SAP has signed the first financial services-focused reseller to its Master VAR Program with the inclusion of Sita Corp., which primarily represents SAP products for the financial services and banking industry.
While its Master VAR program is not industry specific, the enterprise software maker is aiming to increase its presence in the financial services sector.
“Our overall intent [with the Master VAR program] is for SAP to look at ways for key partners who want to grow and expand, as well as ways we can leverage our ecosystem more effectively,” said senior vice president of ecosystems, SAP North America Troy Richardson. “This is designed to allow partners to grow, some who are non-VAR partners with familiarity and SAP apps and solutions as well as partners working with partners, particularly those more downstream. It’s also an opportunity for our VARs to work with EBM[extended business member] partners such as a CPA firm or shop floor services firm with access to customers who will be buying those solutions.”
Sita Corp. has been working with SAP for over 20 years as a VAR and found that SAP was looking to target the financial services sector, but did not have a significant presence.
“Being close to the New York area we’ve been engaged in the financial services sector and SAP wants to go after banks, capital markets and insurance companies, but they knew it’s not going to be easy so they started a channel program to go after that market,” said Sita Corp. chief executive Rom Reddy. “Any partner who has experience in these areas would be considered as a part of that channel. There are lots of specialists[in the SAP ecosystem], say in predictive analytics but they may not have the expertise that we have in the financial services area. So under one partner, smaller partners can have a contract with a Master VAR with solutions provided by us.”
According to Richardson, SAP’s Master VAR program requirements dictate that you are a partner in good standing today, at sales goal levels, have a minimum annual revenue of $250,000, have the capacity to work with EBM program members and put together a business plan to partner with SAP.
“This [program] is designed to help our partners who want to make a bigger investment in SAP,” he said. “Because you also need to be a VAR, you have access to all the solutions on the product list. This program just allows you to extend your release to different partners.”
