Over the past year, SAP has intro­duced a lot of inno­va­tions and pro­grams to its part­ner net­work. At the SAP Glob­al Part­ner Sum­mit in June, the soft­ware com­pa­ny unveiled the SAP Part­ner Deliv­ery Qual­i­ty Frame­work, aimed at improv­ing and increas­ing the num­ber of part­ner imple­men­ta­tions and appli­ca­tions with SAP solu­tions. In Octo­ber, SAP fol­lowed up its Glob­al Part­ner Sum­mit with an online event focused on what is com­ing for SAP part­ners.

“I am very proud of what we have achieved togeth­er to sup­port our cus­tomers,” said Karl Fahrbach, chief part­ner offi­cer at SAP. ​“In many ways, the pan­dem­ic is just an accel­er­a­tor for change.”

The event — which fea­tured IDC and SAP pro­fes­sion­als lay­ing out what the future looks like for SAP part­ners and intro­duced research focused on grow­ing mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties — gave atten­dees a glimpse at how SAP will con­tin­ue assist­ing its part­ners to dri­ve cus­tomer success.

The Grow­ing Cloud Mar­ket for SAP Customers 

One of the most sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of the online event was the research SAP con­duct­ed with IDC, which orig­i­nal­ly looked at oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to SAP part­ners, with a focus on the work­force. ​“We want to focus on the work­force because we want­ed to know how much the ecosys­tem was going to grow,” John Sco­la, glob­al VP, GTM cloud chan­nels at SAP, told ASUG in a recent inter­view. ​“We want to start to giv­ing our part­ners some guid­ance about how their work­force is going to grow, and where they should be recruit­ing. How do they pre­pare for this huge expan­sion of rev­enue opportunity?”

These plans had to adjust as COVID-19 began its march across the globe. IDC and SAP decid­ed to keep their focus on the shifts in the work­force, but also give part­ners a glimpse at what the com­ing months hold for them, as well as for cus­tomers. One of the most sig­nif­i­cant find­ings from the research was in cloud mar­ket growth. Accord­ing to the study, there is an esti­mat­ed $204.4 bil­lion cloud mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty for SAP between now and 2024, rep­re­sent­ing 68% of the total net-new oppor­tu­ni­ties for part­ners. What’s more, because of this increase in mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty, the study esti­mates that employ­ment in the SAP ecosys­tem will rise from 1 mil­lion employ­ees in 2020 to about 1.6 mil­lion by 2024 — some 280,000 of which will come in the form of new consultants.

Tar­get­ed Cloud Investments

“What we see here is that cus­tomers are get­ting used to this ​‘new nor­mal,’ and they are mov­ing for­ward with tar­get­ed invest­ments,” Steve White, pro­gram VP of chan­nels and alliances at IDC, said in an inter­view after the event. Accord­ing to White and Sco­la, these invest­ments are a com­bi­na­tion of cus­tomers rec­og­niz­ing the ease that cloud access grants oper­a­tions, along with cus­tomers con­tin­u­ing their planned tran­si­tion to the cloud. Sco­la also believes that the data indi­cates to cus­tomers that they are on the right path.

“This means for those SAP users who have start­ed their jour­ney on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, they’ve made the right choice,” he said. ​“And I think that for those [cus­tomers] who are on the side­lines and wait­ing to make that move, now is a great time to be work­ing with SAP and its part­ners to con­sid­er how they can start to dip their toes in the water.”

Devel­op­ment and Learn­ing Resources for Partners

The event also fea­tured SAP lead­ers dis­cussing ways the soft­ware com­pa­ny is help­ing part­ners by pro­vid­ing resources that help them devel­op bet­ter solu­tions for cus­tomers. This ties in with SAP’s LACE (land, adopt, con­sume, expand) go-to-mar­ket mod­el it is using to attract and retain both part­ners and cus­tomers. In a ses­sion focused on how part­ners can take advan­tage of SAP resources to help dri­ve busi­ness to cus­tomers, Stef­fen Burg­er, SVP of part­ner enable­ment at SAP, and Hans Georg Uebe, glob­al head of ecosys­tem deliv­ery suc­cess at SAP, walked atten­dees through some of the resources avail­able. The two encour­aged SAP part­ners to increase the capa­bil­i­ties of employ­ees and devel­op new ser­vice offerings.

“You as a part­ner need to think about how to dri­ve con­tin­u­ous inno­va­tion and improve­ment to cus­tomers,” Uebe said. ​“How do we help the cus­tomer con­tin­ue to lever­age the soft­ware and take it to the next level?”

