Will SAP contact EEC start-up ecosystems in 2019?

“In 2019, we will come daring and strong with SAP Cloud Platform Accelerator for our ECOSYSYSTEM in the EEC”, Rumyana TABLEVA, CHEF DE CADAU DU CANAGES MONDIAL AT SAPsaid LinkedIn in the first day of the year. He came as a comment to the new announcement that SAP offers partners free access to its cloud platform to test, demonstrate and develop license services. Now the opening and the integrations are not real News as a giant in SAP company software have tried different approaches to find innovation, talents and partners outside its structures. A message is clear: SAP tries to define its cloud platform as a standard among its partners and the surrounding ecosystem of interested startups, said Alexander Nestorov, director of regional marketing of the company.

We still have no details if SAP plans a more direct approach to the ECE start -up ecosystem. Last month, trendy subjects had the chance to see first-hand how SAP works with the technological ecosystem and startup in Europe and the United States, and the conclusion is that the company learned some lessons on the opening of its structures for external entrepreneurs.

A case of bulgaria

Three years ago, SAP as well as the local accelerator and the investment fund at the start of the eleven stadium organized HCP starting challenge – A competition for EEC technological companies with the promise to give them access to their HANA platform and to supervise them to develop commercial solutions. We cannot talk about the overall result of the challenge, but we have closely observed one of the cases. At the time, two Bulgarian companies bought, the company of the Co -founder of Data Science Society in Bulgaria Sergiv and Scalefocus, were chosen. Shopup has developed its Big Data solution for retailers on the platform and was said that it would have access to SAP customers. “Of course, it is not so easy to reach their customers directly, and it is understandable, and in addition they had a problem with sales at the time. The free version of Hana that we used had no support. However, on a more positive note, SAP invited us to many of their forums and conferences, we had access to their products and integrations, which was cool,” said Sergiev. Due to various business processes and communication problems between levels, things did not go perfectly and did not lead to good news at the time. But Sergiev is rather optimistic. “I see them making progress towards a better relationship with the start-up ecosystem recently,” he added. However, he would advise SAP to focus on the needs of their customers and to use open source technologies to serve them instead of making them more complicated with acceleration programs.

Three years later, it seems that SAP learned certain lessons and started some accelerated initiatives for startups and from stories, we have heard that they operated much better and that the commitment within the company has developed considerably.

Stay calm and open to the next generation

In addition to corporate clichés such as opening and acceleration, the giant has indeed chosen an interesting strategy and has launched several internal and external programs to stimulate entrepreneurship which will allow the company to stay in the lead at the time of young scammers of young hungry techniques. We have spoken to two companies that browse SAP start -up programs – the German rum, a project of two employees who later followed the SAP.io studio internal intervention program and are now developing a separate company for task management (SAP is the majority shareholder) and the Software Bulgarian Okr GTMHUBwhich followed the joint acceleration program with Techstars.

We have received fairly similar comments from the two companies – SAP provides potential prospects and its customers is accessible. In the case of rum, the product is already on the menu of the sales team. GTMHUB, on the other hand, has a seat in the SAP.IO foundry based in Berlin, a co-work of the acceleration program, where managers sometimes bring customers and have experienced more direct contacts. All this looks like a win -win situation – SAP has a participation in new generation companies, while the same companies have access to what they need the market. In addition, after having seen the demonstration of the sap.io demo, we cannot deny the fact that certain companies have not presented products “never heard”, but they seemed to be ahead of the competition in terms of transactions and others in the pipeline.

What and where

SAP has been active in the creation and development of a relationship with start -up ecosystems for some time. For example, the Fund of 2.4 billion dollars Sapphire Ventures which was founded in 1996 and raged SAP in 2011 has more than 60 outings on history. But all efforts have started to gain a more structured form in the past three years and now SAP has five programs which are in one way or another linked to entrepreneurship. Initiatives are located in Western Europe and the United States, but most of them are accessible to any geography. However, as shown in the examples mentioned, physical presence and local commitment play a major role.

And the acceleration program, mentioned Trencheva, could be the first step towards SAP which really opens up to innovation also in the CEE region. In the end, there are already several R&D – SAP Labs centers, in the region – in Bulgaria, in the Czech Republic, in Poland, in Hungary and in the Slovak Republic. Here is how SAP works with world entrepreneurs:

SAP covered travel and accommodation costs during the SAP press tour in December 2018.