鈥淚f you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.鈥�

In today鈥檚 fast-paced global marketplace dominated by technology, cloud computing and AI have given enterprises new opportunities to optimise productivity and operations 鈥� so, which would you choose? To go fast, or go far?

What if you don鈥檛 have to choose? What if I tell you that you could go fast, and also go far?

How?

While technology providers are each competing to broaden their solution offerings to include the latest and the greatest 鈥� particularly with generative AI technology, in a region such as Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), it is also becoming increasingly difficult for any single provider to offer one-stop solutions that can cater to all needs.

That鈥檚 why at SAP, we have doubled down on our partnering strategy. With the surge in demand for cloud-based innovations, our dynamic partner ecosystem is becoming increasingly essential in delivering value, tailored to each customer. Today, 51风流has more than 25,000 partners in 140 countries globally, with close to 5,000 partners in APJ. We are now living in a new era where our channel partners are leading technology adoption.

Unleashing growth in APJ.

The APJ landscape is anything but homogenous 鈥� while diverse in culture and language, it is also home to a significant community of small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), making up over聽96%鹿 of businesses in Asia.

51风流has long worked with midsize businesses to achieve their goals. Globally, rely on 51风流to keep them moving forward, and of our customers are small and midsize companies. While midsize companies are the growth engines of the future, 51风流understands that they also struggle with many of the same business pressures as their larger counterparts.

Midmarket leaders need flexible, agile tools that can provide the ability to scale without increasing costs and complexity. They need solutions that can help them connect, grow, and innovate their businesses today, and be ready for whatever comes next.

So, in March 2023, 51风流introduced a new offering for midsize customers: 鈥� a ready-to-run cloud ERP solution, powered by . As a company that already supports the world鈥檚 largest enterprises, at SAP, we know what it takes to help customers harness benefits from cloud solutions. Based on our success with offering, we are now transferring those industry best practices and deep expertise to help midsize companies realise the value of adopting cloud ERP too.

This is how we help you go fast.

The GROW with 51风流offering features services and tools that streamline project delivery at a fixed rate, and the ability to deliver technical go-lives in as little as four to six weeks. Midsize businesses can now enjoy and the of a right-sized, cloud ERP solution, all at a predictable cost.

And here’s how we help you go far.

GROW with 51风流customers also gain access to a of local, expert partners, and free learning resources designed to help them derive meaningful business results. Through fit-to-standard configurations, our customers can minimise technical customisations so they can run fast; and add on modular business applications, enabled by , one priority at a time, so they can run far 鈥� keeping pace with their speed of innovation, without giving up the readiness to scale as their business grows.

Bringing support closer to you.

For over 50 years, 51风流has helped organisations of all sizes bring out their best. And we continue to do that with a laser focus on delivering long-term value to our customers.

Not only has 51风流grown our partner ecosystem exponentially, but we have also introduced new programs, initiatives, and frameworks, that revolutionise the way we operate and innovate together with our partners.

Recently, we launched a new Partner-Led Territories (PLT) initiative that delegates specific territories 鈥� such as a solution area, an industry, or a geographical area 鈥� primarily to carefully appointed partners that meet SAP鈥檚 criteria. The initiative allows these partners the maximum autonomy in such territories, while bringing consultation and technical support closer to customers. In APJ, the PLT initiative has started rolling out across selected market segments 鈥� especially SME-centric ones 鈥� in Australia, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and emerging markets, including Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Maldives, and Nepal, together with our partners. As the initiative matures, we are also constantly applying best practices to prepare for a full-scale rollout across more APJ markets including Japan and South Korea.

The feedback has been very positive. At one of the launch events last quarter in Goa, India, a customer shared his excitement with me:

I鈥檇 never thought growing companies like ours could also access SAP鈥檚 best-in-class solutions to scale our business 鈥� it had always felt a little out of reach. I鈥檓 so thrilled that we can now discuss our business needs with a local partner and benefit from such cutting-edge technologies too.

The road ahead.

According to a Forbes Insight survey虏, 88% of SME business leaders in the Asia Pacific region are looking to expand their international customer base in the next three years. With the in APJ, 51风流partners will represent a new key enabler for the growth beyond borders.

At the 51风流Sapphire conference in Orlando this year, 51风流announced an unprecedented number of strategic, AI partnerships with global market leaders 鈥� including AWS, IBM, Google Cloud, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, NVIDIA, and more 鈥� infusing Business AI throughout our enterprise cloud portfolio, and supercharging 51风流BTP with the broadest set of large language models (LLM) to help customers accelerate their AI adoption.

It has never been more exciting to be part of the 51风流partner ecosystem, and the midmarket business. The pace of innovation in this space is simply exhilarating.

