How SAP automated eligibility checks on partner funding requests

Development funds are one of SAP's biggest tools for growing with its partners. But before any money is approved, someone has to check that the request follows the rules.

Those rules were spread across four SAP documents that did not always agree, plus decisions that had never been written down. Two experienced people could look at the same request and give different answers.

That cost SAP twice: hours of skilled people's time spent on repetitive admin, and partners left waiting for answers that depended on who they asked.

We didn't start with software. We started with the rules. We worked through every SAP document and every unwritten decision, line by line, and turned them into one clear set of 212 rules. Where two documents disagreed, we agreed with SAP which one wins, so the tool never gives two answers to the same question.

Then we built a tool that does the checking. SAP's team enters a partner's request, and the tool checks it against every rule that applies, often more than a hundred at once. It gives a clear answer: yes, no, or more information needed.

And it explains itself. Every answer comes in plain English, with the exact rules behind it. If something is missing, it says exactly what to ask the partner. When SAP changes its rules, the tool changes with them, with no rebuild needed.

In its first weeks, the tool has checked around €400k of partner funding requests and found around €350k of it eligible. Use more than quadrupled from September to October.

Every request now gets the same check against the same rules. Nothing is missed, no answer depends on one person's memory, and there is a record of every decision. For the first time, SAP knows its funding rules are applied the same way, every time.

Partners win too: a clear answer, the reasons behind it, and one simple question if anything is missing. And as more partners join, every new request gets the same fast, consistent check, in every country.