SAP Simplifies the SMB Sales Process (Part 3 of 4)

One question PAC has had in the past with SAP’s SME business was how long the company could extensively use expensive resources and executives on SME-related sales and projects. And SAP has confessed that the company was spending too much in terms of resources for the much smaller deals that they were going after in the SME space.

In order to adjust their model, SAP has focused on continuing to build out its channel base and now states that there are over 2,100 indirect sales professionals in their SME ecosystem. However with a still limited revenue pool (especially for BusinessOne as well as newer offerings), there is only so much opportunity for partners currently. As a result, SAP has aggressively developed its telesales model around the SME products, especially for BusinessOne, in order to increase their SME market, while also introducing two very interesting web-based tools aimed at making the sales cycle more efficient for SAP and for partners.

1. The first tool encompasses all SME solutions:
www.sap-best-fit-adviser.com
This tool’s purpose is to guide prospects towards which SAP solutions are right for them, between the four ERP platforms. This also helps to screen leads from SAP, which they then flow out channel partners, unless it falls into their direct sales team.

2. The second, and more interesting tool, is focused around SAP All-in-One:
www.configurator.ch/dojo/apps/us/solution-configurator-v015.jsp?lang=en
It allows prospects to gauge what the total cost (including software, hardware (based on a 6-server infrastructure), implementation services and financing) to implement SAP All-in-One will be depending on their company size, industry and functional components to be leveraged. Working very much like a “Build my Car” feature on an automakers website, the pricing is only an estimate, but should be within +/-20% of the actual cost, according to SAP. All of the packaging falls within SAP’s “Fast-Start” program, which involves partners like HP, IBM and Intel on the hardware side, in addition to SUSE Linux, as the operating system, and SAP’s MaxDB, as the underlying database (which also is the database used in the Business ByDesign solution).

I believe that the addition of such tools show some progress made by SAP in adapting a portion of their business towards a more volume sales based model, something that clearly was foreign to the company 5 years ago, but is now maturing within the SME business unit.

Next: Business ByDesign: so what’s up with this?