According to Pranay Mital, director, SME direct channels, SAP Asia Pacific, the PartnerEdge program was fine-tuned and further developed after months of meticulous analysis and research on the major partner programs currently running globally. SAP noticed that most channel partner programs out in the market are designed to meet vendors’ goals rather than customers and partners. SAP says Mital, has put the priority on “customer success and then partner success, in this order, and that this focus will ultimately result in SAP’s success.”
He adds, “The new program is very robust. It is geared towards a complete partner transformation and the advancement of capabilities. Partners now have the ability to enjoy greater benefits as long as they expand on their capabilities. This translates into deeper skills and expertise and will drive mutual growth, revenue and customer success.”

“It is a very well-defined, transparent and holistic program which allows our partners to plan, measure and very importantly, get financial as well as other intangible rewards,” he continues.
The modified program which provides enablement, business generation and quality incentives for partners who serve small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), now offers partners additional enablement packages for delivering service to customers, the opportunity to participate in the program’s reward points system, higher margins and additional co-marketing resources.
A clear driving factor of the program is that it helps partners to deliver a high level of solution support for their customers and with this in mind, SAP concentrated on developing a comprehensive package of technical support, service and educational benefits including:

Proactive Technical Advice

This comprises a single point of contact, a Partner Services Advisor (PSA), for all technical and SAP PartnerEdge enquiries. The PSA will take the initiative of reaching out to the partner and offer a variety of enablement services, thus ensuring that partner employees are aware of the latest SAP application enhancements, upgrade and industry trends.

Technical Services

The PSA in turn, will put the partner in touch with multiple SAP experts within the SAP organization, who will support the development, implementation and operations of SAP software-based solutions.

Enablement Support

This will be achieved through the PSA or the SAP Channel Partner Portal, allowing the partner to have access to technical enablement and SAP PartnerEdge program support, with a focus on general how-to-questions.

Knowledge Transfer

24/7 access to online self-service business and technical education which leverages 30-plus years of SAP expertise and industry knowledge. These offerings include role-based curricula, which enable partner employees to develop new skills and talents, and encompass the Services e-learning components launched with the announcement of the SAP PartnerEdge program.

A core new component of SAP PartnerEdge is an online system that allows the company’s partners to proactively and more easily manage their relationship with SAP. Incorporating many functions into one easy-to-use system, the online resource provides partners with vital information that helps them track their program status including their PartnerEdge Value Points balance and the number of people in their company who have completed required sales and technical training. Partners can use the Web-based system to manage and maintain their profile and contact information, and subscribe to communications. An added bonus is that with this system, partners can manage market development funds and related marketing activities.

Mital is very excited about the new partner portal, saying that both SAP as well as their partners are very happy with it. He notes, “We have received very good feedback from the channels ever since it went ‘live’ earlier this year. It’s a huge step forwards simply because it is a great improvement from our last partner portal which was pretty static and one sided as partners could not really collaborate with SAP and other channel partners,” he explains. “This is now so different. Partners not only get to manage their business online but can search for, as well as collaborate with partners in other geographies, whether by region, industry, solutions and so on. This really helps our channels market their skills and expertise to other partners, enabling them to grow in the long-run.”
Another new introduction to SAP’s PartnerEdge is the “Value Points” system which recognizes and rewards partners for performance and capability-building activities in addition to sales volume. Mital explains that this provides more opportunities for partners of various sizes and types to advance up the program’s three-level structure—Associate, Silver and Gold. Additionally, the program is designed to support the key role of independent software vendor (ISV) partners by supporting and rewarding solution development, certification and qualification activities in an effort to expand the availability of partner-developed add-on solutions in the market.

Partners attaining Gold level status include:

• Hand Enterprise Solutions Ltd.- China
• Daebo System Co., Ltd.- Korea
• Bridge Solution Group Co., Ltd.- Korea

Partners attaining Silver level status include:

• Covics Business Solution Co., Ltd.- China
• Compass Business Solutions Ltd.- Hong Kong
• Sabre Information Services Pte Ltd- Singapore
• Inecom Pte Ltd – Singapore
• The World Management Pte Ltd – Singapore
• Biztech & Ektimo – Korea
• Morning Data Communication – Korea
• Taiwan Auto – Taiwan

SAP’s partners certainly seem to be convinced by the modified program. On the first day of the launch itself, 15% of their partners signed up for it.

It is no surprise then that SAP has got high expectations with PartnerEdge, aiming to triple their SME customer base through quality channel partners by 2010.
Mital also stresses that the company is concentrating on the quality of ParnerEdge partners and not the quantity. The concentration will be of course on SAP’s major Asia Pacific markets – India, China, Korea and Australia, but Mital emphasizes that this does not mean in any way that the other countries will be ignored.

As for partner types, he says that here, SAP has a long- term direction. Mital explains that at the moment there is more of a focus on ISVs because this group has the highest impact and the quickest returns. However, in 2007 and 2008, Mital says that all types of partners will come under the PartnerEdge umbrella.
He notes that SAP has enjoyed good SMB success in the last 2 to 3 years and that the company’s SMB side has grown by 300% since they started, already having 3000 customers and aiming to accelerate this momentum. In this space, SAP Asia Pacific has 184 partners in total, of which 78 focus on the mid enterprise and the remaining 106 concentrate on the small enterprise section. Of this 184, 20 already signed up during the launch of PartnerEdge on the 24th of August and they expect the rest to transition to the program by the end of the year.

Commenting on what it takes to join SAP’s PartnerEdge program, Mital says the company looks for the following traits:

• Partners who have been in the market for a good amount of time, have the experience, expertise and skills, have fostered good relationships with their customers and who understand and know the market well.
• Financially sound partners who have a good business track record.
• Partners who are committed and who will be together with SAP for at least the next 20-25 years. Here, Mital stresses that they are not interested in companies who are only lured by the SAP brand name.

“We definitely have high aspirations which we firmly believe we will achieve with our revamped program. There is simply no biasness in our PartnerEdge program. Our criteria are well-defined. We know that our channel partners enable us to offer SME customers what they need when they need it in ‘rightsized’ solutions deployed incrementally. We now offer a world-class program of unprecedented business building resources to our partners – the valued extensions of our business – while further aligning our joint efforts to deliver maximum customer value. SAP is now a firmly established SME solution leader and our PartnerEdge program will further fuel our channel partners’ efforts as we look to triple our SME customer base by 2010,” concludes Mital.