After achieving some success with the release of SAP’s cloud-based offerings including SAP Business ByDesign and, more recently, Business One OnDemand, the business process software giant is planning the release of a cloud-based financial management product later this year with accounting firms as key partners in the effort.
While finer details are not yet available on the product, it is expected to build on the ByDesign model and be driven by SAP’s dedicated cloud unit, according to SAP senior director of product marketing, cloud solutions Jim D’Addario.
“SAP ByDesign is our premier on-demand suite, and sales are accelerating with more companies buying into an idea of an on demand suite as opposed to best of breed,” said D’Addario. “As for the future product, that will be all about financial management so within that product’s go to market strategy, we will be reaching out to accounting firms. We have good relationships with larger firms on the ERP side and we will be reaching out to mid-upper and midsize firms [for the financial management product].”
D’Addario’s colleague Alain McHugh, product marketing manager for SAP Business One and the newly released Business One OnDemand, also sees the value in reaching out to accounting firms as recommenders and partners.
“With our OnDemand product, we are looking to expand our partnership types,” she said. “Typically Business One has been sold through a VAR, and now we are opening up to game-changing partnership types like working with IT companies who would do the sales, service and implementation part. Over time, as the product develops, we could see closer ties with accounting firms. We are starting to see the idea of aligning ourselves with key accounting firms to talk more about our products and relationships will grow tighter over the next year, especially on the [Business One] OnDemand side.”
Meanwhile, SAP has just released a new OnDemand product, SAP Enterprise Performance Management OnDemand.
The first options for SAP’s new cloud product will deliver expense insight, real-time profit and loss analysis, and capital project planning: Both nonfinancial decision-makers and financial experts can use SAP EPM OnDemand to establish a picture of the financial consequences of capital investment projects, and optimize the use of capital.
