Sydney, Australia — SAP Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) has dived into the small and medium business (SMB) software space, unveiling plans today to acquire a significant share of the market in 2004. A solid channel strategy will provide the platform for the SMB push, supplemented by three tiers of products that address a wide range of business sizes falling under the SMB umbrella.
“SAP has a proven track record in delivering industry leading business software, and we are excited to be bringing this expertise to the SMB market with our Solutions for Small and Midsize Businesses,” said Geraldine McBride, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, SAP Australia and New Zealand.
“Our channel program consists of industry specialist SMB partners, enabling us to deliver the products to market in a way that best responds to the diverse needs of SMBs.
“This will place SAP in a strong position to grow our market share in the critical SMB sector,” she said.
SAP’s channel program has already ramped up with more than 10 sales and service partners on board. Over the coming weeks, partnership agreements will be negotiated with additional partners from throughout Australia and New Zealand. This approach is designed to address the distinct business software needs of SMBs, which are characterised by their industry, complexity of operations, and also company size. To kick start the program, SAP will be working closely with its partners to initiate lead generation activity, pre-sales support and organisational development, by providing resellers with tutorials and sales methodologies.
Sales and service partners delivering SAP’s Solutions for Small and Midsize Businesses to market in Australia and New Zealand, include: Applied Business Technology; BDO Kendall; Evolution Software Systems; Extend Technologies; Industry Data Systems; Intelligroup; Radio Beacon Australia; REALTECH; Supply Chain Consulting; and Wireless IP. The solutions will also be delivered by long time SAP partners Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
SAP SOLUTION FOR SMALL AND MID SIZE BUSINESS
SAP has devised a three tiered product strategy for the SMB market, which gives it the necessary depth to address the software needs of a wide range of customers, regardless of their size or industry. It has also simplified IT challenges for SMBs by offering a suite of products that are easy to implement, and more importantly allow flexibility, which is critical in positioning SMBs to respond to future growth.
Targeted at the lower end of the SMB market is SAP Business One, an out of the box solution that delivers core business accounting functionality with integrated CRM, extended workflow, as well as seamless integration with mySAP Business Suite. SAP Business One is ideal for businesses with at least 10 employees, up to 250 employees.
mySAP All-in-One, targeted towards larger SMBs with more than 200 employees and total revenues between $30 million and $200 million, is a pre-configured, industry specific solution with built-in content, tools, and methodologies. It provides customers with a cost-effective, turnkey deployment.
Rounding out the SMB product offering is mySAP Business Suite, suitable for companies at the high of the mid market. mySAP Business Suite is the industry’s most comprehensive family of business solutions, providing functionality for complete integration, industry-specific capabilities, unlimited scalability and collaboration over the Internet.
Today’s announcement follows an 18 month push into high end SMBs, along with several months of rigorous planning, to prepare the company for its broader SMB focus. In July, Ms McBride made a series of high profile SMB appointments, including Tim Cavill as SMB Director for SAP ANZ and Richard Duffy as SMB Market Development Manager for SAP ANZ. Michael Reidy has also just been appointed as SMB Channel Sales Manager, based in Melbourne. Cavill, Duffy and Reidy have been responsible for developing the SMB go-to-market strategy and for establishing SAP’s channel program.
