Intelligent Tech Channels Issue 08 | Page 19

ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOG SAP.” Ambarish Gupta at Knowlarity, continues: “Another big underlying development alongside the SaaS world is API-fying SaaS products. This is referred to as unbundling of traditional SaaS products. Most of the products solve a specific problem or a specific set of problems, and do a good job at it. However, they also acknowledge there is scope for improvement by integrating with another tool or suite of tools. As much as there is effort on making things open for plug and play, it’s not in their strategy to do solutioning.” Dr Hichem Maya, Head of Industries, SAP MENA. overseas. Local knowledge, network and physical proximity will accelerate growth and this is increasingly a trend among B2B SaaS products.” 2. Take the software and customise it: SaaS usually comes in a one-size- fits-all solution, accommodating the requirements of the average user, which may be fine for some, but not all organisations. VARs are again in a great position to offer knowledge and specialist technical skills to assist in the customisation of a solution. Vijay Jaswal at Software AG says: “In terms of customisation, VARs have the advantage of providing industry specific knowledge on what particular services an organisation will require.” Dr Hichem Maya, at SAP MENA, adds: “The biggest channel revenue opportunity is in customising SaaS applications to meet business needs, especially for third platform technologies such as mobility, social media and Big Data. Demonstrating the strong opportunities for SaaS optimisation, only 12 per cent of organisations using SaaS said that current applications meet their business needs, according to a recent Forrester survey commissioned by 3. Help to migrate and integrate: Interoperability may be an issue between some SaaS solutions or existing legacy applications and it may also prove a challenge to migrate data easily or successfully; excellent news for VARs, which have a substantial opportunity to step in and save the day by designing and deploying solutions to meet client requirements. Vijay Jaswal at Software AG says: “Integration of applications in SaaS also presents revenue sources for VARs in terms of design methods on Many service providers and vendors agree that the channel has a vital role to play when it comes to SaaS, especially in the SMB sphere, where organisations will still seek out SaaS resellers for implementation and advice. The biggest channel revenue opportunity is in customising SaaS applications to meet business needs, especially for third platform technologies such as mobility, social media and Big Data. Dr Hichem Maya, Head of Industries, SAP MENA. how to integrate or migrate from legacy to SaaS applications.” 4. Offer to train: Implementation and overcoming initial technical SaaS solution snags will inevitably evolve into developing working processes and making them more efficient and user friendly, which involves training so that the application can be used to its full potential. Step in the VARs, which can assist with these crucial tasks to monitor patterns of usage, identify and obviate possible problems and tweak the solutions for maximum effectiveness. Vijay Jaswal at Software AG says: “VARs can develop plans and provide training for users, as well as identify potential problems and fix the solutions under the SaaS management system.” Dr Hichem Maya, at SAP MENA, concludes: “Middle East channel partners should help their customers by tying in SaaS deployments to a wider digital transformation strategy, and upskilling customers in how to best use the business applications.”  19