Enterprise resource planning giant SAP claims it is witnessing some maturation in its partner program and foresees surpassing 40 percent in revenue from channel sales by 2015.
In a recent press call, SAP’s senior vice president, ecosystem & channels, Kevin Gilroy and VP analytics, global ecosystem and channels John Wilkinson touted recent success in channel marketing efforts and foresaw aggressive growth in partner sales, especially to the non-SAP business suite market.
SAP has seen “double digit growth” in partner revenue over the past three years and its goal of 40 percent in partner revenue for 2015 will likely be exceeded in North America, according to Gilroy.
“Since coming on three years ago I’ve seen a transformation to a mature channel program. It was OK when I came in, but [channel sales] were not a major component of our business and I’m thrilled to say we’ve built out a very powerful channel; the channel DNA is locked in,” said Gilroy. “It’s been about bringing in new people and combing that talent with those here. In my view and I’ve been doing this for nearly 30 years, we have the number one software channel team. Internal evangelization was so important and that’s how we got the resources and go to market with model we now have, we’ve also simplified the process of doing business with us.”
Meanwhile Wilkinson claimed SAP now has 1,100 SAP analytics product VARs, one-third of which sell solely to the non-SAP business suite market.
He also noted that SAP will continue to enable partners to sell into the enterprise segment worldwide, specifically businesses with over $500 million in revenue.
“We’re also interested in market spaces where SAP doesn’t have specialist skills, we will then have a VAR sell into it,” said Wilkinson.
