InsideTrack THE
Project 2026: The Roadmap to Success
The priorities, the opportunity and the programmes to get you there
The InsideTrack Contents
Special Partner Summit Edition
Welcome to the Inside Track
An introduction from Rafael Brugnini, Chief Partner Officer, EMEA.
Thought Leader
Karl Fahrbach and Augusta
Spinelli unveil THE strategic priorities for EMEA in 2026.
Spotlight on: Partner First
Rafa and Santina Franchi on the size of the market opportunity and the programmes that will help SAP and partners to seize it.
Partner Business Essentials
Utkarsh Maheshwari and Rich Phillips pull no punches on the focus areas for sales teams and Partner Business Managers in 2026.
Welcome.
This is your roadmap to success in 2026: The Inside Track. It's a guide to everything you need to know and do to help your partners deliver over the next 12 months.
It brings you all the key headlines from this month’s SAP Partner Summit, the first we’ve held in conjunction with our colleagues in MEE.
Some 2,200 partners joined us for a day and a half of non-stop announcements, break-out sessions, meetings and one-to-ones. It was a huge success!
Check out the highlights to get a flavour of what happened.
We’ve captured all the important messages for you here over the next few pages; see it as a reference guide you can come back to time and again over the coming 12 months to ensure you –and your partners – are on track to deliver an amazing 2026.
Finally, as we head towards the end of the year, I’d like to thank you for your hard work over the last 12 months – keep the momentum going for the next few weeks so we can close on a high!
Rafael Brugnini Chief Partner Officer, EMEA
Click here to watch the highlights video
Looking ahead to
The Thought Leader
EMEA: Growth-driven, Bold and Forward-Thinking
At the 2025 SAP Partner Summit, Augusta Spinelli, Regional President of EMEA and Karl Fahrbach, Global Chief Partner Officer, gave a sneak peek of SAP’s top go-to-market strategy for 2026 as well as a host of brand-new programmes for partners.
Here, Augusta and Karl talk exclusively to the Inside Track about the goals for the next twelve months, how crucial partners are to those goals, and how SAP will help partners to deliver.
“Partners are essential,” says Karl. “They turn our artificial intelligence and data innovations into real customer outcomes from faster adoption and larger opportunities to higher renewals. They add real value.”
“…We simply cannot deliver… without partners!”
— Karl Fahrbach
He says partners give SAP scale, industry expertise and the go-to-market engine to reach more customers across more markets.
“Partners co-innovate with us, they embed solutions into the SAP Business Suite, and they accelerate time-to-value so that our customes see results sooner. The bottom line? We simply cannot deliver on our priorities without partners!”
Top priorities for partners in the coming year include:
1. Building profitable businesses through SAP Business Suite
The SAP Business Suite is the complete platform. It delivers AI-powered insights, harmonised, connected data and intelligent applications. It is continually expanding and improving through the introduction of new AI agents. So far, 20 agents are on the Suite. By the end of this year, that number will have doubled to 40.
“Our partners are the ones that bring the Business Suite to life. They build on top of it with their industry expertise to drive adoption and deliver value to our end-customers,” says Karl.
Partners already using Business Suite have a two-and-a-half times higher win rate and the average size of an opportunity’s annual contract value (ACV), is doubled.
“SAP Business Suite is the future of enterprise management,” Karl adds.
2. Expanding Partner Autonomy
In 2026, SAP will hand greater autonomy to partners enabling them to win new Corporate customers and drive growth via the Partner-Led Territories initiative. This isn’t a change in SAP strategy or direction, but an acceleration of that strategy.
“The momentum for partner autonomy is real,” explains Karl. “We’ve been very successful working together with our clients and we will double down on that with greater focus on adoption and consumption and cross-selling Lines of Business.”
3. Focus on Public Cloud
There will be a stronger commitment to public cloud in 2026, with its clean core principles delivered via the RISE with SAP methodology and tool chain. “More partners are delivering RISE with SAP methodology every month and we expect to see that continue into the new year and beyond,” says Karl.
How SAP will Help Partners to Deliver
Three brand-new initiatives and programmes were announced at the Summit, each designed specifically to support partner delivery.
1. SAP Partner Accelerator
This enablement initiative brings with it: money to invest in demand generation, coaching to help partners to expand and grow using the SAP Business Suite, access to a community of partners (each bringing their own area of specialism) and certification.
Karl says: “THIS IS A KEY INITIATIVE! It’s THE path for our partners to grow their Business Suite scope, with demand generation investment, coaching, access to Development Funds and more.
“It’s an unbeatable growth accelerator. Regardless of where partners are in their journey, they can position themselves as end-to-end innovators. Everything we do rewards partner autonomy and drives the growth of the Business Suite plus, as we invest in more automation and more tools, we’re making it simpler to be an SAP partner.
And they can expect deeper enablement through new learning and certification courses that will help to differentiate them from their competitors. Ultimately, in 2026, it’s all about making it easier for qualified partners to capture the huge opportunity ahead and to do it profitably. I invite all our qualified partners to join the Accelerator initiative!”
2. SAP Referral Programme
For partners that can’t cover every Line of Business, SAP has introduced the Referral Programme to ensure no opportunity is lost. The programme will see Partner Business Managers pass on opportunities to partners who do have the LOB expertise to deliver. If that opportunity is then closed, the referral partner will receive 10% of the ACV.
3. Partner Lead Routing
With time-to-value of the essence in today’s speedy market, in certain territories, SAP hands over the reigns to a partner to lead on an opportunity. In 2026, the Partner Lead Routing programme will be enhanced and open up not just for Cloud ERP opportunities but for a range of different LOBs.
Partner Business Managers: get ready to speak to partners about all the new programmes and incentives.
A Strong, Thriving, Partner-Ecosystem
Augusta was appointed Regional President of EMEA in August. With 25 years’ experience at SAP, and leading the Adoption Services Centre before taking on her new role, the customer-first approach has been central to her mindset and delivery.
This is no different in her new position with her priorities remaining focused on customer adoption and growth.
“They’re key,” she says, “for every single function at SAP. When we sell, we need to take the ‘Suite-first’, ‘AI-first’ approach.
Otherwise, we sell, but the adoption doesn’t happen. So our goal is to reduce churn and achieve high adoption rates, because they’re critical if we’re going to grow our Cloud business.”
She explains that by expanding SAP’s Corporate and Partner-driven businesses, thereby creating in effect a ‘back office’ for S/4 public cloud (ERP) for partner projects, the ecosystem will be strengthened. “Public cloud will be the leading solution in EMEA and this makes it easier for our customers to buy, adopt and consume our solutions and innovations.
“We have a strong, thriving partner ecosystem.”
— Augusta Spinelli
“Next year, EMEA will be recognised as a growth-driven, bold, forward-thinking region, because we’ll work together as one team across the board – SAP and partners – with a growth mindset.”
The partner ecosystem is ‘fundamental’ Augusta says to extending SAP’s capabilities and driving innovation for ‘every customer in the market’.
“We have a strong, thriving, partner ecosystem,” she adds. “It’s one of SAP’s greatest assets. And by expanding our collaboration with our partners, we’ll be able to deliver our AI-first, Suitefirst approach. We can ensure that the right skills are available to deliver value, together, to our customers.”
Augusta says it’s a ‘super exciting’ time to be a part of SAP and the technology industry.
“I love working in EMEA because we have innovative solutions, bold customers, a thriving partner ecosystem and the very best professionals. And in 2026, we will take the opportunity to invest in our people and to master the solutions that are going to solve the challenges our customers face, whether that be Public Cloud, AI, the Business Data Cloud (BDC) or Business Suite.”
Connect with Karl Fahrbach on Linkedin
Connect with Augusta Spinelli on Linkedin
Spotlight on...
The City of Partnership
SAP announced two major moves that further extend SAP’s ecosystem-first strategy at the Partner Summit: the move to significantly increase the proportion of the indirect business in Corporate AND the expansion of Partner-Driven.
Here Rafael Brugnini, Chief Partner Officer, SAP EMEA and Santina Franchi, President of SAP Corporate segment and GROW business, dive into the detail behind the opportunity and how SAP and its partners can take full advantage of it.
The market opportunity for the region of EMEA stands at €107bn in cloud revenue, excluding services.
But, to take advantage of it, says Rafa, SAP and partners ‘have to evolve the way we work’ by working together. And SAP is ‘fully committed’ to doing that in 2026.
It’s demonstrated through SAP’s introduction of a sweep of new programmes, rebates and initiatives, not least the expansion of Partner-Driven, which marks a seismic step forward in SAP’s ‘partner-first’ strategy.
“This is a real leap-frog moment!” enthuses Rafa. “It’s unique and means we will drive the entire market segment with and through
our partners. We know that customers are struggling under the pressures they face and the reality is they need technology to improve and evolve their business processes, to be compliant and more competitive. And we have the magic recipe to help them to evolve – SAP and our partners.”
Of the market opportunity available, there are some 250,000 companies in the Corporate space in EMEA that are not yet engaged with SAP. But as the opportuntiy in Corporate is far bigger than just in Midmarket (more than 7,000 accounts have turnovers of more than €500 million and 3,600 have turnovers of 1billion), it will take ‘the entire ecosystem working together to solve their problems’.
“ There are 250,000 companies in the Corporate space, ready and waiting for an SAP partner to show up and help them to transform!”
— Rafael Brugnini
Says Rafa: “Some of these companies are big and complex and need a lot of help. And that’s where we need ISVs, VARs, GSSPs and hyperscalers to develop the solutions that will help them to transform into efficient, smooth-running, businesses.”
Looking at growth predictions across the portfolio, year-on-year growth is forecast across all of the SAP Business Suite, namely: Human Capital Management, Finance and Spend, Customer Relationship Management, Business Technology Platform, Supply Chain Management and SAP ByDesign.
Turning the spotlight on AI, currently just 20% of companies in the market are taking
advantage of the value it can bring. “This is where we need our partners to deliver AI use-cases with measurable return on investment, with scalable business outcomes that connect with a customer’s top priorities. And that’s where the partner will win – and win faster!”
In terms of expectations from customers, Rafa is clear on what they don’t want: long, drawn-out, technology projects. Instead, they’re looking for predictable business outcomes that are delivered fast. They want to shift the amount of investment they’re spending today ‘keeping the lights on’ and spend that money instead on strategic services that help them to transform their business processes.
But Rafa cautions: “Our competitors and their partners are talking to customers too, even when they’re not able to do a fraction of what we can do together here at SAP. Our AI-data-apps approach is unmatched in the market, and we need to tell that story right.”
SAP will help by bringing partners new rebates, enablement funds ‘for every role’, new digital tools and, most importantly, the commitment to go to the market with and through partners.
“In summary, we will help our partners to grow faster, operate smarter and scale with confidence in EMEA to make our purpose come true: to make the world run better and improve people’s lives,” smiles Rafa.
“This is our moment in EMEA! The customers are ready to transform, they’re waiting for us. It’s time to lead the market, not follow the market.”
Santina Franchi has led the SAP Corporate segment and GROW since March this year. Her team looks after 80% of SAP’s clients and represents 28% of the overall SAP
“ ...the fly-wheel effect — AI, data and apps — presents a huge new opportunity for partners…
— Santina Franchi
revenue in EMEA. This is one of the fastest-growing businesses for SAP and, in EMEA alone – in quarter four 2025 – Cloud ERP grew by 95% year-on-year.
While the market opportunity is ‘massive’ for business applications, it’s ‘even bigger’ for AI, standing at more than €2 trillion, according to Gartner.
Translating that opportunity into real business outcomes for partners, Santina says it’s important for partners to lead with the ‘fly-wheel’ effect: that virtuous circle of AI, data and apps. That is the ‘gamechanger’ for partners and is where SAP has a unique position in the market. She explains: “Customers are already experimenting with AI – either with SAP or with another vendor. But the most important thing for our partners to have in mind is that all that experimentation struggles to scale, to go into production and to deliver real and tangible business return on investment. Why? Because an agent needs to understand the semantics of the data and needs to understand the anthology of the process to make sure that the action that the agent can take is coherent with the business of a company. This is why the SAP AI strategy is unmatched.
“SAP Business AI can be consumed as embedded in our Business Suite; it can be further built on SAP and it can also work with third party vendors. Whichever route a partner takes, what is needed is an SAP infrastructure at the back that can understand the data and decide how to act in the context of the end-to-end business processes. This is what’s making SAP so
“...it’s indirect by default… no opportunity should be handled without partners...”
— Santina Franchi
successful in bringing use-cases at scale.” Looking at the evolution in how Corporate works with partners, Santina says it’s completely aligned to put the ecosystem at the centre.
“Partners have always had a big role to play in Corporate business but now, we want our partners contributing more than ever. We have millions of clients in this segment and helping them realise the value with the SAP Business Suite is a gigantic opportunity for our ecosystem. This is why we’ve come to a strategic decision that the SAP Corporate business is indirect by default. That means that no opportunity should be handled without partners.”
She said it was important for partners to be ready for all the opportunities that SAP will be bringing their way.
Meanwhile, the change to Partner-Led Territories is another huge opportunity for partners with SAP giving them five times the size of the territories they’ve seen until now.
“This is a HUGE jump and I’m looking at ALL our partners – the entire ecosystem – to help deliver this,” explains Santina.
“This is not just about re-sellers working on their own. It’s about re-sellers working with partner-to-partner referrals. It’s also about re-sellers leveraging hyperscalers, because they’re massively investing in our clients and their business is synergystic with SAP’s.
“And it’s about the independent software vendors [ISVs] continuously bringing additional vertical and horizontal capabilities on top of what SAP is able to provide. All partners are critical if we want to strategically capture the opportuntiy we have ahead of us!”
This is why, Santina adds, SAP has invested and enhanced its working models to support partners in 2026, including the placement of all regional Digital Hubs in service of partners. This is one of the ‘most fundamental moves’ that will support the customer value journey from beginning to end. Digital Hubs are the engine for increased velocity and should be leveraged by partners as much as possible .
“We want to see our partners at the forefront, leading each customer engagement with demos and turning them fast into minimum viable products as soon as they get the data from the client – then continuing with an
ongoing cycle of adoption and consumption.” What’s more, SAP will support with incountry execution by having territory and ecosystem managers in place, continuing to deliver sales excellence on the revenue commitments made with partners.
Santina’s final message to partners is:“To shift the conversation with customers. Up until now they’ve been leading with the apps, with single lines of business and a clear focus on the product. What I ask now is for them to move away from this and, instead, lead with AI. Always start the conversation with every customer with ‘what are you doing with AI’, even if at the end the customer only chooses Cloud ERP. Cloud ERP will power all the customers’ AI needs and investments. Then it’s about continuing the journey to the SAP Business Suite. It’s not about selling one solution but being a strategic partner for the client with intellectual property, with more volume of continuous value delivery.
“In India alone, as an example, we have one Cloud ERP going live per day. So volume can be achieved. If partners go on this journey then that is where I want to go with them. Every one of our partners can grow ten fold if they take the direction we’ve been describing. And it starts this quarter. I’d like to see us go full speed in this direction, and our partners will see their business multiplied.”
Portfolio Year-on-Year Growth
EMEA Market Opportunity
€107bn IN CLOUD REVENUE (EXC. SERVICES)
44%
250,000+ IN THE CORPORATE SPACE
COMPANIES WAITING TO BE ENGAGED
Partner Business Essentials
How to Succeed in 2026
How to Succeed in 2026, with Utkarsh
Maheshwari, Senior Vice President & Head of Global Partner Sales & Services, and Rich Phillips, Head of Channel, EMEA.
“Embrace partners in all the planning that you do and in all the execution that you do. ”
— Utkarsh Maheshwari
InsideTrack: Firstly, and for our sales teams, why is SAP choosing to devolve much more of its business to partners? And why should they put their trust in our partners?
Utkarsh: First thing is there is so much opportunity, SAP has approximately 2% of the share of the addressable market. The only way to expand this is with our partners because they truly bring the local market expertise, as well as the local scale to go and have those conversations and bring these customers on the journey. So really, it’s a choice: you can choose not to do it but if you choose to do it you have a multiplier effect that cannot be created by SAP alone.
Rich: That’s the $64 million question. Why should our sales people work with partners? Well, think about SAP. We are the number one Cloud ERP vendor in the world. Our customers, and the market, expects us to be number one. But in Corporate, we’ve got about four to five percent of market penetration. Is that good enough? No, it isn’t, not for the world number one.
