Channel Partners Promote SAP Sales

Thirty-three percent of SAP's sales are now being handled by channel partners. This makes it very likely that the giant software vendor's aim of having 40 percent of its sales go through the channel by 2015 will be reached.

It is also highly possible that the number of sales will increase with small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) making 88 percent of SAP's net-new customers - many of which are serviced by SAP's growing partner base.

The senior vice president of global indirect channels, Kevin Gilroy, said: "We understand the SME market," when speaking at the "SME Summit" in New York last week.

The co-CEO of SAP, Bill McDermott, was also present at the summit, and revealed the company's SME and channel sales figures at a panel session which looked at the place of startups and small businesses during the time of recession.

Although SAP was once popular for selling enterprise applications to big corporations, more focus has been placed by the company on SME sales in recent years, and has been developing and enhancing its channel programs as a result of that.

One main part of the SME push from SAP is the Rapid Deployment Solutions series established by SAP two years ago. A fixed-scope/fixed-price basis has been achieved through RDSs which are pre-packaged application modules consisting of industry templates, best-practice methodologies and implementation tools.

The SAP marketing vice president, Jeff Winter, said that 150 RDS packages are now offered by SAP and sales have rocketed. Twenty-five hundred RDS products have been bought by 1,700 customers, and this includes mobile, cloud and business analytics packages and products which are most well-known.

One popular product has been the Rapid Deployment Solutions, and channel partners are very interested in this. According to Winter, 43 percent of RDS sales in SAP's third quarter went through VARs, implementation partners and hosting partners, an increase from a mere five percent last year.

A channel partner which is making the most of RDS offerings is Delaware Consulting, a Belgium-based solutions provider. Sales and plant maintenance applications for mobile devices are being developed by the company for mobile devices running on SAP's mobile platform and mobile application's RDS packages.

The manager of Delaware Consulting, Yoeri Coessens, said: "We can deliver a pre-packaged solution and deploy it very easily." Fixed-scope/fixed price provisions are appealing to small businesses and RDS products "are a good go-to-market strategy. It contains all the technology and information in one package."

A Portland, Oregon-based Gold Partner, Orchestra, is having great success in broadening solutions for "micro-vertical" industries on SAP's BusinessOne Cloud set of applications. According to Orchestra President Brad Windecker, BusinessOne is relied upon for Orchestra's solutions and 80 percent of functionality with Orchestra has enhanced the other 20 percent in industries like microbreweries, restaurants and "downstream" petroleum companies like distributors and gas stations.

In 2008, Orchestra became an SAP partner; this was well before the vendor made any commitments to the channel as it does presently. At the SME Summit, Windecker stated that the company decided to progress with SAP as the company has fewer, higher-value partners compared to Microsoft, and "that's what customers are looking for," he said. (CY) Link