SAP App Center, The Digital Enterprise Marketplace

Almost every business leader has in some way experienced the overwhelming process of buying software, from the seemingly infinite number of options to the endless sales calls and the ongoing challenge of integration with existing software. Purchasing software, in short, is hard. However, it’s not just buyers that are challenged by this process — it’s just as hard for software vendors. In a sea of options, how do you get your innovations to stand out? And in an environment where every degree of efficiency can make a tangible difference, how do you most effectively target the right potential buyers? The SAP App Center addresses these challenges for those on both sides of the equation.

Curating Best-in-Class Solutions

The SAP App Center enables customers in 200+ countries and territories to discover, try, buy, manage and deploy trusted partner applications that extend to the customer existing SAP technology and solutions. It was designed to simplify and improve the way customers evaluate and acquire solutions from our partners and it provides a powerful transactional engine designed to help partners conduct business with SAP customers.

Regardless of the type of SAP solution (SAP Cloud Platform, S/4HANA, hybris, Concur, SuccessFactors, etc.), partners can easily publish their complementary products and manage transactions — including invoice generation and payment processing — all from a single point of contact. Customers can then discover, try, buy, manage and, in some cases, auto-provision third-party solutions and extensions across the board for both cloud applications and platforms.

Simple and Seamless Connection

The most important guiding principles for inclusion in the SAP App Center are quality and suitability for meeting customers’ business needs. It is about connecting end customers with the best digital innovations from SAP partners while enabling access to the technology innovations customers need to realize their business-critical goals. And that is exactly what over 1,400 SAP partners are doing today via the SAP App Center.

To include a product in SAP App Center and benefit from the provided marketing and sales support, partners can enroll in any of the various SAP partner programs — for example, SAP PartnerEdge provide the tools, resources and benefits to help partners build, sell, service or run SAP solutions. Once they select the partner program that fits their business objectives and expertise, partners can submit their offering to the SAP App Center team for product assessment. After the product has been evaluated and identified as a candidate for inclusion, the SAP App Center team guides the partner through the steps required to sell the offering through SAP App Center. Once an offering is included in SAP App Center, the business model is based on revenue sharing, like many other app marketplaces.

In the next 12 months, I’ll be writing a blog series that will highlight the most innovative new offerings built by our SAP partners. I’ll cover solutions that are transforming every industry and every line of business in every region, and I want you to read these stories and give me your feedback.  I hope that you enjoy them.