A lot has changed since I joined the SAP App Center team as general manager more than a year ago, not to mention since SAP App Center launched back in 2017.
We have grown in the number of customers we support, increased site traffic year over year, created over 25 jointly branded customer success stories, added partner applications weekly, and expanded the types of industries we serve — across all geographies and lines of business.
Today, as we celebrate partners at SAP Global Partner Summit Online, we also celebrate the three-year anniversary of SAP App Center. Three years ago, we launched the digital marketplace for customers to discover, try, and buy trusted partner apps based on SAP solutions. While the business world in which it was launched is very different than the world today, SAP App Center continues to help customers solve key business challenges by serving them quickly and efficiently.
It is great to see how far we have come, but even more exciting to look at our path forward. We strive to be an innovative digital marketplace for partner solutions, and in fact, recently launched significant enhancements to SAP App Center to deliver on that promise – both for our customers and our partners. Read the press release here.
New SAP App Center Enhancements for Customers
Our customers have always been at the core of SAP App Center and our recent updates especially were made with the customer in mind.
Based on customer feedback and significant user testing, we have made it easier to search our more than 1,500 partner solutions and discover the applications that fit within particular SAP product lines using intelligent search and filtering. Configured with adaptive search, this new feature generates auto-completion and suggests synonyms to ensure customers retrieve the most relevant results for their business needs.
Once they have found a partner app through search, customers will experience improved product pages and an even more streamlined user experience, allowing them to gather the information they need quickly. Streamlined calls to action and one privacy-compliant checkbox are also helping to simplify the buying process.
SAP technology — including SAP Commerce Cloud solutions, the open-source project “Spartacus,” the Kyma runtime for SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory, and the SAP Cloud Platform Integration service — brings these enhancements to life.
“We are excited for SAP App Center visitors to experience the new enhancements that will allow them to navigate the app purchase process more easily,” said Senior Vice President Jeff Griggs of Eightfold AI, which provides the Eightfold Talent Intelligence Platform, a solution that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of talent operations, on SAP App Center. “Customers can easily touch base with us at any point during the purchase process so we can start building our relationship with them early. It’s essential to have this ability in critical times like this.”
Partner Experience Like Never Before
SAP App Center has been and continues to be the only place where SAP partners can market and deliver solutions with go-to-market activities to SAP’s more than 440,000 customers. Additionally, it is the gateway for connecting with SAP’s global sales force, which is committed to promoting partner apps and assisting in SAP App Center deals.
With that in mind, we wanted to make it easier for our partners to have visibility into their performance and manage their opportunities from initial start to close. The revolutionized partner cockpit allows partners to do just that. With an end-to-end view of clicks, visits, opportunities, and conversions, partners access all of the insights they need in one place.
“I particularly appreciate the enhanced usability that the new partner cockpit will provide us with. This is a great feature for managing orders from source,” said Bob Crissman, senior vice president of SMB and Channel Sales at Totango, which offers its Enterprise Customer Success Platform, a solution that provides a unified view of customer information, best practices, and relevant metrics, on SAP App Center. “In terms of customer experience, I expect that the enhanced journey provided by the new feature set will have a very positive impact on the visibility of our Enterprise Customer Success Platform app.”
Additional insights for all deal types – one-time, subscription, consumption-based, upsell and renewal, and more – are available to help partners close deals faster than ever before. Plus, the new publishing cockpit makes it simple and easy for partners to onboard new solutions and maintain existing ones.
It is really energizing to have your vision and strategy come to fruition – what a journey! We listened to customers and partners and made small improvements throughout the year, leading to these most recent updates. I’m proud to be able to deliver on our promise with a whole new experience that’s built on SAP technology.
To check out our latest SAP App Center transformation, visit www.sapappcenter.com.
Anne Yi is general manager of SAP App Center.