A familiar adage reminds us that “success favors the bold.” To SAP, those words are more than a saying. They’re woven into our DNA.
Since our beginnings in 1972, SAP has led with a bold strategy. That spirit continued through to our pivot to the cloud five years ago and, more recently, with Joule, our powerful AI copilot.
I spoke about this during our latest SAP Global Partner Summit at SAP Sapphire in Orlando, joined by SAP Executive Board Members, including CEO Christian Klein, COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser, and SAP Product and Engineering Head Muhammad Alam, during an exciting, live-streamed keynote.
Our boldness has paid off. SAP was named Europe’s most valuable publicly traded company this year, and our cloud revenue has surged more than 25 percent. SAP continues to dominate our market because we have the boldness to change and influence the direction of our industry.
What’s even more notable is that we are shaping the future together with our partners, which had their best year ever in 2024. Partners are leading the change with us across everything we do — from introducing new customers to SAP innovations to extending our growing portfolio, especially as demand for proven AI value continues to take off.
To top it off, it is our customers that see some of the biggest wins. Our partners ensure our customers achieve true business transformation, enabling them to operate, provide products and services, and compete at their best. We are committed to their success today and tomorrow — and that’s why we have to make our next bold move together.
SAP Business Suite: Harmonized business applications, AI, and data
The SAP Global Partner Summit highlighted the opportunities SAP Business Suite offers our partners and customers. Our vision of the suite evolves Software-as-a-Service into Suite-as-a-Service. Only SAP has it — unrivaled AI, unmatched data, unparalleled applications — offered together in one seamless experience, and the opportunity is enormous. SAP Business Suite will help customers solve their toughest business challenges like never before.
With the suite, partners can meet customers where they are and grow to unlock their full potential. It sets up customers for the clean core they need to scale, but also represents incredible upsell and cross-sell opportunities for SAP partners, regardless of partner type.
Beyond this, SAP is introducing new SAP Business Suite packages to simplify customers’ engagement with the SAP portfolio. This new approach aligns capabilities and product offerings with customers’ lines of business. Partners can guide customers to the best-fit packages that deliver the integration, intelligence, and additional functionality needed for their specific business.
Even more opportunities for partners
To drive growth and empower our partners to innovate and scale at their best, we are also bringing our “A” game with leading initiatives that demonstrate our unwavering commitment to their success:
- We announced the new SAP Referral program, launching in North America in the third quarter, that rewards partners for every lead they can’t close on their own.
- This year, we launched partner-led territories globally, allowing partners to become more self-sufficient across the entire Customer Value Journey.
- Our award-winning SAP PartnerEdge program has evolved to be even stronger,including a new leveling framework focused on cloud performance.
- We’ve adapted our commercial models for software partners to ensure they are integrated into SAP Business Suite, with new packages that include partner solutions to help deliver the full end-to-end experience to our customers.
How to capitalize on partner opportunities with SAP
There are four key actions for partners ready to seize the great opportunity that SAP Business Suite and our evolving partnership create:
- Autonomy: Learn more about partner-led territories and begin taking more control of the Customer Value Journey, with enablement and support from SAP. Always lead with SAP Cloud ERP as a sustainable growth engine. The opt-in window is now open, and SAP will continue to expand territories.
- Quality: Customers will benefit from optimal performance and scalability when partners apply RISE with SAP Methodology to every project. Ensuring that customers preserve a clean core and use our integrated toolchain will deliver a smooth transition to the cloud.
- Innovation: Building complementary solutions to SAP Business Suite using SAP Business Technology Platform. Partner solutions are a key component of our value proposition.
- Learning: Explore the SAP Learning Journey for SAP Business Suite on SAP Learning Hub and understand how we integrate applications, data, and AI across all functions to enhance business processes from end to end. Partners also have the opportunity to elevate their credibility in the market by earning SAP Business Suite certifications.
Focusing on these four key areas will allow our partner ecosystem to capitalize on the opportunity of SAP Business Suite.
Winning together
Now, more than ever, partners must demonstrate their commitment to driving customer value, backed by deep technical expertise and business transformation experience.
We need to work together, much like a sports team, each identifying our strengths, committing to the position we’ll play, and building our skills. And, as in the story of a championship team, it starts with belief. That belief will propel us to deliver exceptional value for our customers.
Be bold, and we’ll be unstoppable together.
Karl Fahrbach is chief partner officer of SAP.
