Darryl Gray: Inside SAP’s Blueprint for Partner Success

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
Anyway, okay, now it's recording. Okay, we're on. We're live, we're live. So welcome everybody. Excited to be here with Darrell, Darrell gray and Darrell, gosh, you, you and I go back quite a ways, 15

Darryl Gray  0:15  
years, probably, yeah, and the partner mindset, yeah,

Chip Rodgers  0:19  
that's amazing. So Darryl. Darryl gray is global vice president in charge of all of software partners for for SAP, right? And we're here at the partner Center, which is, you know, where all the action action is, here at Sapphire. And, yeah, so welcome. And just love, just excited to talk to,

Darryl Gray  0:37  
you know, great to be here. And, you know, I talk about being here with 10,000 of my closest friends, and it's never been a more exciting time to be a software partner with SAP. My team is responsible, as Chip said, to make sure that we monetize and succeed with our software partners here at SAP and beyond for our customers business outcomes. So yeah, we're doing some amazing things here together with our partners. Yeah. So

Chip Rodgers  1:00  
it's really interesting how the, sort of the progression of the software partner programs, I think, you know, back in, you know, 10 years ago, when the Solex program started, you know, that was just very successful, and then you've launched the endorsed apps program, and that has just taken off now as well. So tell me a little bit about that. And sort of the the idea of part of progression through those through the ranks,

Darryl Gray  1:26  
yeah, yeah. It's really important for us. Because, you know, in the past, it was all about solution extensions and having account control and making sure all of that was on our paper one throat to choke for the customer. And that would worked all well and good in the, in the on prem universe, you know, in the days of, you know, selling software that was on prem, as we move to the cloud, right? It's a different game, right? Where there's so many more transactions, there's so many sophisticated contracts as it relates to data protection rights and pricing flexibility and all that that we said, you know, it's not tenable to have a full software portfolio necessarily, all on our paper, right? So there's got to be a way to make sure that we are still recommending and having an opinion about these great solutions that are best of breed, that our customers, you know, rely on for business outcomes, but not taking on, you know, the full liability of everything SAP, right? So we, what we did was put in place a partner progression and said, Look, as software developers and innovators come to the table with these innovations that integrate to or are built on top of business technology platform with SAP we're going to take them to market via the SAP Store. That's going to have scale, right? We validate those solutions to put on the SAP Store. Our customers can find them, our AES can find them. And we actually have a lot of cases where these AES come into the SAP Store to find a solution that their customer talked about, that they needed, right? And they register an opportunity. It goes to the partner, and the partner gets engaged with that seller, and then go out to the customer together, which is fantastic, right? So that's where they start, as they build success together, right? And we have customer successes, customer references, monetized together. You know, within the SAP installed base or net new base, then we spotlight those solutions and say, You know what, there's more resources required, because this has got a high propensity right for our customers to want this solution. So we start putting business development funds behind it. We start managing it, you know, in a tighter way, because we have 2000 some odd partner software partners on the store, another 2000 that are in the open ecosystem. That's 4000 partners. We can't treat them all equally, right? And some have higher value to our customers than others. But, you know, as that builds, then we look at those solutions and say, Okay, well, now we have a place that SAP doesn't provide an organic solution, and we want an opinion specifically based on that customer success that we've seen in the market. And those are the solutions that we go after and say, You know what? We're endorsing this solution to make a market with them, right? This is not something we're going to build or buy. This is something that we're going to take to market in a very opinionated way to endorse the solution with our customer base. And it starts to get embedded into everything that we do, right in terms of how we sell, how we market, how we talk about those solutions for our partners and our cost to our customers, how we develop roadmaps together, right? So it's really integrated into our DNA, and now that has become a real strategic core pillar of our overall strategy, from an SAP perspective. So, you know, you listen to the keynote Christian give the keynote on, the SAP sun, right? You've got the core technology wrapped around all the line of business applications that SAP provides, and on top of that are all these ecosystem solutions that plug really well via the BTP integration platform, that add additional value to everything that SAP is trying to fuel the intelligent enterprise to but we're not building for ourselves, right? So that's why it's important to have that progression. Give the partners an understanding of what it takes to be successful with SAP as they go through the progression they're building. You know, kind of a cultural affinity to us that understands how to work with us. You know what our customers expect at a high quality level, right? For business outcome and. Then it morphs into something that is as big as some of the partners that are sponsoring here. As you see, our solution extensions, our endorsed partners. So, yeah, it's a really exciting

Chip Rodgers  5:09  
time. It's great. I love this, the concept of the of the progression, because it gives partners a way to get to get in and get and get started, rather than like, oh my gosh, this is huge mountain to

Darryl Gray  5:19  
climb, right? And it's a blueprint right for their success. You know, we're trying to properly set the expectations with them. That says, you know, it's kind of, I use the analogy that, you know, you don't go right to college, right? Coming out of grammar school, right? You have to go to middle school, you have to go to high school, right? And that builds a learning experience, right? And it's very similar to the way that we look at our partnerships. Here it is a learning experience on how to work together, and when you demonstrate that success, then it also secures the resourcing that the partner is going to provide and SAP is going to provide to make sure that there's a return on our investment, right? Because if you don't have that experience, and you put a bunch of resources together right on both the partner side and the SAP side, and nothing happens. Well, that's a huge opportunity cost, right? So it's important to make sure we've got demonstrated success first, right? Learning how to work with one another. SAP learns how to work with them. They learn how to work with us. And it's a recipe for success.

