As the old adage goes:
“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”
In today’s fast-paced global marketplace dominated by technology, cloud computing and AI have given enterprises new opportunities to optimise productivity and operations – so, which would you choose? To go fast, or go far?
What if you don’t have to choose? What if I tell you that you could go fast, and also go far?
How?
While technology providers are each competing to broaden their solution offerings to include the latest and the greatest – particularly with generative AI technology, in a region such as Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), it is also becoming increasingly difficult for any single provider to offer one-stop solutions that can cater to all needs.
That’s why at SAP, we have doubled down on our partnering strategy. With the surge in demand for cloud-based innovations, our dynamic partner ecosystem is becoming increasingly essential in delivering value, tailored to each customer. Today, SAP has more than 25,000 partners in 140 countries globally, with close to 5,000 partners in APJ. We are now living in a new era where our channel partners are leading technology adoption.
Unleashing growth in APJ.
The APJ landscape is anything but homogenous – while diverse in culture and language, it is also home to a significant community of small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), making up over 96%¹ of businesses in Asia.
SAP has long worked with midsize businesses to achieve their goals. Globally, over 250,000 growing businesses rely on SAP to keep them moving forward, and around 80% of our customers are small and midsize companies. While midsize companies are the growth engines of the future, SAP understands that they also struggle with many of the same business pressures as their larger counterparts.
Midmarket leaders need flexible, agile tools that can provide the ability to scale without increasing costs and complexity. They need solutions that can help them connect, grow, and innovate their businesses today, and be ready for whatever comes next.
So, in March 2023, SAP introduced a new offering for midsize customers: GROW with SAP – a ready-to-run cloud ERP solution, powered by SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. As a company that already supports the world’s largest enterprises, at SAP, we know what it takes to help customers harness benefits from cloud solutions. Based on our success with RISE with SAP offering, we are now transferring those industry best practices and deep expertise to help midsize companies realise the value of adopting cloud ERP too.
This is how we help you go fast.
The GROW with SAP offering features services and tools that streamline project delivery at a fixed rate, and the ability to deliver technical go-lives in as little as four to six weeks. Midsize businesses can now enjoy rapid time to value and the benefits of a right-sized, cloud ERP solution, all at a predictable cost.
And here’s how we help you go far.
GROW with SAP customers also gain access to a global ecosystem of local, expert partners, and free learning resources designed to help them derive meaningful business results. Through fit-to-standard configurations, our customers can minimise technical customisations so they can run fast; and add on modular business applications, enabled by SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), one priority at a time, so they can run far – keeping pace with their speed of innovation, without giving up the readiness to scale as their business grows.
Bringing support closer to you.
For over 50 years, SAP has helped organisations of all sizes bring out their best. And we continue to do that with a laser focus on delivering long-term value to our customers.
Not only has SAP grown our partner ecosystem exponentially, but we have also introduced new programs, initiatives, and frameworks, that revolutionise the way we operate and innovate together with our partners.
Recently, we launched a new Partner-Led Territories (PLT) initiative that delegates specific territories – such as a solution area, an industry, or a geographical area – primarily to carefully appointed partners that meet SAP’s criteria. The initiative allows these partners the maximum autonomy in such territories, while bringing consultation and technical support closer to customers. In APJ, the PLT initiative has started rolling out across selected market segments – especially SME-centric ones – in Australia, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and emerging markets, including Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Maldives, and Nepal, together with our partners. As the initiative matures, we are also constantly applying best practices to prepare for a full-scale rollout across more APJ markets including Japan and South Korea.
The feedback has been very positive. At one of the launch events last quarter in Goa, India, a customer shared his excitement with me:
I’d never thought growing companies like ours could also access SAP’s best-in-class solutions to scale our business – it had always felt a little out of reach. I’m so thrilled that we can now discuss our business needs with a local partner and benefit from such cutting-edge technologies too.
The road ahead.
According to a Forbes Insight survey², 88% of SME business leaders in the Asia Pacific region are looking to expand their international customer base in the next three years. With the growing ambitions of midsize businesses in APJ, SAP partners will represent a new key enabler for the growth beyond borders.
At the SAP Sapphire conference in Orlando this year, SAP announced an unprecedented number of strategic, AI partnerships with global market leaders – including AWS, IBM, Google Cloud, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, NVIDIA, and more – infusing Business AI throughout our enterprise cloud portfolio, and supercharging SAP BTP with the broadest set of large language models (LLM) to help customers accelerate their AI adoption.
It has never been more exciting to be part of the SAP partner ecosystem, and the midmarket business. The pace of innovation in this space is simply exhilarating.
We know that business transformation is a journey, not a destination. To help customers find the right expertise, SAP continues to evolve our partner training and validation programs. In addition to the Competency Framework, we have recently introduced a new RISE with SAP Validated Partner recognition to help customers identify their ideal cloud transformation partner, with greater confidence.
To find an SAP partner, start here.
For partner solutions, visit SAP Store.
To learn more about partnering opportunities with SAP, visit us here.