Australian and New Zealand SAP Business One users have been lumped in with Asia-Pacific generally, but in many ways they are different, contends Mark Loveys, chairman of the SAP Solution Partner Advisory Council.
“I have heard anecdotally from SAP that ANZ partners for Business One are among the highest achievers in terms of revenue per partner. Having a small population forces us to be more versatile in our approach.
“In some of the larger countries partners can expect vendors to do all lead generation,” he says.
“Global application developers want to sell into the ANZ channel, but they see it as a big investment to reach a relatively small population.”
Loveys, who is a director of Enprise Software, used his role as chairman of the solution partner council to facilitate bringing SAP’s Business One Solution Summit to Sydney last month, the first time such a summit has been held in Australia.
Visiting solution partners were mainly from the US, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark, as well as New Zealand.
He says SAP statistics show that ANZ customers embrace more third-party products and solutions than in larger economies.
Loveys estimates that SAP Business One has around 300,000 users globally.
“There are lots of opportunities for ANZ organisations. Enprise Software, for example, has 100 resellers around the world selling our job costing module for Business One.”
He says several local businesses have written their own add-on applications for Business One and are now focused on global market access.