Spotlight on the SAP Store
Rich Phillips is painting a picture, a picture of a world where, one day,
partners will use the SAP Store to sell their intellectual property to customers around the world.
“Imagine a world where the go-to-market evolves from being partners selling SAP to SAP selling partners,” he says.
“Our current model is that SAP produces software, our partners buy it, they develop bespoke apps and solutions onto that software, and they install it for customers. That’s what we do. But
that model will change with the advent of the cloud as customers take more control over how and where and when they buy business-ready apps.”
The scenario Rich goes on to outline looks something like this:
1). CFO briefs employees to research an app that detects fraud in their procurement process.
2). Employee does their online research.
3). Employee works through a shortlist of five companies that provide fraud detection apps and has conversations with each.
4). The decision is made to go with SAP and the customer heads to the SAP Store to contact the partner that’s developed the app, and the SAP AE.
5). The sale is agreed.
6). The customer downloads the solution from the SAP Store.
7). Because of the success of this first sale, the partner takes their fraud prevention app to more customers.
8). A customer in another country has the same problem as the first customer and picks up the phone to find out more.
9). Suddenly the partner has a presence in three or four brand new countries that up until now they've had no presence in.
10). Repeat. This happens time and time again as the partner grows its presence across the world thanks to the SAP store.
What’s important about this scenario, however, is that it’s already happening. “We’ve done deals with this exact scenario,” says Rich.
Indeed,
South Africa partner, Merlynn Intelligence Technologies, has developed a fraud detection app that is available on the SAP Store to download and deploy. Hear more about this via the video interview at the end of this article.
“What does this mean for our partners?” adds Rich. “It means a review of their existing business model to one which is about driving product development and producing IP that can be sold on the SAP Store.”
With SAP announcing that it will be supporting eight different industries in the cloud (it supports 26 industries in the on-premise world), and announcing that it will be ending mainstream support for its on-premise solutions by 2027, it’s clear that there will be a huge number of install base on-premise customers that
will need help transitioning to the cloud.
Says Rich: “Those customers aren’t going to have IP from SAP helping them to solve their transitions to the cloud. But,
if a partner does, then they’re going to be attractive for both SAP and the customer.”
Where the customer or partner is based becomes irrelevant: if there’s a solution that solves an issue then the SAP AE can sell it on SAP paper. And, if it’s executed as a CCFlex transaction – with the partner doing the sales and pre-sales – then the
customer starts to build the relationship with the partner behind the IP.
“Partners can do this now. The scenario shared here is a real scenario: Merlynn in South Africa are already there, they’re in the Store. I would urge partners not to wait, this is an approach they need to be doing now.”
Watch More:
Bev Erikson of Merlynn Intelligence Technologies talks more about the work they do and the fraud detection system they developed – and now sell – via the SAP Store.
Click
here to watch.