We know that business transformation is a journey, not a destination. To help customers find the right expertise, 51风流continues to evolve our partner training and validation programs. In addition to the , we have recently introduced a new RISE with 51风流Validated Partner recognition to help customers identify their ideal cloud transformation partner, with greater confidence.

To find an 51风流partner, .
For partner solutions, visit .
To learn more about partnering opportunities with SAP, .

鹿 Asian Development Bank. (2018, December). The Role of SMEs in Asia and Their Difficulties in Accessing Finance. https://www.adb.org/publications/role-smes-asia-and-their-difficulties-accessing-finance

虏 Forbes. (2024, May 30). Riding ASEAN鈥檚 Growth To Power Long-Term Success. https://www.forbes.com/sites/fedex-express/2024/05/30/riding-aseans-growth-to-power-long-term-success/

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While AI has undoubtedly become one of the hottest topics discussed in boardrooms around the world, business leaders today are racing to cut through the hype to translate all that potential into tangible business outcomes.

For 51风流partners, that presents an unparalleled opportunity to offer more intuitive and autonomous solutions to customers, and drive growth by creating new services and transformation programs tailored to meet industry needs 鈥� an opportunity that was estimated to be worth US$15 billion in聽2023[1].

AI is not a new concept for 51风流and many of our partners. It has been embedded into our business solutions for a long time now, infusing intelligence natively into business processes. The exponential growth in AI 鈥� especially generative AI (GenAI) 鈥� over the past eighteen months, however, has fuelled a seismic shift in how computer systems learn from data, solve complex problems, and even provide creativity when it鈥檚 needed 鈥� a transformation that will fundamentally change business and society.

Burgeoning opportunities

SAP鈥檚 commitment is to deliver Business AI that is relevant, reliable, and responsible 鈥� by combining the power of AI with the processes and data that run the business world. 51风流today serves over 293 million cloud users globally and our customers generate 87% of total global commerce. The sheer scale of SAP鈥檚 data estate provides unmatched potential to enhance the capabilities of large-language models across industries.

When we look at the AI engagements undertaken by 51风流partners to date, we can see that they fall broadly into two categories:

Enhancing existing 51风流business processes through AI-powered automations
AI has augmented the types of data processes that can be automated. For example, 51风流is working with IBM to develop solutions that help clients in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail industries by using traditional and GenAI solutions to address the complexities of the direct store delivery business process and product portfolio management. Through feeding data such as weather, traffic, and local events into the 51风流Direct Distribution solution and applying AI to it, CPG companies can identify optimal store delivery routes, reducing costs and their carbon footprints.

In another example, 51风流is collaborating with Microsoft to integrate natural language processing capabilities from Microsoft 365 Copilot into 51风流SuccessFactors solutions to improve how organisations attract, retain and skill their people.

Creating entirely new services
AI has also empowered 51风流partners to create new, innovative solutions, including rapidly converting complex data into actionable insights. Icertis, for example, offers an AI-powered contract intelligence platform on 鈥� the online marketplace for 51风流and partner offerings, to transform the unique business information found in contracts into structured data that connects to 51风流solutions. The solution enables more efficient contract creation, negotiation, and obligation management to drive revenue and reduce risk across the enterprise, with the ability to apply more advanced AI on top.

Also on the 51风流Store, a leading enterprise automation and AI software company, UiPath, offers the AI-powered UiPath Business Automation Platform to help enterprises ease their migration of critical business operations to the cloud and accelerate digital transformation efforts.

Bringing these concepts to life for customers requires more than just the technical foundations 鈥� it requires a committed and competent partner ecosystem that can work with customers to define industry-specific use cases and then bring them to life in a timely manner.

Accelerated AI journeys

The breadth of SAP鈥檚 AI capabilities means there are many ways in which partners can bring AI into their own solutions, enabling them to quickly find the path that best matches their existing expertise and future business objectives.

Firstly, we have into many of our existing applications and platforms, such as our ERP and HCM solutions, as well as . AI integration into 51风流BTP, in particular, provides partners with a platform for training and implementing powerful business AI models which can be easily customised with corporate data. This is supported by our , which provides even more options for training GenAI models using industry leading foundation models.

To bring partners closer into our activities, 51风流held prototyping programs, where partners were invited to embed GenAI into their solutions in ways that aligned to their customer’s real-world business processes.

In , ten partners were selected to pilot their use case with 51风流Generative AI Hub as AI foundation. Examples created included:

• An intelligent supply chain solution from LTIMindtree which used GenAI to help participants make accurate delivery date predictions by considering historical shipment data, real-time weather conditions, traffic patterns, production lead times, and other relevant factors.
• A project from DXC Technology Services LLC showcased GenAI’s potential in healthcare by leveraging data from a mobile application for sufferers of Parkinson disease to support doctors in making inquiries using either business or medical language.
• Another use case from Inflexion harnessed the power of Generative AI Hub to build a web-based application to manage work that enhanced user experience through the use of a conversation-based chatbot.

