New SAP Go-to-Market Model Offers Partners Upfront Commissions

SAP GLOBAL PARTNER SUMMIT — SAP is paying upfront commissions to partners in its new revenue share and go-to-market model.

The enterprise resource planning (ERP) provider will launch “SAP PartnerEdge Cloud Choice, flex model,” which aims to give partners more flexibility. Partners serving both large enterprises and the midmarket can tap into the flex model, which divides the customer life cycle into two segments. In addition, SAP will pay upfront commissions and award larger commissions for renewals.

In addition, SAP announced an initiative that will make its partner experience managers work “more proactively” with partners. SAP launched its Partner Success organization on Wednesday. Chief partner officer Karl Fahrbach said the company wants to lean into digital transformation initiatives that COVID-19 helped spur.

“To help partners maximize this opportunity, SAP launched a new Partner Success organization, which will drive more proactive engagement from our partner experience managers. They will work with partners on their business plans and priorities. We continue to collect and act on partner feedback for our RISE with SAP offering while focusing on improving partner profitability in migrating customers to the cloud,” Fahrback wrote in a blog.

Additional Enhancements

SAP also plans to launch a “Partner Finder” that will land partners more customer leads. The function will allow customers to search for partners that best meet their needs. The Partner Finder will likely go live by the third quarter, according to SAP.

Fahrbach in his blog said SAP is committing to helping partners drive more cloud implementations, using SAP’s industry cloud on the foundation of SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). BTP can deploy into any cloud environment to provide integration and extensibility for applications, data and business processes. According to Fahrbach, there will be training for partners to build solutions on BTP.

The company is vowing to reach 150,000 trained and certified consultants by the end of the year.

“SAP is also committed to helping ensure that affordable training accompanies the release of new cloud updates and solutions,” he wrote. “SAP is investing to help partners increase their SAP-certified consultants.”

SAP’s Karl Fahrbach

Other updates include:

Fahrbach spoke more about SAP’s partner initiatives in an interview with the Channel Futures Podcast.

Partner Perspective

Ninety-one percent of partners plan to invest more in their SAP partnership this year, according to an SAP survey. In the meantime, SAP has candidly expressed its goal of responding to partner feedback. For example, some partners have asked for “earlier, faster” collaboration from the company. SAP has also committed to “removing barriers and streamlining processes and reducing costs.”

Dickinson + Associates recently won SAP’s Midmarket Partner of the Year. President Don Dickinson shared the story of how his company moved forward during COVID-19.

Dickinson said the firm originally focused on providing employee welfare and taking care of immediate customer needs. Then Dickinson + Associates worked to help customers who had either closed their office doors or were looking to re-open.

Dickinson + Associates’ Don DIckinson

For example, the company served a dental company with more than 1,000 locations. Dental procedures largely stopped during the early stages of the pandemic, but locations have been opening up recently, differing based on their state.

“As regions of the company reopened, they needed to think about how to bring those companies back to work and how to reach out to those customers,” Dickinson said.

Dickinson + Associates developed a dashboard that helped the customer organize its personal protection equipment (PPE) and other health-related aspects.