Chip Rodgers  6:13  
It's amazing. You know, think back to the early days of SAP, and, you know, even 10 years ago, and it was very much like everything was SAP. I mean, you you've like this program and indoor steps and solution extensions has really put a stamp on, on SAP itself. And to hear Christian, you know, talking very, you know, emphatically and passionately about, about the partner

Darryl Gray  6:35  
ecosystem, yeah. I mean, it's part of our DNA now, right? It really is a, it's a metamorph metamorphosis in terms of what we used to do, right? We look developers want to build everything right, but you have finite resources, right? We can only buy and build so much, and so we've got to be smart in terms of making sure we're number one or number two in those areas. We're going to double down on around our core, around our line of business solutions, and then there's a whole bunch of really smart people out there that have spent lots of money in developer time building best of breed applications that attach to SAP and provide all that additional value. We don't necessarily have to own all of that, right, but we do want to help monetize that with our customers and leverage our installed base right to make sure that our customers are finding continued value to use all that rich data right that sits inside of our applications, and our partners want that data, right? So there's a really symbiotic relationship to provide that type of business outcome that our customers are looking for in a very like I said, symbiotic way. Yeah. So that's super exciting time.

Chip Rodgers  7:36  
That's, it's amazing and, and so you're, you're, and I love just the fact that you're talking about joint roadmaps and go to market. So when you get to the spotlight level and the doorsteps level, then you're also then connecting the partner into the field and doing co selling. So tell me a little bit about that. How does that all? Yeah,

Darryl Gray  7:53  
yeah. I mean, we kind of integrate the value proposition into the way we go to market with our customers, right? We kind of have our own blueprints, right in terms of, oh, well, customer needs, x, y, z, right? I'm thinking good example might be talent acquisition right? They have success factors. We are looking for AI powered talent acquisition capability that you know our customers need for rapid recruitment or rapid rapid onboarding, right? Well, we have solutions that do that, right? We have eightfold is one of our partners in the indoor space. We have paradox AI, that that is another partner in our indoor space. Our success factor rep would then take a look at what the value or what the customer would need. They say, Oh, well, we have this from success factors, but we have some great endorse solutions that add that additional value for talent acquisition, and here's how they do it, right? And we would invite those partners in to that conversation with the customer. Lo and behold, customers enamored with what we're talking about together, right? And the rep gets paid. The AES on the partner side also get paid, and they've got carte blanche to the SAP install base, right? So if we do it well together, it goes very well, and we've got some great endorsed solutions that have just risen meteorically, and that's going to continue, right? And to get there, it is that progression, right, validation, then ultimately the spotlight program, and then up into the endorsed ranks. And that's really what builds that success together. Yeah, that's tremendous. And I would say also just, you know, my team does manage that holistically around the life cycle of that partnership, from a software perspective. And, you know, to do that chip, you and I have a partnership as well, right? So SAP uses work span to do a lot of this because, you know, as this portfolio has grown, and as the numbers and the expectations in terms of growth has grown, you know, we need more partners, right? And more partners are providing a lot of cool, you know, business, you know, applications to fuel that intelligent enterprise. We couldn't do that on email and spread spreadsheets and Word and like, you know, when I would ask for, you know, two. Just a synopsis of everything that we're doing with the partner. You know, of course, it was a flurry, and it would take me four days to get it right. Now, I've got the ability to leverage work span. My PSMS are working side by side with your team, and we're actually putting that collab, the partner collaboration activities, all within work span. So it's got the visibility on both sides. SAP knows what's happening, and especially from a management standpoint, I know what's happening, right? And the partner sees, hey, we're doing a lot of things together. We manage our marketing budgets this way, we manage our marketing activities and outcomes this way, and our pipeline, our mutual pipeline, so it's really a strong system. And, you know, I couldn't do it without our partnership, because it's growing into, you know, a true enterprise onto itself. That's

Chip Rodgers  10:42  
fantastic. Well, Darrell, thank you so much for spending some time today. I know you're busy, like back to back meetings, and you're heading to one right now, so

Darryl Gray  10:52  
I talk about being here with 10,000 of my closest friends, and they've got me hopping. So yeah, no, I'm excited to do this with you, Chip, I appreciate your partner as well, and I'm off to see another

Chip Rodgers  11:04  
partner. Awesome. Thank you, Darryl. You really appreciate it, and thank you all for joining us, and we'll see you. Yeah, yeah, see you for the rest of the day. And sapphire, go SAP. Thanks everybody. Thank you.

Darryl Gray  11:17  
You get that one. You.

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