The Inside Track: Our Time to Shine Issue Q1 2022 EMEA N

The Essential Update for SAP Partners

Our Time to Shine

A Sustainable Partner Ecosystem Julia White outlines her vision

Key Dates for Your Diary What to look out for in 2022

Q1 2022

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Contents Q1 2022

Thought Leader Julia White, Chief Marketing & Solutions

Officer shares her focus for the year ahead.

Partner Business Essentials Veronique Hangard, Head of Channel, addresses the

need to grow capacity across the partner network.

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Special Feature Justine Desardurats, Channel Digital Hub Leader at

SAP, on what partners can expect from this year’s NNN programme and Sandrine Pons, VP Solution Sales & Innovation, on when, what, where and how partners can get involved in the 2022 Midmarket Summit.

Celebrating Success Showcasing and celebrating the winners of this year’s Partner Excellence Awards.

The Thought Leader: Building a Sustainable Future Together with our Partners Julia White joined SAP as its Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer

in 2021 and is SAP executive board member. Here, Julia speaks to Inside Track about her role and her priorities for the year ahead.

Anytime you come into a new situation, you have the gift of a fresh perspective – a chance to ask strategic questions, approach new situations with curiosity, and learn without bias from previous experiences. I took on such an opportunity when I joined SAP last spring after working at Microsoft for 20 years.

Together with my leadership team, I’ve spent the first year in my role as SAP’s Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer creating a new board area with the purpose of transforming the way we go to market. By bringing together solutions management, product marketing, industry solutions, and our corporate marketing

The Thought Leader

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Inside Track 2021

A Go to Market Approach for Mutual Success

functions, my team gives SAP a single organization that starts the work with our industry and solution innovation and translates that innovation into customer value and business outcomes.

How we go to market with partner services and innovation is critical—for our customers’ success and for yours, too.

We are working hard to increase partner centricity across all SAP solution areas and to involve partners across the lifecycle from product strategy to the go-to-market approach to meet our customers’ needs and nurture customer loyalty.

“We are working hard to increase partner centricity across all SAP solution areas and to involve partners across the lifecycle.”

Our SAP Endorsed Apps model serves as an established framework of partner recognition, with good results. By aligning with market-leading partners with relevant solutions to meet customer demands, we are adding business value, strategically rounding out our portfolio, and giving partners access to our install base and customer prospects through a co-sell model.

I’ve done a lot of learning during my first year, and along the journey I’ve met many of you as we continue to hone our strategy for how SAP and our partners can best support customers and the demands of an ever-changing market. I’d like to share some of our key priorities in 2022 - focused on working with you much more closely to help our customers make their transition to the cloud, and to unlock new growth and innovation opportunities.

And, partners can leverage the SAP Store as a route-to-market. SAP sales teams are compensated to include partner apps in their deals, and partner solutions are listed as a customer offering, with partners completing and running deals for their applications, on their paper, via our SAP store.

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The Thought Leader

Partner Expertise in the Cloud

Our partners have the expertise and deep industry knowledge to meet customer demand, and to manage customer processes in the cloud while complementing SAP innovations. We know the only way we can be successful in the cloud, and truly meet our customers’ ongoing needs, is to support our ecosystem and work with our partners as an extension of SAP.

Partner centricity also means shining a bright light on the expertise partners bring.

A top SAP priority is helping customers on their transformation journey to the cloud.

If our customers stay on premise, we know they will miss out on the continual innovation, agility, reliability, and cloud economics that the cloud provides. It’s imperative we help them take the leap, but we know that each customer’s situation is unique. That’s why working with our vast partner ecosystem is integral to our customers’ success and SAP’s success. It is also the best way to increase customer lifetime value, which is a win-win for all of us.

Earlier this year, a partner launched their own premium supplier option as a complement to RISE with SAP, helping accelerate customer migrations to the cloud. This is just one example of how our partners can support our customers on their cloud journey.

Co-Innovation for the Future As we look ahead, there are so many opportunities for co-innovation. By bringing complementary partner innovation and products together, we can much more seamlessly cover white-space opportunities around SAP’s application portfolio to extend the value of SAP offerings and address unique customer needs.

“We know the only way we can be successful in the cloud, and truly meet our customers’ ongoing needs, is to support our ecosystem and work with our partners as an extension of SAP. ”

Recently, we expanded one of our partnerships for enhanced contract management to minimize risk. This created a joint product road map and deeper technological integration to deliver faster

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Inside Track 2021

Sustainability, Together

negotiations, greater compliance, and AI-powered business insights and automation. SAP initiated this expansion through a portfolio assessment. Instead of building it all ourselves, we identified the right leading partner solution and evaluated how this would help both of our companies increase growth and generate new revenue – we want more partnerships like this one.