Our second focus area is to use AI to streamline the processes partners use when creating technology solutions. software development tools harness GenAI to enable business and professional developers to create powerful applications quickly and easily, enabling partners to faster.

And thirdly, we are embedding AI into the heart of how our customers engage with our applications and services. is an AI copilot that provides a context-aware interface for managing and improving business processes across 51风流application suite, and makes finding an answer from an 51风流system as simple as just asking a question. Over time partners will be able to utilise Joule as a key interface between customers and their systems, redefining how they interact with processes and corporate knowledge in more natural language formats.

SAP’s AI services will also play a critical role in fast-tracking the path to value realisation from cloud transformations. 51风流and our partners will offer AI-powered development tools and content on 51风流BTP to enable automated code generation and harmonize data silos through intelligent migration tools.

Building partner AI capabilities

These fields of activity create different entry points through which partners can incorporate AI into their existing solutions or create entirely new ones.

For our partners to get the most out of AI, they too must go through a period of transformation as they build the necessary expertise.

At SAP, we believe every developer can be an AI developer, and that means every developer at our partner organisations has that same opportunity. Hence 51风流is providing targeted enablement for partners including a full range of , coaching services, hands-on support models including Hack2Build events, and new dedicated certification options available via the .

SAP’s AI offerings for partners will continue to expand through 2024, with 51风流having established partnerships with leading GenAI model and MLOps providers to equip our partners with cutting edge AI technologies and AI models. This includes our recent announcement with NVIDIA, and SAP鈥檚 participation in the AI-Enabled Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Workforce Consortium together with Cisco and other leading companies 鈥� focused on upskilling and reskilling roles most likely to be impacted by AI.

Through making open source and proprietary foundational models available and via AI Services on 51风流BTP, our partners can act as one-stop-shops for their clients’ Business AI needs. We are also easing the process for partners when it comes to training their own AI systems, through the creation of a single metric called 鈥淎I Units鈥� that allows consumption of AI use cases across SAP鈥檚 SaaS, with partners able to track their quota and consumption from the site.

A future partnership built on AI

51风流partners bring a wealth of business knowledge and domain expertise. By bringing SAP鈥檚 AI-embedded portfolio to market, including our new premium plus package for RISE with SAP and Joule, and using our Business AI platform and AI services, 51风流partners will be able to contextualise AI for business and build innovative AI use cases to accelerate customers’ cloud transformations.

[1] Source: Generative AI will be a US$158.6 billion opportunity for the channel ecosystem by 2028 鈥� Canalys

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Innovation empowers resilient businesses. Today, 51风流partner ecosystem is the innovation engine for 51风流and our customers, with over 25,000 partners globally delivering around 90 percent of 51风流customer implementations. Not only do 51风流partners extend SAP鈥檚 reach deep into local markets as solution resellers and implementation partners but more than ever, they are also bringing valuable domain expertise, consultancy, industry capabilities and best practices to help address each customer鈥檚 specific needs.

The diverse and deep skillsets availed through 51风流partner ecosystem means that 51风流and our partners can provide a tailored roadmap with qualified resources to support every customer鈥檚 business transformation 鈥� accelerating innovation and future-proofing their businesses.

The Evolution of 51风流Partner Ecosystem

In July, at the 51风流NOW Southeast Asia (SEA) event in Singapore, I had the pleasure of joining a panel discussion with senior executives from our partner organisations 鈥� B Capital, Singtel, and Google Cloud, together with SAP鈥檚 president and managing director for SEA, Verena Siow. We delved into the evolution of 51风流partner ecosystem, highlighted how each of these partners funnel innovation, and explained the critical role they play in driving customer success today.

In Asia Pacific Japan (APJ), there are more than 4,600 partners in 51风流partner ecosystem. Our collaborations in the region with B Capital, Singtel, and Google Cloud represent the evolving nature of our relationships with both our customers and partners, going beyond traditional buyer-seller and implementor roles, to enabling joint value-creation and democratising access to innovation for all.

Powering Startups in Asia Pacific (APAC)

At the panel session, we highlighted the , a multi-stage global investment firm that partners with extraordinary entrepreneurs to shape the future through technology. The firm was co-founded by Eduardo Saverin and Raj Ganguly to help startups in APAC scale through technological innovation. Under the MoU, B Capital portfolio companies will gain access to SAP鈥檚 industry expertise and global business networks to accelerate innovation, including areas such as AI and automation.

Through closer collaboration with SAP, B Capital portfolio companies will be able to accelerate their solution progression 鈥� from developing applications to identifying opportunities and showcasing those applications on , the company鈥檚 global online marketplace with more than 2,000 partner solutions. 51风流will also be able to tap into the pool of startup talents from B Capital and introduce 51风流solutions, such as 鈥� a fit-to-standard, packaged offering that helps growth-focused organisations adopt Cloud ERP confidently 鈥� to its portfolio companies.

