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SAP Outlines SME Strategy for India

By Yogesh Gupta Fri, Dec 04, 2009

A provider of business software SAP is traversing a successful SME roadmap across Indian shores. “Out of 4000 odd customers in India today, almost 75 percent (more than 3000 customers) are SMEs. Apart from adding new customers on annual basis, it is highly important to monitor the repeat business through regular customers with us,” informed Debdeep Sengupta, VP – SME & Channels, SAP Indian Subcontinent. “With an extensive portfolio of solution offerings, it becomes crucial to enable partners to up sell and extract regular business from loyal customer base,” he added.

“Almost 70 percent of SME customers provide repeat business with our partners,” said Sengupta. With over 100 active partners addressing SME segment, it is important to have a limited partner base to protect margins and extend opportunities. “Being into niche software market of business applications, we try to achieve a fine balance to expand our presence geographically and vertical –wise, without over distributing our channel funnel,” he added.

Highlighting the channel ecosystem, Sengupta spoke about the three levels as per size and employee strength of SMEs to streamline SAP’s business operations. “The small enterprises are provided with SAP Business One which is executed by 100 odd resellers and local system integrators. The medium enterprises which need more industry flavor are addressed by tier I/II solution providers through SAP All-in-One (A1) offering,” said Sengupta.

The top end of SME is handled directly by the vendor for its MySAP suite but implemented by partners as per him. The partner base is optimized and expanded as per market demands depending on geography and verticals. “We address almost 22 micro verticals which are understood well by local /regional system integrators,” informed Sengupta. However, partners can play in other territory also if he has the skillsets. “If he is not competent, then he is paid referral fee and a skilled and regular partner executes the order. This ensures a healthy collaboration amongst partners and us,” he said.

“Business Intelligence, HR and CRM are ‘few of the many’ software offerings from our end which partners can focus across SMEs for next few years,” Sengupta elaborated. SAP is selective in appointing partners as it looks beyond a partner’s robust customer base. “Domain knowledge and software delivery skills are very important criteria. Our solutions offer high margin and repeat business for partners, but the technical expertise of our partner is the key to our success,” he said. SME would be a major focus area as the market matures to new business software offerings. “Our limited and competent set of partners would help us address this widespread market effectively,” he summed.

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