SAP has prioritized making our own operations more sustainable for many years.

We are proactively using our expertise to help our customers become more sustainable as well - we simply cannot do it without our partner ecosystem.

There is tremendous opportunity for partners to resell sustainability solutions or develop complementary innovations across the value chain, from digitization to simplified collaboration and procurement efficiencies.

“We are proactively using our expertise to help our customers become more sustainable... we simply cannot do it without our partner ecosystem. ”

When we work hand-in-hand with our partners we serve our customers better. We maximize the value we create, we deliver a curated experience not found by any other company, and we offer unmatched services and applications that meet each customer’s specific needs.

Working with industry experts and building solutions for SAP’s industry cloud portfolio and line of business applications on SAP S/4HANA Cloud and with SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) makes it possible to better meet customer needs and provide value, with speed, integration and a shared data model—all essential to helping our customers become intelligent, sustainable enterprises.

During this time of unprecedented change, we must make decisions towards better sustainability for businesses and for the world. We only have one planet, and we all need to work as partners towards a more sustainable future, helping the world run better for generations to come. ■

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The Thought Leader

“We only have one planet, and we all need to work together towards a more sustainable future, helping the world run better for generations to come.”

Julia White

Chief Marketing & Solutions Officer

Follow Julia White on LinkedIn

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Inside Track 2021

Partner Business Essentials:

SAP Boosts Partner Business with Qualified Consultants

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Partner Business Essentials

is sponsored by SAP, thereby drastically decreasing partner costs to develop and certify skilled consultants.

“Qualified consultants are essential to growth but one of the biggest challenges for SAP partners today is finding experienced consultants to help them scale their business,” says Veronique Hangard. To address this need, SAP is stepping up to help source and cultivate talented consultants to meet growing demand in the partner ecosystem.

1.

3. Invest in Digital People is a local initiative supported by the French government and managed by SAP’s Alexis Granier, Channel Head for France. This dedicated reskill programme enables partners and customers to group their needs by different competencies and is a great example of how SAP drives programmes across EMEA North and locally, to help upskill and reskill consultants in support of partner businesses.

Fresh Faces is a programme designed to help attract young talent to work in the IT industry.

Through this programme, led by SAP’s Marcel Eshuys, GB Partner Transformation Director, SAP helps create awareness within student communities about the work SAP and its partners do, and the wide and varied career paths SAP partners can offer. The programme allows partners to introduce their work to students through video and social media contact and, by managing the connection between universities and partners, SAP encourages college graduates to seek employment at SAP partner companies.

4. And last – but not least – we need to understand how to do more with the existing level of resources we already have. Cloud business allows us new ways to deliver, using standard implementation packages and even using Artificial Intelligence. To this end, we have created a new team dedicated to supporting our partners, to sharing the knowledge and the tools that we use. And I’m really excited to announce that Nick Mulder, Director Delivery Excellence EMEA North Channel, recently joined my team to create this new, skills and knowledge sharing, initiative, which has already been met with high partner demand.

2. The Partner Academy is a brand new training plan for both newly graduated and experienced talent that want to join the IT business. The programme, led by SAP’s Head of Strategic Alliances Sumanth Gopal, and currently in its pilot phase in the Netherlands, benefits partners by certifying qualified candidates to better support partner businesses. This programme will drastically decrease the cost of creating new resource for partners. We started the pilot programme in Q1 and our target is to create 300 new consultants this year, 1,000 next year, and 1,500 the year after that. It’s a major investment from SAP but we strongly believe that it will solve a major issue for our partners and, of course, by extension, a major issue for SAP. The programme

With the clear need for skilled and certified consultants in SAP’s partner ecosystem, these initiatives demonstrate SAP’s strong commitment to supporting partner business. Working together, SAP and partners can help transform businesses to meet the evolving needs of today and those of the future.” ■

Connect with Nick Mulder on Linkedin

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Inside Track 2021

Special Feature Rethinking Workplace Diversity

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Special Feature

Sandrine Pons, SAP Vice President Solution

Sales & Innovation, on her diversity and inclusion award success, the latest on this year’s Midmarket Summit, and the Fast Start programme for 2022.

Kelly Gamble, Senior Communications Specialist, Midmarket & Partners: Sandrine, firstly congratulations on your SAP Regional Diversity & Inclusion Award! Tell us why diversity is so critical?

from different backgrounds to one’s own is enormously important, if you are to progress as a human being, let alone as a business.

Shakespeare wrote that: ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ None of us knows everything, but together, we know a lot.