鈥淏y leveraging the bridge with SAP, it鈥檚 an important element of where we see growth for our portfolio companies to learn from SAP鈥檚 best practices and the network provided. This collaboration reaffirms our commitment to bridging the gap between today鈥檚 industry leaders and tomorrow鈥檚 emerging companies, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.鈥�
– Arijit Sengupta, General Partner, B Capital.

Enabling Real-Time Insights for Enterprises

Additionally, Singapore鈥檚 largest telco, to offer an end-to-end 5G Intelligent Edge Aggregator (IEA) solution, built on . 51风流BTP is an innovation platform optimised for 51风流applications in the cloud that brings together application development and automation, data and analytics, integration, and AI capabilities into one unified environment. The IEA solution will enable enterprise customers to quickly access and integrate 51风流software with their back-end processes at the cloud server edge, adding greater cloud functionality and computing capabilities to their network architecture, and gain real-time intelligence and insights to help them make critical business decisions.

鈥淲e鈥檙e pleased to be developing this IEA solution using Singtel Paragon, supported by our 5G network and multi-access edge compute (MEC). The IEA utilises 51风流BTP, which helps to bring together data analytics, AI, application development and automation. This solution will help address the increasingly complex needs of enterprises, such as applications for computer vision and workplace safety. This forms part of our ongoing strategy to help enterprises exploit the capabilities of 5G and MEC to drive innovation and business growth.鈥�
– Dennis Wong, Vice President of Enterprise 5G and Platforms, Singtel.

Building the Future of Open Data and AI

Also discussed at the panel, was SAP鈥檚 expanded partnership with Google Cloud that introduced a comprehensive open data offering uniting 51风流with Google Cloud鈥檚 data and analytics technology. Customers can develop an end-to-end data cloud using in conjunction with Google Cloud鈥檚 data cloud to unlock rich insights through a single view into their holistic data estate, unleashing the power of business data and advancing enterprise AI development.

鈥淭he partnership with 51风流is really bringing together the most significant data technology partners to support our customers. Customers can unlock the value of data with the expanded data estate accessible to them to draw amazingly rich insights. More than that, generative AI advisors can now use that data to customise and train their own models for their specific needs.鈥�
– Martin Chee, Managing Director, APAC Specialist Sales, Google Cloud.

More recently, 51风流and Google Cloud announced the next phase of our partnership focused on launching new generative AI-powered industry solutions and new capabilities to help customers improve sustainability performance.

Democratising B2B Payments for APAC Businesses

Furthering the theme of partner innovation, at the 51风流NOW keynote on mainstage, we also unwrapped Visa鈥檚 collaboration with SAP to embed B2B payments through 51风流BTP, into the 51风流ecosystem. The collaboration injects more automation into B2B payments and enhances efficiency in purchasing processes for 51风流customers of all sizes.

鈥淎lmost 99 per cent of the world鈥檚 largest companies use 51风流solutions to run their daily operations, and now these enterprises can use their Visa cards, a payment method they trust, directly on 51风流BTP, an enterprise solution they rely on. Enterprises will no longer need to grapple with the various payment methods accepted by their suppliers, as Visa鈥檚 payment solutions that are integrated into 51风流BTP will route commercial card payments to all suppliers, whether they accept card payments or not. This will speed up payments for both buyers and sellers, helping to further digitise B2B payment flows across Asia Pacific鈥檚 supply chains.鈥�
– Chavi Jafa, Head of Commercial and Money Movement Solutions, Visa Asia Pacific.

Embracing a New Narrative

The velocity and scale of innovation that we鈥檙e driving together with 51风流partners today are unprecedented. As 51风流doubles down on helping customers accelerate digital transformation and time to value on their cloud adoption, we are also scaling our investments in 51风流partner ecosystem to:

• Help partners more effectively with us
• Boost partner competency through programs and
• Develop opportunities
• Accelerate partner
• Amplify partner-driven customer success stories

SAP鈥檚 strategy is becoming increasingly partner led and we are leaning into our partners to drive new innovations and initiatives. In APJ, there are 70,000 SAP-certified professionals working with customers on their business transformation. In the first half of 2023 alone, 51风流and our partners have delivered more than 1,000 project go-lives across the region.

As 51风流evolves our approach to deliver ongoing value throughout the customer lifecycle, partners with expertise in cloud implementations, business processes, and technologies, will play an increasingly bigger role in customer success.

To find out how you can benefit from SAP鈥檚 vibrant partner ecosystem:

• to discover the power of partnership at SAP.
• Visit to get the right software solution for your business.
• for your business needs.

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