In a post-COVID-19 business world, the ability to bring customer-centricity into all business decisions may not only be the key to success but an obligation for smooth survival.
So what does the future of the partner business look like? What tools do partners need in their armory to treat customer success as a centripetal force in their business?
SAP Chief Partner Officer Karl Fahrbach gives us an answer: Next-Generation Partnering. Although the Next-Generation Partnering initiative was established before COVID-19, it has become more pivotal now.
What Is Next-Generation Partnering?
Next-Generation Partnering is a multi-year, transformational movement for SAP partners, providing them with the requisite tools to rapidly exploit the expanding innovation economy.
It is not a program or certification that a partner can join or attain; it’s an ongoing journey emanating from a deep commitment from SAP to guide its partners to constantly innovate so they can deliver exceptional customer experiences.
This initiative can help partners strategically advance on a track that will make them champions in the experience economy.
Partner Innovation: Innovate to Unlock Unlimited Possibilities
To inculcate the culture of innovation and to share its findings, SAP encourages partners to network with peers and allow the spirit of innovation to flow freely. As part of this initiative, partners will get to innovate and develop their own intellectual property (IP) that can lead them to create new choices for their customers, with unrivaled support from SAP.
This ecosystem-centric initiative focuses on partner-led customer innovations where, by developing their own IP, partners will be able to expedite the reach into new markets and unbolt a new revenue style. Through Next-Generation Partnering, our joint customers can run their businesses more efficiently and work to realize the dream of becoming an intelligent enterprise.
Partner Economics: Produce Value-Driven Growth
Value-driven growth doesn’t mean merely hunting for high economic performance; it also means aiming for frugal spending. That’s why value-driven growth is considered more sustainable. In a constantly changing business scenario, especially in the post-COVID-19 landscape, partners will need a commercial model that delivers both profitable and sustained growth.
Creating new lines of digital solutions, an obvious outcome of innovation, will lead to revenue. On the other hand, many economical provisions are in place for more sustainable cloud partnering:
- Reducing learning and certification costs and increasing free test and demo offerings
- Assisting partners in building a best-in-class cloud delivery practice
- Creating attractive, new, cloud-centric commercial models
- Continuously optimizing partner policies to make an ecosystem-centric model
With these far-sighted arrangements, partners can reap benefits and, in effect, create value-driven growth.
Partner Experience: Deliver the Synergistic Experience
Generating an ideal partner experience that creates ecosystem admiration is a cardinal foundation that Next-Generation Partnering rests upon. To underpin this partner management initiative, SAP works to improve the end-to-end journey for software partners, offer a self-guided user experience, optimize the process from application to publishing and transacting new apps on the app center, and harmonize partner digital enablement. Above all, Experience Management solutions from SAP (Qualtrics) act as a natural pulse reader of partner sentiments.
Companies do not create new industries, but ecosystems do. Next-Generation Partnering works to create an atmosphere where partners and their customers can realize the power of becoming an intelligent enterprise.
The idea of Next-Generation Partnering appears similar to that of a robust tree. As the roots strive to expand and anchor the body of the tree firmly into the ground, partner innovation aims to do the same for a partner organization. Moving upward, the trunk represents the wealth accumulation for the tree, just as a partner economy leads to value-driven profitable growth. Bearing fruit is the final ambition of a tree, and, similarly, delivering an absolute partner experience and helping to grow intelligent enterprises is the pivotal objective of Next-Generation Partnering.
Ajitabh Das is a partner experience manager at SAP.
