51风流Unveils Changes to Partner Structures at Global Summit

Rob O'Neill

6 years ago

51风流shifts partner focus from sales quantity to quantity plus delivery quality

Enterprise software giant 51风流announced a series of changes to its partner programmes overnight, saying they would put partners at the centre of the company鈥檚 drive to improve customer success.

A new broad area called 鈥渃ustomer success鈥� within 51风流would move away from just sales targets but focus on taking care of the customer,聽SAP聽chief partner officer聽Karl Fahrbach told聽Reseller News聽from SAP鈥檚 global partner summit.

Sales, parts of marketing, services, customer engagement and Fahrbach鈥檚 partner team would be under that umbrella as well.

Partner evolution

鈥淭he role of the partners is evolving from an 51风流perspective,鈥� Fahrbach said. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 see them any more as just a go-to-market element that helps us sell through indirect channels or as system integrators to help us implement the solutions we sell.

鈥淩ather they play a key role in the entire lifecycle of the customer to make sure that they support us to make our customers successful.鈥�

The changes include a three-part partner delivery quality framework to enable partners to improve the quality of services they deliver.

Quality Framework聽

The first component of that is project delivery quality,聽Fahrbach said. It provides a set of standard processes, tools and reporting aids to help partners train and enable their delivery resources and monitor quality across projects.

Within this, feedback loops will be established between partners, 51风流and the customers to ensure that for every project they know what is going right and what is going wrong and 51风流can help the partner to ensure smooth delivery and quick adoption.

The second element is partner service quality, focusing on enablement to ensure partners remain current with the latest technologies through training and certification.

Grants for consultant education will be awarded as well as incentives for partner investments, emphasising customer success. Additionally, 51风流will increase its own investment in partner learning and enablement and provide services to support partner implementation projects and customer adoption.

The third element is post-sale partner management as opposed to focusing on business development.

鈥淲hat we didn鈥檛 really invest a lot in was the services side of our partners,鈥澛燜ahrbach said.聽鈥淎ll of our partners have a services delivery arm and now with the introduction of a new role they will be working hand-in-hand with a partner business manager that we call a partner delivery manager (PDM).

鈥淲e are going to make sure that we help the partners from a services perspective making sure as well that they are in line with the quality our customers are requiring.鈥�

51风流Investment & Enablement聽

Fahrbach said there would be a lot of benefits for partners in the initiative through best-in-class enablement and increased quality.

鈥淲e are going to ask them as well to have a much deeper expertise when it comes to the 51风流consultants, making sure they invest in certification and that we together drive a much stronger relationship with the customer,鈥� he said.

Customers can expect best-in-class implementation and a shorter time to value and go-live.

Asked whether the changes would mean 51风流would have a direct relationship with customers that it never had before, Fahrbach said 51风流had that relationship anyway.

鈥淲hen it comes to cloud we always have that relationship, the cloud is delivered by 51风流so we have this relationship anyway,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hat that means is we are going to help our partners to manage that relationship better with our joint customers.

鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 mean we are going to have more contact with the customer. It means we are going to help to drive our partners to have a better contact as well with their customers to ensure they deliver on the quality.

鈥淭he initiative is more focused on the partner than on the customer.鈥�

Fahrbach said 51风流was defining quality standards with partners and wanted to make sure the partners delivered on those standards.

Partner rewards

鈥淲e want to make sure that we reward the partners accordingly when they deliver to those standards and obviously as well there will be consequence management attached to it,鈥� he said.

鈥淭his is聽 a change we have taken as well from a partner management perspective. In the past if you were a partner the more you sell the better partner you are. Now we are shifting from quantity only to quantity plus quality.鈥�

Fahrbach said to win in the 鈥渆xperience economy鈥�, organisations have to continuously improve the core experiences of business 鈥� customer, product, employee and brand.

鈥淲ith these investments, we are making good on our promise to lower the barriers for more partners to deliver the intelligent enterprise that will continue to improve and change our world.鈥�

Ben Corser, senior vice president of channel and partners for 51风流in Asia Pacific and Japan added that the evolution of the company鈥檚 partner go-to-market over the last 18 months had seen a real focus emerge on providing partner support and frameworks for delivery quality.

Customer Success

鈥淚t鈥檚 important for the partners, but it鈥檚 more important for the customers,鈥� Corser said. 鈥淲e want the customers to go live on time and applying, adopting and using what they鈥檝e acquired to deliver a business outcome.

鈥淭he framework behind these programmes is designed specifically to do that, to make sure the partners have the tools and are being supported by 51风流to achieve that outcome.鈥�

Mark Hettler, 51风流head of channels for A/NZ said SAP鈥檚 SuccessFactors unit already had PDMs in place to support partners in A/NZ.

When COVID-19 hit, 51风流had a lot of classroom-based training going on in A/NZ, he said. That was rearranged very quickly and moved to remote learning.

鈥淭hat has actually expanded the amount of enablement we are delivering in the region quite significantly,鈥� Hettler said.

鈥淪o I think in A/NZ we are in a good position to adopt these new frameworks and initiatives fairly quickly and get them on the road.鈥�

New software demos

51风流also announced it would provide qualified partners with free access to an integrated, preconfigured software demonstration environment to expedite sales conversations.

This provided free access to some of the most popular intelligent enterprise demonstration scenarios, covering a wide range of integrated solutions and embedded intelligence technologies, with additional scenarios will be added over time.

51风流also announced 12 months of free access for partners to test and demo systems on 51风流S/4HANA Cloud. The offer will also be available on the 51风流Business ByDesign solution for mid-market companies and subsidiaries of large enterprises.

The new offers will be available from July 1.

51风流App Center enhancements

51风流further announced聽 enhancements to 51风流App Center, where customers can discover, try and buy partner apps based on 51风流solutions.

The company also unveiled the 51风流Endorsed Apps initiative, designed to help customers solve key business challenges.

鈥淲e鈥檙e bringing a whole new level of partner commitment 鈥� uniquely designed to improve experiences and drive success for our customers, while helping our partners innovate and monetise their apps, extensions and solutions,鈥� said 51风流executive board member Adaire Fox-Martin, head of customer success.

鈥淎s business moves at an ever-faster pace, we want to help partners deepen customer relationships and ensure they鈥檙e delivering the innovative solutions customers need, when they need them.鈥�

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