Hewlett-Packard and German enterprise software provider SAP have
agreed to develop, promote and sell the CRM (customer relationship
management) software suite SAP Business One jointly, throughout the
Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.
The companies will start this month with the German market, the
companies announced on Thursday at Sapphire, SAP's international
e-business conference being held in Lisbon.
"We're taking the strengths of the two companies and combining
them, specifically HP's strength in the channel and SAP's
credibility in the end-to-end solutions market," said Jos Brenkel,
head of commercial channel and SMB business for HP EMEA.
SAP Business One is a set of applications aimed at small and
mid-sized businesses (SMBs) based on technology that SAP acquired
from Israeli vendor TopManage Financial Solutions in March. SAP
Business One is aimed at businesses with up to 250 users, and is
designed to address common user requirements in the areas of
accounting, logistics, salesforce automation and business
reporting.
HP will help SAP identify, qualify, preselect and manage local
resellers as part of the HP and SAP Business One Certified Reseller
Program. Both companies will staff the SAP Business One centres
where SAP will certify partners selected by the two companies, as
well as provide partner training and technical and presales
support.
"We are trying to address the economics of the channel with
value-added solutions. Our hardware partners will make their margin
with value add, and Business One offers extremely good value add.
We have to mix off-the-shelf software, which keeps the price down,
with a level of customisation to make sure that the solution is
fine-tuned to fit the needs of each customer," Brenkel said.
As part of the agreement, the companies will use HP's distribution
channel in more than 30 countries in the EMEA region with the focus
initially on Germany, which has more than 300,000 SMBs. The program
will extend to Austria and Switzerland in about three months' time,
and the UK and the Benelux countries in the first quarter of 2003,
he said.
"Rolling out in Germany, where SAP knows the market so well, gives
us a good feeling about how this process works and what resources
are needed. There are many companies growing from small to
midsized, but because of the complexity of solutions, many
companies have not really delved into CRM software. At our Business
One centres, resellers can come in and train with HP and SAP staff
on how to provide their customers with end-to-end solutions that
start with CRM software," Brenkel said.
Brenkel did not know if HP and SAP have similar plans for promoting
and selling the product in the US. Brenkel also declined to
disclose the financial terms of the deal.