SAP Global Partner Summit Online featured keynote speakers including SAP CEO Christian Klein and Chief Partner Officer Karl Fahrbach to speak about leading technology, partner programs, resources, and opportunities.
SAP has brought its annual industry-leading partner event online last June 3 to continue its thrust on delivering innovation and support to SAP partners and customers. As businesses navigate the road to recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, the SAP Global Partner Summit Online emphasised how the German company remains focused on helping partners deliver customer success quickly and efficiently.
SAP CEO and Chief Partner Keynotes
The keynote sessions highlighted SAP partners’ innovations for today’s most pressing business issues and SAP’s initiatives that are partner and customer-centric. Joined by other SAP and industry leaders, CEO Christian Klein and SAP’s first-ever Chief Partner Officer Karl Fahrbach talked about the partners’ critical role as the driving force to customer success.
“Everyone at SAP has to understand that customer success is not about the point of sale,” Klein said.
“It continues across the sales lifecycle, and partners play a vital role in that. So, we have to double down on that,” he added.
The SAP CEO stressed that the company is committed to developing tools and programs that would simplify and automate partner interactions to bring a better experience for the entire SAP ecosystem.
“Customer success means that we recognize that, in order to make our customers successful, we need to do it with our partners,” Fahrbach said. “The role of the partner has changed within SAP. It’s no longer about sales with our reselling partners or implementation with our services partners.”
As the chief of SAP’s global partner business, he stated:
“Customer success means that we recognise that, in order to make our customers successful, we need to do it with our partners.”
“The role of the partner has changed within SAP. It’s no longer about sales with our reselling partners or implementation with our services partners,” he stressed.
Fahrbach also commended that the partners are the key players in leading the intelligent enterprise.
Initiatives for Partners and ISVs
SAP Global Partner Summit Online introduced new initiatives and enhancements to help independent software vendors (ISVs) and implementation partners serve SAP customers better.
Partner Delivery Quality Framework (PDQF). This is an initiative for implementation partners to help them implement higher-quality projects faster. It consists of three components: project delivery, partner skills, and post-sales management.
SAP’s testing and demo systems used internally to develop and demonstrate projects for customers are also now open to SAP partners’ access, which will enable them to build applications that integrate various SAP platforms such as S/4HANA, SAP Ariba, SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Partner Solution Progression framework. This program is for independent software vendor (ISV) partners that develop SAP-based applications and extensions. Through the framework, partners can develop SAP validated products faster and make them available on the SAP App Center. This allows ISVs to advance into the Partner Spotlight program wherein they get more go-to-market support and then further on be invited to the SAP’s premium certification initiative and be an SAP Endorsed App.
“Business on the SAP App Center has quadrupled, but it took way too long for partners to become a partner in the App Center and to onboard their solution until they make their first dollar in revenue,” Klein shared.
“We have significantly improved how you become a partner and how you publish in the App Center,” he emphasised.
Bengaluru-based, AI-powered recruitment platform Skillate is one of the apps released a few weeks ago in the SAP App Center. Skillate is a partner in the SAP PartnerEdge program.
Credit service options. Recognising the partners’ concerns on the cash-flow issues and credit access at these uncertain times, SAP postponed SAP PartnerEdge program fees until later in the year and will not raise annual maintenance fees. Also, partners can now use a consumption-based pricing model previously available only for SAP’s direct salesforce with the Cloud Platform Enterprise Agreement (CPEA).
“We also launched credit service options to make sure that partners have access to credit and have revised commercial guidelines for the cloud,” Fahrbach detailed
“This will provide our partners the ability to be flexible in the way customers consume our software, which is especially important these days with COVID-19, ” he said.
