Software maker SAP opened six solution centers worldwide to design and polish solutions based on its mySAP All-in-One platform, which can be implemented in micro-verticals in a fixed scope, cost and time.
The centers will aid SAP's scheme to use its platform as a jumping-off point for ISV partners to craft nearly complete ERP (enterprise resource planning) solutions for micro-verticals in the SME (small and midsize enterprise) market, which it defines as businesses with less than $1.5 billion in annual revenue.
Partners take All-in-One, which is 50 to 60 percent of what a client needs, and hones it with best practices and industries knowledge into a solution for niche industries that is 80 to 90 percent complete or greater, said Michael Sotnick, SAP's senior vice president for SME business.
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The strategy has changed implementations to rollouts in almost every client, said Moodi Mahmoudi, general manager and CEO of KBMS, in Montreal, an SAP partner building All-in-One solutions for the food and beverage industry so specific that they craft different solutions for bottlers and juicers.
"Most consultants are working at Boeing one week and a food and beverage company the next and trying to make the solution fit," Mahmoudi said. "SAP has paired its building blocks with our tight, micro-vertical industry knowledge and best practices, and the result is a solution that is 90 percent complete for your business.
"There is no need to sit down and reinvent the wheel every time," he said. "The configuration is quicker, cheaper and less risky. Clients get a solution that meets their specific needs."
SAP and its 750 All-in-One partners have crafted some 600 solutions on the platform, but the solution centers in Newtown Square, Pa., as well as in Barcelona, London, Prague and Singapore and SAP headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, will lower the cost of entry for those partners, Sotnick said.
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SAP teams and developed best practices will create a baseline from which partners can launch solutions. Sotnick compared the process to leasing space at an outfitted shopping mall instead of opening a store from scratch on an empty lot.
In addition to mySAPBusiness Suite applications and SAP Best Practices offerings, the solutions include implementations based on proven SAP ASAP Focus methodology, so partners can tie together software, documentation, and preconfiguration and implementation accelerators and prepare for a customer's systems, data and people.
The centers also will provide training and sales tools to marketing and sell the finished tools and a framework by which partners can localize solutions for introduction into new markets.
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