Business partners play an increasingly important role in the SAP ecosystem. Today, SAP is more dependent than ever on partner companies for advancing its ambitious goals such as "100,000 customers by 2010" among middle-sized companies and increasing the use of the Enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture (Enterprise SOA). Partners play a major role in many customer projects, and their numbers are growing from year to year just like the number of different SAP partner programs.
SAP partners are also represented in the German-Language User Group (DSAG). But DSAG focuses on SAP user companies, so partners don't have a suitable platform here for representing their overarching partner interests.
PARTNER e.V. offers the organizational framework for jointly coordinating and representing the overarching interests of SAP partners. Goals of PARTNER e.V. are:
- Setting up a partner network
- Improving planning security by coordinating its efforts with SAP in the areas of sales, development, consulting, support and training
- Involvement in the further development and optimization of the SAP partner ecosystem
PARTNER e.V. makes it possible to have direct dialogue with SAP. The result is quicker decisions and greater technical planning security. Ultimately a strong ecosystem is a win-win situation for everyone – for customers, SAP and partners.
SAP benefits from consolidating the dialogue with its partners, which eliminates a lot of the different communication paths and allows it to make quicker decisions. PARTNER e.V. will support SAP in expanding and operating a more efficient partner ecosystem.
Once cooperation between SAP and partners is better consolidated and standardized, customers will have a higher degree of investment protection with software, greater security with planning projects and also with support. In addition, it will be possible to carry out implementations and higher-quality projects, thus making them more affordable and on time.
Association founders include well-known partners from very different areas: e.g., software partners, local and global consulting firms, system integrators, hardware and other partners from the SAP ecosystem.
All partners, of course, represent their own business interests on their own. PARTNER e.V. focuses on topics that are of overarching, general interest such as
- Standardization issues
- Well-ordered communication infrastructure
- etc.
According to its bylaws with their focus on customer interests, DSAG represents the concerns of SAP users to SAP. The focus of the PARTNER e.V. bylaws, however, is on representing the overarching interests of the partners to SAP.
The PARTNER e.V. organizational bodies are:
- General meeting
- Management board
- Steering committee
- Working groups
The actual work of the association takes place in the working groups, for example on administrative issues such as
- Certifications
- Support processes
- Interface standardization
- etc.
PARTNER e.V. is aiming for a membership base that is as broad as possible, so all SAP partners are being addressed – regardless of partner category or status.
Every legally independent company can become a full member if it has at least official, SAP-certified partner status.
Every legally independent company can become an associate member if its business model was created based on SAP and it is willing to promote the goals of PARTNER e.V.
Associate members do not have active or passive voting privileges, nor can they vote at the general meeting. They also cannot exercise any official representative function outside the association. Otherwise, they have the same rights as full members.
Communication takes place at regular meetings on the management level. The goal is to establish a common platform for structured communication through working groups, committees and meetings.
Today, international SAP partners are already represented in PARTNER e.V. Even if the initial focus is on Central Europe, PARTNER e.V. is also open to partners without any branches in Germany or Europe. In such cases, cooperation takes place from a distance or through regional chapters. In addition, the association aims to cooperate with the American SAP Users Group (ASUG) in the U.S. and other international organizations in the SAP ecosystem.
PARTNER e.V. represents all members equally. Decisions are made by majority vote, and every member company has one vote.
The goal of PARTNER e.V. is not to market products, solutions or services but to represent overarching interests in the partnership with SAP.
PARTNER e.V. is not a body that deals with the content of development requests to SAP. This will be handled, as before, by individual partners or customers themselves or via the proven roll-in processes of DSAG.
This is clearly defined by the different roles:
- DSAG represents the interests of customers
- PARTNER e.V. represents the overarching interests of partners.
Already established processes between DSAG and SAP, based on their respective roles, can be used as models for cooperation between PARTNER e.V. and SAP.