D&I is no longer just a moral or cultural necessity — it is a human-driven, business imperative. I lead a team of people from 15 (and counting), different nationalities, of all ages and from many different backgrounds. We have techies, non-techies, businesspeople, even a storyteller with a past in film and television. I consider that array of talent to be our superpower. It motivates the team to learn from each other and move

Sandrine Pons: Thanks Kelly, it was a great honour. Diversity is critical to the advancement of any organisation, for many reasons.

We live in a diverse world, one that communicates more than at any other time in human history. The world has shrunk, as they say, and we are all neighbours, friends, family and work associates. So, the knowledge and wisdom of others who come

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Inside Track 2021

Sandrine Pons: Yes! We are so excited for

forward. In a business context, if you want to understand your customers properly, you need to have respect for their diversity.

Diversity & inclusion are the engines of success and innovation.

the Midmarket Summit this year. Firstly, let’s remember some of the results from last year: in 2021, we had six Midmarket Summits, with 1,500 attendees, (60% of which were net new name customers), and enjoyed an overall satisfaction score of 95%. How amazing is that? The Midmarket Summit is one of the year’s highlights and our team are working hard to make the 2022 summit even better. It promises a lot of new content, new innovations and new experiences. And our Partners are encouraged to take part. It’s currently planned for October 2022, so stay tuned.

For me, leading a team has never been an easy responsibility. But the more I do it, the more I believe in the power of difference. My focus is the team and the individuals within that team. I won’t leave anybody behind.

“ Thank you to all of the

Last year, we created the “Meet Partners” area, which showcased all the content from our partner sponsors, as well as the opportunity for customers to interact directly with them. One customer, Tom Holmes, Founding Director of Veran Performance in the UK, said: “I love the platform because it gives me the chance to explore the topics that interest me and identify the technology that will help achieve the ambitions I have for my business and my customers.”

participants. It was gratifying to hear that you found the content valuable, energetic & helpful, enabling you to succeed in 2022.

Regional Solution Sales Manager on the Cloud Fast Start Programme

Kelly Gamble: People can still access the platform behind Midmarket – Always-On – right?

Kelly Gamble: The power of difference… I love that! And you are so right. So, let’s talk about your other passion – innovation! I know the Partners in EMEA North can expect a lot of great events this year in order to impact their business growth. Let’s start with the Midmarket Summit.

Sandrine Pons: Yes, that’s why we refer to it as the Always-On Platform! It is just too valuable not to make it always available.

Customers can access it 24/7 and, for a minimal sponsorship investment of €2,000 per year, so too can partners. To quote our Regional Chief Innovation Officer, Assia Mouloudi: “The SAP Midmarket Always-On

Sanne Corneliussen

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Special Feature

platform is a living, breathing, 360° platform, a virtual meeting place, but with a human face!” Currently, inside the Midmarket Always-On platform, partners can expect: •

Replays of Midmarket Summit discussions with world-beating experts

•

150+ Midmarket content across all solution areas & industries

•

30+ Lines of Business and industry demos (The HXM Demo has been used by customers more than 500 times!)

•

100+ success stories from midsized companies

Kelly Gamble: And I believe you have many other resources and events for our Partners?

Tell us about those.

PARTNER SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES IN 2022

Whether partners choose to put their name to the brand-new solution specific Forums, which address SAP BTP, Customer Experience and Human Capital Management in detail, or get involved in the Midmarket Summits, sponsoring an event provides visibility and pipeline generation.

Options include: •

Solution Specific Forum Sponsor – three agenda slots per forum = €35k each

•

Cross-Solution Midmarket Summits:

•

o

Platinum sponsor: two slots per Market Unit €35k each

o

Exhibition sponsor: six slots per Market Unit €10k each

Always-On Access Pass (providing unlimited access): €2k each

All sponsorship packages are 100% MDF refundable. To find out more, connect with your Partner Business Manager or check out this guide HERE

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Inside Track 2021

Sandrine Pons: At the beginning of the year,

FAST START SUCCESS

we ran the Cloud Fast Start programme for each market unit. We started Fast Start four years ago for our internal sales teams and I'm very happy to say that this is the first time we’ve delivered it for our partners as well.

This session is designed for the generalists.

We focus on what really matters to deliver against budget and succeed. Over a period of three hours we cover: RISE, S/4HANA & ByDesign, Customer Experience, Business Technology Platform, Human Experience Management, Supply Chain, Sustainability, and Innovation. The whole session is animated in a dynamic and engaging way and includes a treasure hunt on the Midmarket Always-On platform.

