What Solution Extensions have in common with Innovation

SAP Chief Technology Officer Jürgen Müller recently shared with me an observation about innovation: “It is great to see how our customers gain access to innovation by SAP partnerships,“ Jürgen said. “This supports the creation of engaging experiences through technology. As the world’s largest enterprise applications company, partnerships continue to boost growth and provide a competitive edge, and help extend the market footprint for the SAP partner ecosystem.”

I have known Jürgen for a long time and he has always been a collaborative, out-of-the-box innovator with a passion for motivating employees to develop new solutions based on the most advanced technologies for the benefit of SAP customers. His remarks inspired me to think further about how innovation happens.

In our world of B2B enterprise software, the SAP software and services portfolio is richly infused by the Intellectual Property of SAP partners. To fully benefit from the rich, dynamic innovation of this ecosystem, businesses are open to see the bigger picture and for diverse experiences. Only those who try out different approaches and explore new possibilities benefit from the full scope of value on offer in the SAP partner ecosystem.

Let me give you just a few examples of the amazing array of digital innovation available from SAP partners.

Celonis – Process Mining

Partners with SAP since 2015 when they joined our ecosystem via the Startup program. Through joint innovation Celonis offers solutions which make visible to customers where process inefficiencies occur, as a result suggests potential actions based on these insights and round it out with real-time analyses. Their leadership in process excellence software has been recently proven by further funding of USD 290 million which is also a result of the joint success the partner has together with SAP.

DocuSign – e-signing

With a market cap of 12.5B, DocuSign offers a document verification solution that allows companies of any size to electronically exchange and sign official documents, effectively ending the days of printing and mailing/faxing paper. DocuSign and SAP formed a partnership in 2015 and have seen steady growth since then as businesses enjoy these benefits of using DocuSign:

·        Going paperless (saving costs and trees)

·        Cutting the need to mail physical documents (reducing employee resources)

·        Increased Net Promoter Scores (due to improved customer experience) 

Blackline – financial close solutions

BlackLine has tripled its market cap to $3B since going public in 2016 and industry analyst firm Gartner named them leader for Financial Close Solutions. Blackline has a long and fruitful partnership with SAP, beginning in 2013. In 2018, Blackline became a Solution Extension partner with SAP. More than 700 SAP customers currently run BlackLine as their cloud solution choice for financial close.

These solutions are growing fast because companies need them, showing innovation and SAP having worked with them early in their development.