How loyal are SAP partners?

Visionary Professor Hasso Plattner recognized the power of process mining very early on. When SAP's Innovation and Research Center opened in Potsdam many years ago, one of the guests was the young start-up Celonis from Munich.

Celonis developed magnificently and, according to the assessment of financial experts, is worth over ten billion euros. In the meantime, the Celonis software was also on the SAP price list and some SAP partners made use of this innovation. Thus, investments were made in training, education and sales. Celonis software was implemented and successfully maintained at SAP's existing customers.

Some partners probably didn't reckon with SAP's leapfrogging. After a few years of Celonis' existence on the SAP price list, SAP bought the Potsdam-based start-up Signavio with its process mining solution and said goodbye to Celonis through the back door, which is now successful worldwide and can certainly cope with SAP's withdrawal of love. But what should the partners do now?

As an SAP partner, there is not only a commitment to their own existing customers, but there is also the investment in selling Celonis software. Naturally, there should also be loyalty and stability towards SAP. However, in the ERP environment, replacing software components is neither simple nor inexpensive. Where SAP is likely to take the easy way out with a revision of the price list, many consequential problems arise for partners and existing customers. Once the Celonis software is running smoothly, the old computer science wisdom will certainly apply: Never change a running system!

So loyalty is always a two-way relationship. SAP partners can be loyal to SAP's offerings and solutions if SAP, for its part, also shows reliability and continuity. The acquisition of Signavio as part of the Rise-with-SAP initiative came as a surprise. The move is in the right direction. SAP has acted in the right way - perhaps too little taking into account the legacy issues, because now there is a split community: successful partners and existing customers who have been using Celonis successfully for many years; unencumbered partners and existing customers who are betting on the new Signavio offering; and perhaps also partners and existing customers who are now sitting between all stools.

Unfortunately, the Celonis case is not an isolated incident at SAP: SAP acted in a similarly disruptive manner on the subject of no-code/low-code programming. For several years, the product of Siemens subsidiary Mendix was on the SAP price list. There were Hana Mendix interfaces and tools that were aligned with the SAP universe. A year ago, SAP Chief Technology Officer Jürgen Müller presented a new no-code/low-code solution. Another similar application, Signavio, came to SAP, and shortly thereafter SAP acquired a start-up in this field. Because the topic is interesting and important, large and small SAP partners naturally also have suitable solutions on offer.

SAP has many good ideas, is marching in the right direction, but has little regard for companions and legacy issues. The question posed above, "How loyal are SAP partners?" should therefore be asked differently: How loyal and reliable is SAP to its partners?