Report on RDS workshop for partners – July, 22nd and 23rd 2014, Bangalore
It is very obvious that our mission “Innovation Adoption at Scale” is only achievable with a strong eco system. The simplification of the consumption of SAP solutions by our customers needs to be supported by providing the right solutions in form of industry best practices and fast deployment methods. Therefore we count on our partners to scale our SAP innovations into the market and support the customers as well as ourselves with co-innovation on crucial and new topics. This means that together with key partners we want to build jointly a comprehensive portfolio to serve the customers with end-to-end solutions which are deployable via Cloud, on premise or in hybrid models.
Our content is key to partners´ business…
Keeping the above charter in mind, I am pleased to share with you that we conducted a two day deep-dive RDS workshop for selected global SAP partners in Bangalore, India. The invited partners, Wipro, HP, IBM, Tata Consulting Services, Tech Mahindra, Atos Origin and Robert Bosch are already serious players in the packaging game. We asked the partners to show up represented by Practice and Competency Heads, Solution Architects and Project Managers to gain most benefits out of the event with a combination of strategic discussions, insights into the SAP Packaging Vision, Portfolio Deep Dives and Expert talks. In addition we have asked the partners to share their honest and frank feedback from real implementations, the usability of our content and of course also their packaged solutions with all our local SaKP employees.
We are very glad the more than 20 representatives including of Senior Executives from these companies attended the event.
…an open dialog is key to success
As shown in the below agenda the workshop enabled partners to get a sneak peek into future topics on SAP’s Solution Packaging, making them aware about our Cloud powered by HANA and other packaging portfolio, and allowed them to interact with RDS solution experts for deep dives on hot topics on the RDS Show Floor, a fair like setup. The conducted panel discussion was the forum held to allow partners to share their valuable frank feedback as well as their business strategy on key topics like Cloud, HANA and solution packaging. It was very interesting to hear how different the perception and the engagement in regards to HANA and our Cloud strategy gets performed by the partners. Another slot offered them to share their RDS project feedback very frankly to the entire SAKP team in Bangalore.
Furthermore we had the opportunity to have 1:1 tête–à–tête discussions between Partner Executives and SAKP Executives represented by Hardy Kuhn and Matthias Schmitt. These sessions we used to commit on concrete future Co-Innovation activities.
Please let me share some of the feedbacks:
“I shall appreciate periodic sharing of RDS Roadmap, if possible including partner's roadmap as well; overall I got what I expected from session.”
“The event was well organized; I would like to see more such events probably focusing in specific areas as well for a deep dive”.
“RDS event was very well organized, panel discussion and POD sessions were insightful, let us work together and improve customer satisfaction by refining RDS”.
“Please involve/take partners’ feedback when you make strategy on deciding RDS packages ready for deploy/market”
Overall, on a scale of 1-5 (1-Poor .. 5-Excellent), Participants gave the event a rating of 4.2!
In summary the event was eye opening and we received valuable feedback on how our content can be found and used by the partners what differed between “not found” via “valuable for deal support” to “apply some of the assets in projects”. In order to drive co-innovation ahead and achieve a higher fit of our solutions we agreed with selected key partners on closer collaboration with support and knowhow exchange in both directions.
Yours sincerely
Matthias Schmitt
Vicepresident,
Global Head of Solution Build for Bus. Analytics and CRM Packages
Solution and Knowledge Packaging