The SAP next-gen partnership campaign of the SAP PartnerEdge Program in 2019 continues with new enhancements detailed in the 2021 Partner Guide.
During the kick-off of the virtual event SAP Innovation Day for Partners held from 10th to 15th of November, one of the keynote speakers, SAP Chief Partner Officer Karl Fahrbach, shared the enhancements in the SAP PartnerEdge program that is centred on delivering customer growth and success.
The 2021 version of the Program Guide, which was originally slated to roll out in July 2020, has now been released to include enhancements in the Partner Grouping Agreements (PGAs) to help SAP Partners expand their geographical footprint. SAP’s latest cross-border certification opens up growth opportunities for sell partners to pool their consulting resources across borders within a region, enabling them to sell to multiple countries.
Elaborating on SAP’s newest customer success strategy of removing barriers that restrict SAP Partners in expanding their businesses, Fahrbach said:
“We’re now positioned to orchestrate the full customer journey with you.”
“For many years, SAP tried to do all things to all customers. And that approach didn’t work. We just cannot serve the needs of every customer. And that’s OK. We have an ecosystem of more than 22,000 amazing partners, each with expertise in different areas,” the SAP Chief Partner Officer added.
The New PGA
Considering the global, economic impact of COVID-19 to many businesses including SAP Partners, SAP has decided to delay and deliver the changes in a more phased implementation.
In the LinkedIn post of Teri Hamann, SAP’s senior VP of Partner Experience shared:
“Last week we announced significant enhancements to the SAP PartnerEdge program that will make partnering with us more attractive and create a better experience. We’ve been working on them for the past few months, and today (10th November) I want to introduce you to one dimension: Partner Grouping Agreement.”
According to Hamann, the PGA enables SAP and its Partners to manage the Partner journey more holistically.
“For our multi-entity Partners, we now can bring together all their affiliates into a single corporate group. Partners will then be able to pool resources to meet specific requirements, simplified invoicing, present a unified profile in the SAP Partner Finder, and much more. It is a transformational enhancement that will help partners across the globe and the vehicle we will utilize to deliver future program benefits,” she said.
SAP Partners can now access the same tools used by SAP’s internal salesforce such as the SAP Partner Finder, which uses AI to help patch customers with partners.
The German software company is also cutting down the cost of its partnership agreements. Previously, a new partner wanting to join the SAP PartnerEdge program had to pay a fee in every country for every entity.
“Today, we’re tiering the fee structure at a substantially reduced price. That will let us manage more of the holistic relationship beyond just the border or the country that they’re in today,” Hamann highlighted.
The rollout of the improvements in the SAP PartnerEdge program, which are known to be the most significant since the company introduced it 15 years ago, will begin in January 2021, with additional benefits to be released within next year.
