This year, we were excited to host more than 7,000 viewers from all over the world for the 2021 SAP Global Partner Summit conference. Due to the pandemic, the event was once again virtual, giving participants a fully digital experience broadcasted from New York City.
Hosted by Katie Linendoll, the summit provided viewers with insights and information from SAP executives, industry insiders, partner-business colleagues, and partners from around the world. Attendees heard about market dynamics, SAP’s strategy, how SAP continues to evolve the partner business, and the many opportunities with RISE with SAP, industry cloud, and SAP Business Technology Platform.
Over the past year, SAP experienced much growth across its cloud portfolio – with its highest growth in cloud in the last 10 years occurring in the first quarter of 2021. SAP partners recognize the great opportunity in the cloud and were able to leverage RISE with SAP and SAP Business Technology Platform to drive customers’ business transformations in the cloud and capitalize on that opportunity.
Partners Focus on Growth Opportunity
Don Dickinson, founder and president of Dickinson + Associates, shared this sentiment during the SAP Global Partner Summit primetime show, noting growth potential with RISE with SAP combined with SAP Business Technology Platform, particularly after a year that drove so many customers to digitalization.
“[RISE with SAP] allows you to innovate on SAP Business Technology Platform on an ongoing basis once you get past that migration…and it offers improved best practices that have been built in,” he said. “This is a huge opportunity, coming out of the pandemic with a workforce that is ready to transform businesses.”
Some partners have taken it a step further by working with SAP to launch cloud offerings for their specific industries. Ginger Smith, director of Strategic Partnerships at Honeywell, discussed the recent launch of Honeywell Forge Real Estate Operations with SAP and how working with partners helps in bringing their platform to another level. After starting out with a few focus areas in real estate, Honeywell started expanding into indoor air quality and space utilization. Looking forward, Honeywell will leverage the SAP partnership to introduce its next iteration of the solution.
Trust Is Key
Throughout the event, it was encouraging to see so many partners finding success with SAP and with each other, thanks to the SAP partner ecosystem. During the primetime show, SAP Chief Partner Officer Karl Fahrbach discussed how SAP partners value simplicity, speed, trust, and transparency. He noted that trust is key to any relationship, particularly the one between SAP and its partners.
This was echoed by the yearly Partner Enablement Experience survey, which seeks partner feedback on the SAP ecosystem. “If you look at the survey results, you’ll see that we’re doing very well in that partners are trusting SAP, but I think what is important to note is that SAP is trusting partners as well,” Fahrbach said. “When we commit to provide transparency of our road map – because we expect to deliver the Intelligent Enterprise with partner intellectual property and partner products – that means that we trust our partners.”
The SAP Global Partner Summit event recapped some of the major highlights of the partner ecosystem, including the successes of our partners and SAP’s programs and engagements, and RISE with SAP over the past several months. Building on this momentum, at SAPPHIRE NOW, attendees learned about new RISE with SAP capabilities that will position SAP partners for success in the future.
RISE with SAP Offering Extended at SAPPHIRE NOW
On the heels of the SAP Global Partner Summit event, SAP kicked off its global SAPPHIRE NOW conference. Throughout the event, attendees could see the value of SAP’s partner ecosystem, with sessions from partners including NTT Data, Accenture, and Siemens, as well as customer sessions featuring partners like Deloitte, Skillsoft, Blackline, and many more.
SAPPHIRE NOW showcased the RISE with SAP transformation packages for specific industries, which build on the January introduction of the RISE with SAP offering. Since January, SAP partners, like Dickinson + Associates, have taken RISE with SAP to new heights, working to achieve revenue for their businesses and create value for their customers.
The RISE with SAP transformation packages for specific industries provide business transformation as a service with five initial industry-tailored cloud solutions for retail, consumer products, automotive, utilities, and industrial machinery and components. Partners complement the RISE with SAP industry packages by applying their industry know-how to create personalized solutions for the industries they specialize in. This broadens the reach of SAP and its partners, leaving no industry untouched or unsupported by our joint expertise.
Recently, Accenture launched SOAR with Accenture, a curated collection of RISE with SAP-compatible resources and services that enable business transformation across industries. SOAR with Accenture bundles business transformation capabilities and assets to help companies plan for, implement, and manage RISE with SAP projects. We are working with Accenture to develop a portfolio of ground-breaking industry solutions that span multiple industries, including utilities, oil and gas, defense, and manufacturing – among others.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), one of our strategic partners, recently launched TCS Enterprise Navigator™, a consulting-led framework that takes a holistic and measurable approach to modernize processes and enhance user experience. Designed to help organizations build a future-ready digital foundation that allows them to enhance innovation and easily adapt to changing market dynamics, the consulting framework brings smart capabilities such as strategic insights and value realization, organization change management, and pre-configured business and industry solutions, supported by emerging technologies, such as AI and advanced analytics. The set of pre-configured industry and business solutions, TCS Crystallus™, powered by assets and accelerators bundled together as a business reference suite, complements the RISE with SAP offering and helps companies in their digital transformation journey by leveraging SAP digital core technologies and SAP Business Technology Platform. TCS Crystallus can be adopted for various industry segments including life sciences, hi-tech, professional services, and travel and transportation, and delivers faster time to market, competitive advantage, business agility and minimal business disruption.
RISE with SAP highlights the best that the SAP partner ecosystem has to offer, as it demonstrates how partners and SAP work together to provide great solutions for customers. At SAP, we are continuously innovating on top of the solutions we offer to partners to achieve partner success because we know that, ultimately, partner success will bring customer success. As we move forward, we will continue putting our partners at the center of our strategy with the RISE with SAP offerings, and we will work closely with our partners to achieve our joint goals.
If you missed important sessions of either event, join us on demand for the SAP Global Partner Summit event or SAPPHIRE NOW.
