As the landscape of cloud-based enterprise solutions continues to evolve rapidly, the relationship between SAP and our dedicated network of partners becomes increasingly vital for our customers. At the core of this partnership lies the unique and exclusive SAP Preferred Success offering, designed to empower our partners with benefits that are unparalleled in any other traditional partnership model.
Central to this collaboration is the access to experts, tool insights, and resources provided through success planning, which serves as a blueprint to help partners maximize customer success. The joint approach between our partners and SAP can give customers immediate access to experts who can provide specific advice and solutions that help maximize the value of the cloud. This can not only enable our customers to get what they need, but it also helps ensure their long-term satisfaction and confidence in their cloud investment.
Our partners’ businesses are reaping tremendous benefits, too. With SAP Preferred Success, SAP partners can have a foundation for more efficient deployments, faster incident resolution, and lower project overruns – laying the groundwork for their profitability and growth potential.
Driving Cloud Adoption with Continuous Engagement
A key advantage of SAP Preferred Success is that partners can work with SAP to innovate and deliver a range of tailored services and solutions that align with each customer’s business case.
This shared effort between SAP and our partners helps enhance cloud consumption and adoption through five essential services:
- Feature adoption planning and success checks: Partners work with customers to plan and adopt relevant features that align with their desired business outcomes.
- In-depth release guidance: Customers receive help in planning for new feature adoptions to help maximize the benefits of SAP solutions.
- Targeted training programs: Key users and administrators are empowered with knowledge on relevant topics and best practices.
- Advanced support and enhanced target service levels: Customers can benefit from quicker incident response times and expanded resolution targets.
- Customer success experts: Customer success experts coordinate exclusive content, resources, and planning methods to help accelerate cloud adoption.
In the context of SAP Preferred Success, our partners play a pivotal role. They can offer advisory and implementation expertise, helping ensure customers can take advantage of the latest innovations and industry standards within a suite of cloud solutions from SAP. This can not only mitigate risks and lower costs, but it can also provide customers with best-in-class support and guidance throughout their journey, making our partners an integral part of the success story.
In addition, as SAP deploys the latest innovations and features, SAP Preferred Success can complement partner skill sets with expertise on new features and capabilities, as well as guidance on best practices learned across tens of thousands of customers. Our ongoing support and commitment to innovation can better ensure that partners and customers are always at the forefront of the cloud industry, with access to the latest tools and resources to help drive their success.
Strengthening the Partner-Customer Relationship
Through the adoption and operation scenario within the flex model for SAP PartnerEdge Cloud Choice, SAP partners can own the overall customer relationship. This responsibility extends to driving customer success activities in collaboration with a customer success partner from SAP who helps orchestrate the delivery of SAP Preferred Success services, whether the sale is direct or indirect.
Drive value through a proactive partnership with SAP Preferred Success
The role of the customer success partner enables SAP partners to drive value across the customer lifecycle through successful solution adoption and ongoing renewals that foster account expansion. That includes encouraging the creation of a success plan and providing inputs to define business goals and key performance indicators. Customer success partners can further assist partners by hosting release guidance sessions, offering exclusive learning content, and booking one-on-one sessions with certified SAP experts to help address configuration needs and discuss best practices.
By working closely with a designated customer success partner, partners can proactively manage potential issues and avoid escalations of critical customer situations. This can be achieved through regular communication and collaboration with the customer success partner, working to resolve problems or concerns promptly and efficiently. Partners are consistently included in customer interactions and are the first to receive defined outputs from completed activities. Doing so helps ensure alignment of messaging presented to the customer, giving partners the opportunity to address potential concerns, add their recommendations, and propose services to implement the next steps.
For partners such as Innovabee, this level of teamwork with SAP provides a faster and easier path for migrating customers from outdated ERP systems to a modern, cloud-based ERP, such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Focused on adopting the solution instead of adapting, the SAP partner can emphasize a user-centric approach that encompasses real-time process visualization, agility, scalability, and ease of maintenance.
Innovabee’s engagement with customers in various industries is a shining example of the benefits of SAP Preferred Success. With a customer success partner’s assistance, the SAP partner can connect its customers with SAP experts to help create and agree on innovative and relevant solution recommendations, gain guidance on adoption of new functionality, and quickly access continuous learning. This approach helps enable customers to adapt to a new way of working efficiently, showcasing the transformative power of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and maintaining peace of mind through and beyond solution deployment.
“As a partner, we always highly recommend that our customers opt for a subscription of SAP Preferred Success to amplify the business impact of their SAP solutions. We see easier adoption of new innovations, better user experience, and overall faster time to value for all parties,” shares Florian Häußler, CEO at Innovabee GmbH.
Delivering High-Quality Services That Build Success
The collaborative approach between SAP partners and SAP – facilitated by SAP Preferred Success – is a pivotal factor in enhancing the cloud journey. Customers can confidently navigate the complexities of the cloud landscape, knowing that they have a trusted partner in SAP that is committed to their success and growth.
And for SAP partners the model is even more empowering. By freeing up their capacity, partners can serve more customers effectively, leading to an enhanced customer experience, accelerated innovation adoption, reduced risks, and access to expertise in the ever-evolving cloud landscape.
Ready for a more rewarding approach to the cloud journey? Explore how your partner business can leverage the advantages of SAP Preferred Success and SAP PartnerEdge Cloud Choice, flex model.
Andreia Bessa is global program lead for Enterprise Cross Solution Sales at SAP.
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