a recent discussion got me thinking. who are the legacy sfsf consulting partners and who are the newbies. why does this matter? customers need as much information as possible to make smart choices.
to achieve this i went to the wayback machine and pulled a sfsf consulting partner list from 2 december 2011 (prior to sap purchase) and a list from today. back then there were a total of 29 partners (5 strategic). today there are 90 partners (9 strategic). in comparing the lists, only one legacy partner is not on the new list. some other legacy partners (learn2perform; knowledgeinfusion) have been purchased and are part of other orgs.
the legacy partners are: accenture; capgemini; ibm; mckinney rogers; pwc; 3dresults; aasonn; arago consulting; drivensystems; droste group; effective people; elkiem; hentity; hrizons; ihouse; inforonics; integrity data; jigsaw-is; knowledge infusion; learn2perform; lockheed martin; northrop grumman; pentos; report designers; satyam; serco; skillpartners; surrex project solutions
some basic observations. unlike the workday market (aggressor bought by deloitte; omnipoint bought by aoh-hewitt), i do not see any legacy sf partners been purchased in the samw way. which brings the following question. how have the 61 newbies managed to become partners (since my understanding is that there must be x consultants with y projects in a specific sfsf product). by headhunting? other?
another observation. since some partners are only partners in specific sfsf products, a customer may need more than one partner to implement sfsf. also, if integrating to sap hcm, a legacy sap hcm consulting company is needed
to have a successful partner experience, customers may have to hire more than one consulting company depending on what is to be implemented
the burning question - to success, quite a few of these partners are going to have to merge or build strategic relationships. this is valid for both legacy and newbie sfsf consulting partners
thoughts??
