Thi Tran: Why SAP’s Partner Strategy Starts with the Customer

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
Yeah, okay, good afternoon. So here we are, Wednesday afternoon at Sapphire. And, gosh, it's just been a really, you know, fantastic day, and very vibrant. It's just the show floor has been, has been really, a lot of energy and and a lot of people here. So anyway, I'm excited to be joined by T Tran and T is so for a number of years, you've been Carl farbach, our Well, our saps chief partner officer. You're Carl's Chief of Staff, running everything for Carl, but, but now recently you've you're just transitioning into a new role to be head of partner advocacy and amplification, which is really an exciting role. We'll get into that a little bit more. But T welcome. Thank

Thi Tran  0:52  
you. Thanks for having me here. Chip. I mean, as you said, it's really a very great atmosphere here, and so excited to be here and having this conversation with you,

Chip Rodgers  1:01  
yeah, yeah. So let's start. Love to talk to you a little bit about the about saps partner strategy. And I know you've as Chief of Staff, you've been building a lot of those, you know, structures and what the strategy is. You know, we were just talking before and when I was with SAP, you know, some years ago, it's very different today, with just SAP really embracing partners and the whole ecosystem across all kinds of partners. Tell me a little bit more about why that is. Why are we seeing that here at Sapphire? What and what does it mean?

Thi Tran  1:39  
Yeah, I mean, I joined the party ecosystem four years ago, as you said, As Carl Schiffer staff and I could really see the transformation happening over the years, right? I mean, in the past, on the on premise world, I mean partners, of course, very important to sell solution, implement solutions. But in the cloud, things have changed. And you know, it requires transformation, and we have gone through quite some transformation in the pocket ecosystem, success organization, really bringing our partners on the path to the cloud. And so why are partners important? I mean, it starts, I mean, we make partners part of the every key initiatives and SAP. And it starts from, you know, innovating with us and embedding partner IP into the portfolio, to augment our portfolio, to go to market, delivering our solutions and very important in the cloud is to drive adoption. And you probably heard from Carl and the board members at our SAP partner connect on Monday that adoption is super critical for for the our sex success in the cloud, and to achieve our ambitions. And how has this changed? I mean, we know that we can't do it alone. We need our partner ecosystem to achieve our ambitions and to really provide the best innovation to our customers, right, and the best experience and and the success. And it's our partner strategy is driven by our customers strategy. So what our customers need is what's influencing our partner strategy. And, you know, we have done a lot of change, and you heard from Carl and also the board members, one consistent message was, you know, we have to bring our existing ECC customers to the cloud on the clean core, of course, right with rise, with clean core. Clean core, yes, I think we heard this very consistently and and then also another priority is, you know, driving net new names with our new offering, grow with SAP. And there will be also a partner initiative that we roll out now. And of course, when we talk about IP, you know, it has to be built on BTP. So BTP, adoption is very important. And last but not least, adoption, adoption, adoption, I think Carl said it, that is the magic formula for success,

Chip Rodgers  3:59  
yeah, and it's so important in the cloud, you know, because you close a deal, but you're always, you're always looking forward to renewals, and the faster you can get your customer to value, the more they'll want to continue

Thi Tran 4:16  
exactly. And that's why partner sales are critical. They are really helping our customers, you know, understand and get the most value out of the investment into SAP solution, but also driving faster time to value, as you said, right? And that's another critical aspect why partners are so important, and I hope that our partners feel the change over the years. I mean, I have been with car for, as I said, four years, and I do see the tremendous change. And, you know, just the partner Connect event itself, where we had three board members participating on stage, and the rest of the board members, you know, in in the audience, and joining our partners to network. I think it's a tremendous, big sign that the commitment is there.

Chip Rodgers  5:00  
It really is. It's because I've been to many, you know, partner connect events, or global partner summit, I think, several years ago. And it's really a very evident, you know, that the the entire board Christians message was, was all you know, very much about partners. And they had a great session together, Christian and Carl together.

Thi Tran  5:23  
Yes, absolutely. I mean, five such it at the end, right? Yes, it was. And it shows, I think, of all the board members. What is also beautiful is have a consistent message, right? Of course, clean core, that we can't do it without our partners, and that they are critical for our success, and especially for customer success. But it's also it has changed, like, when I started right when we have a partner event, we have to advocate and get our board members, you know, to participate. Now they're coming to us proactively. It's like, it's called having his event, you know, I want to be part of it. So this is already a great change that I'm seeing and in aligning, you know, messaging has really been done naturally. I mean, there was not much we have to do. Our board is super aligned here.

Chip Rodgers  6:07  
Yeah, that's that's fantastic. So you also mentioned that for sapphire itself, that partners have been very embedded into the into the content. So talk a little bit about that. I think you said 25% of the content being delivered. You know, this week is done is by partners.

Thi Tran  6:26  
Yes, exactly. So this year, the global events team, or SAP, has launched, and with support of Scott Russell and Joe White, that partners are fully embedded into our event strategy. So they are participating. You could see like over 25% of the sessions are led by partners in.

‍