Researching my latest article for SAP.info, "Tips for Partners Selling SAP HANA,” gave me a chance to follow up on that critical question that echoed across the Twittersphere during the January launch of SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA: What’s in it for partners?
To find out the answer, I spoke with Claus Gruenewald, vice president SAP Ecosystem & Channels Go-To-Market, SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA. As I learned, SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA provides partners both the competitive advantage of being able to offer their customers the latest technology and an attractive economic model that presents them with opportunities to open new business spaces. “The technology is an enabler to do new innovations in business,” says Grunewald, citing the success of SAP customer and leading manufacturer John Deere, an early adopter. “That is what we are seeing in the first projects right now.”
Once the new technology is up and running on the customer site, it can have a transformational effect on how the customer views its own business.“When partners are working with their customers, they realize the speed that comes with the new technology – performance increases very dramatically,” Gruenewald says. “However, if all of a sudden reports, analytics, and even transactions go that much faster, customers tend then to add other services, business processes, and products – extending their reach into the market.”
Such tremendous gains in computing efficiency provide new opportunities for customers to create a meaningful impact on their business. “No replication of data is necessary anymore,” says Gruenewald. “This gives the business immediate access to real-time insights and enables predictive analysis like never before.”
For partners, SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA brings transformational business opportunities through new services like consulting, building add-ons, and providing support. “The partner economic model is very attractive because it opens so many new spaces,” says Gruenewald in SAP.info. “It’s not the traditional implementation or database migration; there are many other lines of businesses and revenue streams that come with it for partners.”
VARs in particular will want to take note of two new opportunities available with SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA.
- Participation in Ramp Up: For the very first time, VARs are part of the ramp-up phase. This means they are able to nominate their customers for SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA as of the first day when SAP starts go-to-market. If the nomination is successful, the partner can already sell the solution and, if they have system integrator certification, they can start that project right away.
- VAR-Delivered Support: Another first: VARs with the proper SAP support certifications will be able to deliver Level I and II support to their customers. It is even possible for them to start this in the ramp-up phase by using a shadowing concept of working side-by-side with SAP experts.
Gruenewald says that this is an excellent opportunity for partners to create a separate business model around the resell of SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA. VARs especially will be interested in the combination of consulting implementation plus support.
“We believe that the partner economic model is very attractive for SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA because, besides the software sales, it offers the transformational business consulting, partner add-ons and partner apps, and analytics,” he says. “The projects get bigger typically – as well as the value for the partner and the end customer.”
To find out more, see the SAP PartnerEdge landing page for SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA