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Fast Start sessions for 5 Market Units

6 344 solutions covered

What’s more, to support success across SAP’s solution areas, we are organising specific solution-focused forums for our customers. In April, we have a Business Technology Forum and in June & July, we are planning Customer Experience, Human Experience & Innovation Forums.

At these events we will invite our midmarket customers to come and share relevant stories based on their business challenges.

We have just launched a series of sponsorship packages for our partners, to give them maximum visibility to generate new leads. And all of the packages are 1001% MDF reimbursable.

attendees: 42% partners, 58% SAP employees

2

+

hours spent on average, per attendee, visiting the Always-On platform

4.24

/5

Kelly Gamble: Thanks so much Sandrine!

It sounds like we have so many tools and events at the disposal of our Partner Ecosystem! ■

High partner satisfaction rates!

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Special Feature

WHAT TO DO NEXT

Watch this video to find out what to expect from the Midmarket Always-On Experience

Watch this video to hear what our customers and sponsors think of the Midmarket Summit & AlwaysOn Experience

Register to sponsor the Forums, Midmarket Summits and/or the Always-On Access-Pass, with packages starting from €2,000

Connect with Sandrine on Linkedin

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“ This event is super-hot!

Partners can now up-level their demand generation programmes and ability to grow new cloud business, through a series of briefings and workshops.

2021 attendee

Launched for the first time in 2021, the NNN Cloud Partner Programme aims to support, inspire and enable net new name demand generation activities. Through a series of briefings and workshops, partners can develop their knowledge, skills and ability to secure new business, with a particular focus on business in the cloud. Additionally, 25 motivated, committed partners will benefit from follow-up funding to further boost their demand gen projects.

Following the programme’s resounding success last year, new net name partners can now enrol in the 2022 NNN Cloud Partner Programme.

Justine Desardurats, Channel Digital Hub Leader at SAP, and the brainchild behind the programme, said: “Last year we saw 442 people from 161 partner organisations benefit from the NNN Cloud Partner Programme.

And this year, we’ve added even more value.

Our ambition is for 35% of our indirect cloud target to be in the NNN business, so we designed this initiative to give new partners the tools they need to succeed in meeting their cloud NNN targets.” ■

“ The dem gen sessions were so insightful!

2021 attendee

To learn more about what you can expect from the 2022 NNN Cloud Partner Programme and how to enrol, watch this short video!

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ed!

Celebrating Success EMEA North SAP Awards for Partner Excellence

Inside Track 2021

Join us and raise a toast to this year’s winners of the EMEA North SAP Awards for Partner Excellence.

The annual EMEA North SAP Awards for Partner Excellence celebrate the work of partners in the region, and their dedication to delivering superior value to customers.

SAP presented awards in a variety of categories to shine a spotlight on top-performing partners, and their amazing achievements in sales and marketing, innovation, technology, service, and solution-specific areas. The winners walked away with trophies to mark their accomplishments.

Partners are critical to SAP’s success, and these awards pay tribute to the work they do in helping customers to adopt innovation, gain rapid results, grow sustainably, and run better.

Stéphane Mermet, Vice President – Head of System Integrators, SAP EMEA North says: “Partners play a huge part in SAP’s overall success and are fundamental to our strategy. Thank you to everyone who goes the extra mile in helping to work towards our mission. And a huge congratulations to this year’s winners.” ■

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Celebrating Success

Introducing the winners of the SAP EMEA North Awards for Partner Excellence 2022

Arago Consulting Marketing Best Practice

Jigsaw Cloud Cloud Delivery

Ayata Commerce Top New Partner

myBrand Service Excellence

Clarivos New Business

NTT Data Business Solutions Sustainable Growth

Delaware Consulting Top SME Cloud Performer

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Inside Track 2021

Introducing the winners of the SAP EMEA North Awards for Service Partner Excellence 2022

IBM Special Recognition

Accenture Cloud Contribution

TCS Integrated Delivery Experience

Accenture RISE with SAP

Deloitte Line of Business

Accenture Business Transformation

Ernst & Young Commitment to Certification

Deloitte Industry Cloud Initiative

Capgemini 24

SAP Business Technology Platform Adoption

Celebrating Success

Introducing the winners of the SAP EMEA North Awards for Partner Excellence 2022 for Solution Extensions

OpenText Top Partner

BlackLine Best Cloud Performance

Tricentis Best Newcomer

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The Essential Update for SAP Partners

Illustrating the Inside Track Returning to The Inside Track for 2022 is Bonn-based illustrator Timo Meyer, whose brilliant, vivid illustrations have brought our Bright Futures edition to life. Timo has worked with Air France, Opel, FAZ and DIE ZEIT newspaper, among many others.