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LONDON SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Laura Atkinson has been appointed as Chief Partner Officer for SAP UK & Ireland, reporting into Managing Director Michiel Verhoeven.

In her new role, Laura will focus on leading a customer-centric, consistent and holistically run partner ecosystem in SAP UK & Ireland. Both the UKI VAR team and the Global Strategic Service Partner (GSSP), Hyperscaler and Solution Extensions (SolEx) team, will now report into Laura. Laura will also drive closer collaboration with the line of business (LOB) partner resources to maximise the impact of partners in all areas of the business.

Previously head of partners and alliances, SAP UK & Ireland, Laura has been with SAP for four years, and prior to that spent 15 years at Microsoft UK, covering a variety of sales and partner management roles. Laura has over 26 years’ experience within the IT industry, spanning the entire spectrum of customer and partner industries, and is driven by her passion for fostering greater diversity and inclusion within the business community.

“Our ambitions are clear; we want to double the all up partner contribution to the UKI business by 2023,” said Michiel Verhoeven, Managing Director, SAP UK and Ireland. “We want to create customers for life by delivering better outcomes and choice via our partner community, continue to develop a partner ecosystem that supports our cloud growth strategy, and provide an outstanding and consistent experience for all our partners.

“Laura has done a fantastic job over the past four years building greater trust, collaboration and advocacy within our Partners and Alliances network, particularly with our most strategic Systems Integrators and Hyperscaler partners, and will no doubt build on this success and leverage this strategic mindset in her new role.”

“We have an incredible partner ecosystem here in the UK and Ireland in terms of talent, innovation, collaboration and sheer scale,” said Laura Atkinson, Chief Partner Officer, SAP UK & Ireland. “I am inspired by our partners every day, and am really looking forward to the challenge and the opportunity of continuing to grow all of our businesses together in this new role.”

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