SAP India has created a Partner Advisory Board, and plans to build further its channel ecosystem in India.
“We want our channel partners to be more equipped and capture the market opportunities by addressing the future digital needs of our customers and prospects. To support this, we are investing in knowledge sharing capabilities and initiatives such as the Partner Advisory Board aims to drive business with partners for mutual benefit,” said Avinash Kumar Purwar, vice president, global partner operations, SAP Indian Subcontinent.
“Customers have been at our core throughout SAP’s two decades in India and expansion to our partner strategy further strengthens our commitment to the ecosystem.”
The Partner Advisory Board, which will work closely with user group INDUS to address customers’ business needs using new solution and provide the extended partner network with insights to help expand the customer base, has 11 representatives from the partner ecosystem:
- Chida Barat – CEO, Zieta Technologies
- Prashant Pansare – Managing Director, Inteliment Technologies Pvt. Ltd
- Venugopal Uppalapati – Chairman, vCentric Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
- Mike Dhall – CEO, ZenFocus Software Pvt. Ltd.
- Rakesh Barik – Technology Leader, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd.
- Mohan Ramanan – General Manager and Head – Business Applications, Wipro Limited
- Sanjeev Deshpande – Managing Director, iTelligence India Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
- Andy Stevenson – CEO, Fujitsu India Pvt. Ltd.
- Anindya Basu – Country Managing Director, Accenture Services India Pvt. Ltd.
- Balakrishna Navaluri – Chief Operating Officer, Yash Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
- Arnab Basu – Technology Consulting and Digital Leader, PwC India Pvt. Ltd.
SAP India also plans to build capability among its partners, particularly in cloud solutions such as SuccessFactors, Ariba, Analytics and customer engagement and commerce solutions such as Hybris. The company has committed to increase investment in this enablement through initiatives such as the SAP Partner Sales Academy, SAP Presales Certification Drive and SAP Platinum Academy.
Further, SAP India plans to move to a 100 per cent partner-led go-to-market strategy for its SME business. While currently partners facilitate 70 cent of SAP India’s SME business, the company will implement focused programs to grow this proportion, as well as expand deeper into non-metro locations in India.
