SAP Releases PartnerEdge Program Enhancements in 2021 Partner Guide

The SAP PartnerEdge program is moving into the next phase of its transformation. SAP has released its 2021 Partner Guide, putting into motion key enhancements of last year’s “Next-Generation Partnering” promise.

SAP announced the new partner guide last week on the eve of Tuesday’s SAP Innovation Day for Partners. The enhancements to PartnerEdge include Partner Grouping Agreements (PGAs) that let partners pool resources to expand their geographic coverage maps. SAP has begun offering cross-border certification, removing barriers to those partners tied to selling in one country.

Improvements to the SAP PartnerEdge program will also give partners access to the same tools used by SAP’s internal salesforce. Among them is SAP’s revamped Partner Finder, which uses AI to help patch customers with partners.

SAP’s chief partner officer, Karl Fahrbach, outlined the improvements in a keynote kicking off Tuesday’s virtual event.

SAP’s Karl Fahrbach

“We’re now positioned to orchestrate the full customer journey with you,” Fahrbach said.

With SAP’s new customer success strategy, Fahrbach tacitly acknowledged the company needed remove barriers that restricted many of its partners.

“For many years, SAP tried to do all things to all customers,” Fahrbach said. “And that approach didn’t work. We just cannot serve the needs of every customer. And that’s OK. We have an ecosystem of more than 22,000 amazing partners, each with expertise in different areas.’

Delayed Because of COVID-19

Originally slated to roll out in July, SAP postponed implementing the changes due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the SAP Global Partner Summit in June, the company announced it was moving to a more phased implementation. Like many businesses worldwide, the pandemic has had a significant impact on SAP’s business and that of its partners.

SAP’s Teri Hamann

“We slowed the timeline because we knew a lot of partners would be focused on clawback [and] delivery, depending upon how they were impacted,” Teri Hamann, SAP’s senior VP of partner experience, told Channel Futures. (Read our interview with Teri Hamann here.)

COVID-19 prompted SAP’s decision last month to accelerate its timeline for transitioning customers from existing software to its cloud platform.

In a LinkedIn post, Hamann said the new PGA will help partners deliver improved customer delivery and service.

“The changes will make partnering with us more attractive and create a better experience,” she noted.

SAP has been working on the changes during the past few months after outlining them at June’s partner summit.

“The Partner Grouping Agreement enables SAP and our partners to manage the partner journey in a more holistic way,” she added. “For SAP’s multi-entity partners, we now can bring together all their affiliates into a single corporate group. Partners will then be able to pool resources to meet specific requirements, simplified invoicing, present a unified profile in the SAP Partner Finder and much more. It is a transformational enhancement that will help partners across the globe and the vehicle we will utilize to deliver future program benefits.”

The PGA will let SAP to move to single invoices, Hamann said. It will also let SAP apply …