Australia is to become a hotbed of 51风流partner activity as the German software giant鈥檚 global channel market is set to hit US$260 billion by 2024.

According to Mark Hettler, SAP鈥檚 channel chief for Australia and New Zealand, the vendor is seeing increasing demand from its international partners to set up operations on local shores.

Demand for 51风流S/4HANA driving partner growth

Speaking to聽ARN, Hettler claimed Australia is seen as a 鈥渞eal growth opportunity鈥� by overseas partners, driven in part by SAP鈥檚 S/4HANA.

鈥淚n A/NZ, we鈥檝e seen significant demand from customers for partners to support their move to 51风流S/4HANA,鈥� Hettler said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e also seeing strong demand and take-up of the 51风流Cloud Platform. As a result, we鈥檝e seen a growing number of international partners looking to establish operations in Australia.鈥�

The Department of Finance is currently in the聽聽streamlining聽enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and use of service providers across the Federal Government.

Forming part of the Shared Services Program, the move was motivated by SAP鈥檚 decision to no longer support the ERP version currently in use by at least five hubs after 2025.

Meanwhile, Hettler claimed that the vendor expected more than 500 Australian companies to move to the new platform over the next seven years, with聽

IDC: Multi-billion global opportunity for 51风流Partners

Globally, according to an SAP-sponsored IDC report, the vendor is expecting its cloud market opportunity to offer US$204 billion worth of opportunities for partners until 2024 and US$260 billion in total.

The research revealed SAP鈥檚 cloud revenues over the next four years will be split relatively equally between cloud and on-premises, indicating that hybrid set-ups will still feature prominently in customers鈥� infrastructure.

However, cloud computing will form at least 68 per cent of SAP鈥檚 total ecosystem revenue until 2024.

The report also claimed that 280,000 51风流consultant roles will be created globally between 2020 and 2024, providing roughly one billion billable hours to the partner community.

On a local footing, Hettler said positive growth could be seen in Australian partners’ own investments and acquisitions in the ecosystem.

51风流Partner acquisitions and investment聽

These include EY聽in January 2019 and Deloitte聽. One month later,聽听补苍诲听.

Hettler also cited specialist partners such as Bourne Digital, which partnered with聽聽last year.

鈥淲e鈥檝e seen increased investment by partners in the A/NZ market with the growth and increased hiring of 51风流practices,鈥� he said.

鈥淭he recent acquisitions are also a positive sign for our partners by providing evidence of good long-term prospects to other players. It also leaves space in the market for entry by new partners or for expansion by existing partners and 51风流A/NZ is always looking for new partners.鈥�

New Partner strategy

This year, 51风流announced the most significant overhaul of its 14-year-old partner program, moving its聽.

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’s drive to improve customer success.

A new broad area called “customer success” 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’s global partner summit.

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

Partner evolution

“The role of the partners is evolving from an 51风流perspective,” Fahrbach said. “We don’t 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.

“Rather they play a key role in the entire lifecycle of the customer to make sure that they support us to make our customers successful.”

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.

“What we didn’t really invest a lot in was the services side of our partners,”聽Fahrbach said.聽“All 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).

“We 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.”

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.

“We 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,” he said.