As a part of the SAP PartnerEdge program, the new Competency Framework has been designed to improve vendor, partner and customer satisfaction by highlighting the experience and skills of SAP Partners.
When it comes to supporting businesses of all sizes and across many different industries with their digital transformation and day-to-day operations, SAP understands that its partners play a crucial role. The SAP PartnerEdge program was launched to increase SAP software and technology’s scope, assist the company in capitalizing on expanding markets, and give enterprises of all sizes the chance to participate in the SAP ecosystem through a variety of categories and levels of partners.
To further enable its ecosystem and channel partners in increasing profits and expanding their businesses, the German tech giant established a new Partner Success unit last year. In the same year, SAP announced new initiatives like the ability to test and demonstrate solutions, an interactive dashboard for tracking partner engagements, and a more comprehensive plan for partners to share in both go-to-market and revenue.
With the goal of enhancing vendor, partner, and customer satisfaction, the company introduced a new Competency Framework from the SAP PartnerEdge program that highlights the expertise and core competencies of SAP Partners in order to drive customer success with solutions and offerings that also help them gain a competitive edge in today’s business environment. The Competency Framework was developed as a natural progression of the SAP PartnerEdge initiative to assist partners in differentiating themselves and drawing attention to their unique set of strengths and capabilities in the areas of solution and consultant expertise, customer success, and technical prowess.
SAP’s Chief Partner Officer Karl Fahrbach has emphasized that the company’s partners are essential to the company’s and its customers’ digital transformation efforts. He explained that SAP’s goal is to make it simple for clients to zero in on the solution that works best for their organization.
“Additionally, it allows SAP to reward and recognize partners’ investments in high-quality delivery practices that drive customer adoption and success,” Fahrbach added.
Expanding the SAP PartnerEdge Program
According to Paul Edwards, Director of Software Channels & Ecosystems at IDC, SAP PartnerEdge’s Competency Framework promotes partners’ visibility while assisting clients in locating those who possess the necessary skills to resolve their business issues. SAP’s new strategy places an emphasis on the contributions made by partners in ensuring the success of SAP’s customers.
Partners will be categorized in the framework based on their level of skill and their area of expertise. Seven core competencies, such as “human capital management,” will be established, each with three progressively more demanding levels of proficiency: “essential,” “advanced,” and “expert.” As such, partners can focus on a particular product or process, such as talent management, within each competency. Furthermore, partner performance will be tracked and achieved in three dimensions such as in-depth knowledge, client satisfaction, and proficiency.
With the introduction of the new Competency Framework, the SAP PartnerEdge program will be expanded in order to:
- Identify partners’ skills and specialization across product areas and regions, and reward them for their commitment to customers’ lifetime values.
- Support partners in anticipating client demands through an automated designation process that displays achieved and at-risk classifications in the SAP for Me platform, which partners are using to handle their interactions with customers and SAP.
- Incorporate updated SAP partner logos into the SAP Partner Finder, a database of partners’ skills that customers can utilize to find and evaluate candidates for helping them achieve their digital transformation objectives.
Commenting on the latest SAP Partner initiative, Petra M. Schuster, Director of Global SAP Alliances at BearingPoint, said in a statement:
“The new competency framework provides detailed transparency to the customers, a holistic view of our specific expertise as well as our partner IP based on SAP BTP, which makes us different compared to the previous model of the SAP PartnerEdge program. The customers will also benefit from the global consolidation of competencies as they will get the best-qualified experts independent of the country of origin. This supports our global approach best.”