Rich: So how do we increase our penetration? How do we win more customers? Well, we can either hire more and more sales people, which we’re not going to do, or we can work with partners.
Many years’ ago, The Harvard Business Review estimated that if a sales person worked with a partner, they could work on about six deals on average per quarter. That’s versus one to one- and-a-half deals a sales person can manage alone per quarter. So, you can immediately see the advantage.
If you’re working on six deals, and you close all six, great, happy days, it’s more revenue for the sales person and that’s where we want to get to. But if only three of them close, you’ve still got three; if you are working on one deal directly every quarter and you lose it, you’re done. Working with partners does a number of things for you: it generates more revenue for you and you’re more likely to hit your quota.
Inside Track: If you had one golden nugget of advice for our sellers for 2026, what would it be?
Utkarsh: I can say with some level of confidence that if you truly build your business and territory plans with your partners, and you hold them to account and make them part of your story, rest assured that while you’re focused on your five, ten, twenty pursuits here and there, there is a larger organisation working on your behalf, and that’s exactly what you
“...partners bring the local market expertise as well as the scale,”
— Utkarsh Maheshwari
want to create the scale that you need in the business.
Rich: It’s simple: stop being an individual seller. Elevate what you do with partners, become a virtual sales director by building yourself a group of partner sellers that you act as a sales director with. You advise them on which markets to go for, which solutions to take and build, you work their forecast and deals just as a sales director would.
Inside Track: And, the same to our partner managers: what’s the one golden nugget of advice for 2026?
Utkarsh: We’re on a big transformation with the sales team and partners and this year we’re going to be measuring our success linked to the success of every partner we manage. So the more you can connect your partners and sellers at SAP, the better. Remember, you are the gateway, the powerhouse, you are the go-to-market expert to bring the business plans to the territory plans. We’re counting on you to make it happen, and when you do that, you will see us celebrating an amazing year together!
Rich: You are the pivot point between partners and SAP. You need sellers working with your partners, you need your partners working with SAP. From your perspective it’s one thing: uniqueness, why your partner? And I don’t mean just another services partner with a different services package because, honestly, who cares? I want to know why are they unique? What market do
they serve? What solutions do they have that they can sell quickly?
Fundamentally, what IP do they have that makes them unique? So, if they don’t have IP already and they don’t have a QPPS already, get on it.
“…how do we win more customers… we can work with partners,”
— Rich Phillips
Inside Track: What’s the single, biggest behavioural change that is needed from everyone at SAP to successfully make this big leap forward?
Utkarsh: Working with partners is the multiplier strategy for SAP. The moment you see partners as competition, as taking deals and pipeline away, it’s the wrong mindset to have.
Utkarsh: We’re in the business of creating scale in the market and that can only happen when partners are working with us, sometimes bringing the deals to us, sometimes executing pre-sales. So please embrace partners in all the planning that you do and in all the execution that you do. And if you do that, I will see you at the winner’s circle next year.
“Elevate what you do with partners,”
— Rich Phillips
“...the more you can connect your partners and sellers at SAP, the better,”
— Utkarsh Maheshwari
Rich: Frankly, to be open to change. Let’s stop thinking about SAP from the old world of on-premise ERP, where we were the de facto number one and we could afford to be arrogant.
It’s a competitive world out there, we’re up against lots of amazing competitors –whether they’re our traditional competitors that have moved into Cloud or whether it’s the new up-starts being agile; we have to make sure we’re not arrogant and that we compete effectively.
Inside Track: And, finally, what’s one unexpected skill you possess?
Utkarsh: Not many people know that I play squash professionally. If I’m not travelling and speaking to partners, that’s what I do.
Rich: I can use a MIG welder! Last year my garage door broke, I couldn’t get anyone to fix it, so I went on a welding course, bought a welder and did it myself!
The InsideTrack
The Essential Upate for SAP Partners.
Illustrating the Inside Track
This edition of the Inside Track features the stunning illustrative work of Lydia Hill, a freelance illustrator based in Sheffield, England. Her diverse and quirky style is much in demand among clients such as AWS, Trustpilot, Vauxhall and Hoefler&Co.