What exactly is a Partner Collaboration Day? You may have heard of this event throughout the years, but aren’t entirely sure what this event is all about. Partner Collaboration Days are a global program that targets a particular region to focus on the top qualified strategic partners to collaborate on sales plays, pipeline, marketing, and positioning. This is a relatively small, but highly strategic partner event that brings the ecosystem together with key SAP stakeholders in a particular solution group in a one day event, with a breakout session format that allows for private 1x1 meetings with each partner. Smaller, partners, like BlueFin and T-Systems can be just as strategic as the larger players like Deloitte and HP – the collaboration day format inherently brings out the best sales plays and strategies to target the top accounts in their pipeline.
For the upcoming event in Barcelona, we are focusing on our Database and Technology partners in EMEA. On Wednesday June 13th and Thursday, June 14th, we will be traveling to Barcelona with D&T product managers, partner managers, marketing, and SAP executives to host this two day event with 10 SI and HW partners.
The partner group in EMEA provided the recommendations as to which partners we invited, and what the breakout sessions would be. The morning session is a keynote presentation, in which all partners sit together for a presentation from Jose Velasquez and Prakash Darji. The partners are then each assigned a room, and we proceed the “collaboration” aspect of the day. The breakout session topics will be Databases (HANA, ASE, IQ), BW on HANA, EIM, and a sales and marketing session. We will also have Christian Rodatus rotating in the executive breakout session along with Jose. These breakout sessions are unique and specific to the partner – who will each be assigned a room for the day, and the SAP breakout session leads rotate from room to room, meeting with each partner privately.
Both SAP and partners will walk away with breakthroughs in positioning, customer accounts, and new sales opportunities. SAP will have met with 10 unique partners at the end of the two days, and each partner will have met with 5 different product experts, sales and marketing stakeholders, and of, course, the GM of the product group and an SAP executive.
Please feel free to reach out if you would like to host this event in your region, and I will be happy to provide more information on the value proposition and format.
