa­tion of meter move­ment for the company. 

That’s the kind of inno­va­tion we see and try to dri­ve with part­ners. They become more spe­cial­ized, show more val­ue, and stand out from the crowd.

Q: What is SAP active­ly doing with these emerg­ing chal­lenges for partners?

A: In Sep­tem­ber we rolled out our new com­pe­ten­cy frame­work. It real­ly show­cas­es part­ners capa­bil­i­ties so cus­tomers can quick­ly under­stand, ​“Oh, that part­ner is skilled in the area I need. I’ll go call them.” 

We also rolled out the free SAP part­ner demo envi­ron­ment, which allows part­ners to run dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios they haven’t been able to run before to show cus­tomers how they can meet their needs down to a spe­cif­ic sce­nario. We cre­at­ed 600 dif­fer­ent online and offline sce­nar­ios for our partners. 

We also rolled out SAP Build, a low-code tool that doesn’t require devel­op­er skills.

In the cloud world, a lot of cus­tomers want to have a direct rela­tion­ship with SAP. They want the con­tract on SAP paper. So how do we help part­ners in this sit­u­a­tion? We cre­at­ed the SAP Part­nerEdge Cloud Choice, flex mod­el. It’s a com­mis­sion-based mod­el that allows part­ners to own and man­age the account while the deal goes on SAP paper. The ben­e­fit is that part­ners are paid com­mis­sion for man­ag­ing cloud deals and through­out the cus­tomer life­cy­cle. This has been trans­for­ma­tive for us because we’ve shift­ed a lot of tra­di­tion­al reselling busi­ness to this com­mis­sion-based busi­ness. We launched this in 2021 and it now rep­re­sents 50% of our total indi­rect cloud business.

Q: And is that on SAP cloud solu­tions or on any cloud solution?

A: It is on SAP cloud solu­tions on our price list and some of our solu­tion exten­sions busi­ness, for exam­ple with DocuSign and OpenText. 

Q: ASUG is releas­ing our ​“Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer” research over the next sev­er­al weeks. The num­ber one chal­lenge was inte­gra­tion between SAP and non-SAP envi­ron­ments. How is SAP help­ing the part­ner ecosys­tem with this challenge?

A: This is my world. The SAP Part­nerEdge Build Pro­gram is essen­tial­ly for soft­ware part­ners to help them dri­ve their busi­ness by build­ing IP that inte­grates with or is built on SAP BTP, which was real­ly devel­oped to address inte­gra­tion and make life eas­i­er for cus­tomers. The SAP BTP com­mu­ni­ty is extreme­ly active and dri­ves a lot of engage­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion, not just between SAP and part­ners, but partner-to-partner.

We also offer coach­ing ser­vices. If part­ners are hav­ing a chal­lenge with a par­tic­u­lar build, they can reg­is­ter for coach­ing and align with our devel­op­ment teams to under­stand what’s going on.

We’re also iden­ti­fy­ing white spaces for part­ners, mak­ing it clear­er what solu­tions they should be build­ing. This dri­ves inte­gra­tion and opens new mar­kets for partners.

And part­ners can lever­age SAP BTP to test, devel­op, and demo their services. 

Our Solu­tion Adop­tion team helps part­ners with build­ing appli­ca­tions that are going to be inte­grat­ing with SAP solutions.

Q: We have part­ner mem­bers and SAP licensee mem­bers. Giv­en chang­ing dynam­ics in the part­ner world and part­ner ecosys­tem, what do you want ASUG mem­bers to under­stand about the changes in the sup­port and what they should do differently?

A: If I were to give cus­tomers one thing to think about, I would say SAP is dri­ving inno­va­tion with our part­ners to help get more val­ue out of your solu­tions. Cus­tomers should know that SAP is 100% all-in on our part­ner ecosys­tem, whether it is help­ing part­ners build inno­va­tion, enable cus­tomer trans­for­ma­tion, or extend­ing SAP solutions. 

Under the lead­er­ship of our Chief Part­ner Offi­cer, Karl Fahrbach, and the sup­port of CEO Chris­t­ian Klein and the SAP Board, the required invest­ments to make part­ners as amaz­ing as pos­si­ble to dri­ve great cus­tomer engage­ment and life­time val­ue is here. 

At our recent Cus­tomer Suc­cess kick­off meet­ing in Sin­ga­pore, our sales team and the APJ team brought in part­ners. Part­ners have a seat at the table, prov­ing how vital they are for SAP and cus­tomer suc­cess. Part­ners are part of the fam­i­ly. We are invest­ing in them and they’re reap­ing the rewards of that invest­ment and as a result cus­tomers are get­ting great prod­ucts, ser­vices, and busi­ness outcomes.