SAP Learn­ing Jour­neys and Inno­va­tion Toolkit

One of the assets the Uebe and Burg­er dis­cussed was the SAP Learn­ing Jour­neys. These online resources include dig­i­tal learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, e‑books, and online class­es cov­er­ing a stag­ger­ing num­ber of top­ics. Many of the jour­neys are geared specif­i­cal­ly toward con­sul­tants and part­ners and are aimed at help­ing to equip users with the skills and know-how to bring more val­ue to SAP cus­tomers. Accord­ing to Burg­er, SAP has ​“har­mo­nized” all of the learn­ing jour­neys while also adding applied skill work­shops. ​“Part­ners can now hit the ground run­ning when they meet cus­tomers,” he said.

Also men­tioned in the event is anoth­er great resource avail­able to SAP part­ners: the inno­va­tion toolk­it. This ini­tia­tive helps part­ners shape and imple­ment a cul­ture of inno­va­tion, plac­ing a par­tic­u­lar focus on ​“process­es, peo­ple, place, lead­er­ship, and tech­nol­o­gy.” It helps part­ners apply Design Think­ing and enter­prise archi­tec­ture to projects as a way alle­vi­ate some of the com­plex­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. ​“We are work­ing on the dif­fer­ent stages of explor­ing, dis­cov­er, design, and deliv­er in a very iter­a­tive mod­el and start­ing with a human-cen­tered approach,” Anja Schnei­der, SVP and glob­al head of cus­tomer inno­va­tion, tech­nol­o­gy, and inno­va­tion at SAP, said in an inter­view with ASUG. ​“We are com­bin­ing Design Think­ing with the method­ol­o­gy of enter­prise architecture.”

The toolk­it pro­vides access to tools that help fos­ter an inno­v­a­tive work cul­ture that rewards cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion in IT strat­e­gy. ​“The inno­va­tion toolk­it helps with mas­ter­ing the inno­va­tion SAP is dri­ving at, while also giv­ing hands-on expe­ri­ence with con­crete action,” Schnei­der said.

The Impor­tance of Uni­fied Data and the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Platform

Schnei­der fin­ished the event with a ses­sion devot­ed to ways SAP is help­ing part­ners fur­ther inno­vate in the SAP ecosys­tem, espe­cial­ly around new busi­ness rev­enue streams and busi­ness models. 

It’s a cru­cial part of the SAP Intel­li­gent Enter­prise strat­e­gy to pro­vide cus­tomers and part­ners with the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form—which Schnei­der described as ​“one sin­gle foun­da­tion stretch­ing across the entire intel­li­gent suite.” This plat­form con­nects SAP solu­tions with busi­ness process­es, appli­ca­tions, and spe­cif­ic tech­nol­o­gy such as data­base man­age­ment and data ana­lyt­ics into a seam­less expe­ri­ence. Cus­tomers can lever­age both SAP and non-SAP data sources as they try to inte­grate solu­tions or extend their busi­ness process­es in both hybrid on-premise and cloud landscapes. 

SAP’s One Domain Model

There are also spe­cif­ic qual­i­ties aligned to this such as the One Domain Mod­el, one work­flow inbox, uni­fied user expe­ri­ence, and more. Mov­ing for­ward, the One Domain Mod­el will make it eas­i­er for part­ners to devel­op solu­tions to help SAP cus­tomers inte­grate and extend their busi­ness­es process­es, while sim­pli­fy­ing the flow of data for cus­tomers. Schnei­der spoke at length about the SAP One Domain Mod­el — also known as the ​“lin­gua fran­ca” on the inte­grat­ed intel­li­gent suite. An impor­tant part of the SAP cloud strat­e­gy, the One Domain Mod­el ensures seam­less work­flows between SAP and part­ner solu­tions while keep­ing busi­ness objects aligned across all applications.

“If you want to run end-to-end ana­lyt­ics and make sure that you can adapt process­es at an ear­ly stage, you need to over­come the data and appli­ca­tion cycles,” Schnei­der said. ​“This is required across enter­prise usage of data if you want to cre­ate new busi­ness models.”

The One Domain Mod­el is vital for part­ners as they try to extend their solu­tions and imple­ment them into the SAP ecosys­tem because it allows a ​“har­mo­niza­tion” of data. Schnei­der not­ed that this will help break down data silos and ulti­mate­ly improve the expe­ri­ences of both SAP cus­tomers and the part­ners serv­ing them. 

Over­all, the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form will be high­ly rel­e­vant for the ecosys­tem going for­ward, as it pro­vides the tech­nol­o­gy lay­er inte­grat­ing and enabling tech­nolo­gies and appli­ca­tions to gain max­i­mum busi­ness val­ue out of enter­prise data across enter­prise process­es end-to-end. ​“The Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form is the strat­e­gy and a port­fo­lio,” Schnei­der said. ​“It is also the foun­da­tion of the Intel­li­gent Enterprise.” 

Read an inter­view with Hans Uebe and Cathy Daum about the SAP Part­ner Deliv­ery Qual­i­ty Framework.