Through an exceptional growth the last ten years, as the first SAP partner in Iceland, AppliCon has deservedly been appointed SAP Gold partner, becoming only the third of its kind in the Nordic countries.
København — When AppliCon started the SAP partnership in Iceland in 1997, the company had only a handful SAP consultants and only a few SAP customers. Today AppliCon employs about 200 SAP experts and ten years of business has made Applicon one of the fastest growing SAP partners in the world. These achievements – combined with an impressive high level of customer satisfaction – are evident reasons AppliCon has been appointed third Gold partner in the Nordic region (in SAP named Partner Edge).
“For us the Gold Partner status in the SAP´s Partner Edge program is a recognition of our high ambitions and focus on both selling the SAP software and providing superior SAP services. We have clear ambitions of being a successful partner in Iceland and Denmark, and currently we focus on expanding our services to the other Nordic countries and UK by establishing local offices. Our vision is to be a leading SAP service provider and reseller in Northern Europe providing superior services to local markets. Our mission is to assist our customers in gaining leadership through flexible standardized SAP business applications and intelligent consultancy,” says Managing Director Kristján Jóhannsson AppliCon.
AppliCon’s ambition is to be the most competent SAP Partner in the Nordic region and to be the best employer for consultants in their field of expertise. Appointing Applicon to the SAP Gold Partner status is an important way for SAP to honor the impressive piece of work that is carried out in Iceland and in Applicon’s other offices in Copenhagen, Reykjavik, Stockholm and London.
“AppliCon is doing a fantastic job. Throughout the ten years of partnership with SAP they have succeeded in growing alongside their customers – and everybody knows how fast and strong the Icelandic companies and business have grown in the last ten years. AppliCon is a role model for other partners and an example on how the SAP solutions are scalable from small and mid-size companies to very large companies.” Said director of Sales in Denmark Jens Bager SAP.
Currently AppliCon has offices in Copenhagen, Reykjavik, Stockholm and London and the number of employees is close to 200 and the expected turnover for 2007 is around 35 million EUR. For the past couple of years the AppliCon companies have been growing organically by more than 20% per year. The initiative to construct a strong group of independent AppliCon companies in the Nordics and UK was based on the fact that Icelandic companies have been expanding outside of Iceland. Investments in the other Nordic countries and UK have been quite substantial and the expanding Icelandic companies have been establishing themselves in these countries. As a result there is a need to support the IT business applications needed for these countries and this is one of the cornerstones of the AppliCon strategy. The Icelandic economy has been growing in terms of GDP by around 4% for the past 4 years which is much higher than in other western countries.
“We now see that SAP is focusing much more on building a strong channel in the SME segment with a selection of competent and reliable partners. This makes the future look bright for us. We have grown rapidly and we aim to continue to grow. Our strategy has been to develop packages, solutions and accelerators in order to improve and complement SAP software for particular industries and countries. We believe that this expertise will give us a leading edge in order to continue to be successful and fuel our growth and expansion into new geographic areas,” says Managing Director Kristján Jóhannsson AppliCon.
AppliCon’s globalization strategy is based on providing SAP solutions to the financial services industry. In this vertical AppliCon has specialized in order to be a highly competitive SAP partner. AppliCon will continue to focus on this area as the company believes there are tremendous opportunities for SAP software in the market of banks and financial institutions. This means offering scalable and reliable solutions in various areas such as core banking based on SAP strategy for Service Oriented Architecture. A lot of financial service companies need to replace their old legacy systems in the coming years and the SAP value proposition here is excellent. AppliCon also plans to have complementing solutions such as the AppliCon Internet Bank solution closely developed in cooperation with SAP core product development.
“SAP has been a strategic partner for us for a decade and we rely on our business partnership with SAP. We believe that the SAP Partner Edge program is by far the biggest step taken by SAP in its 35 year history towards strengthening the SME channel. Based on our constructive co-operation so far we believe that this will give us unexplored opportunities and we will be one of SAP´s most strategic services and reselling partners in North Europe in the next 10 years to come,” says Managing Director Kristján Jóhannsson AppliCon.
