How SAP measures partner marketing maturity to prioritise funding
One clear view over thousands of partners' marketing efforts, so SAP can maximise its partner funding and support.
SAP works with more than 25,000 partners worldwide, and helping them sell more SAP solutions is central to its growth. That means knowing how good each partner is at marketing, so funding and support go where they will make the biggest difference.
Challenge
SAP's partners range from global consultancies to small specialist firms, and their marketing varies just as much. Some run sophisticated, data-driven programmes. Others are just getting started.
SAP had no consistent way to tell them apart. That made it hard to know where help would make the biggest difference, which of SAP's marketing services each partner needed, or whether that help was working.
Solution
We started by listening. Workshops with partners in every region, and with SAP's own marketing teams, showed us what great partner marketing looks like and where partners get stuck.
Then we turned it into a score. The Partner Marketing Maturity Index (PMMI) combines a questionnaire from each partner with AI analysis of their actual marketing, and gives every partner one score that means the same thing in Madrid as it does in Singapore.
But a score on its own changes nothing, so PMMI goes further. It spots each partner's gaps and recommends the SAP-funded services most likely to fix them, from showing up better in search to telling customer success stories. SAP's team sees it all on one live dashboard: every partner, every country, who is improving fastest and who needs help now.
Outcome
PMMI has changed how SAP decides where its partner funding goes. More than 2,500 partners in 49 countries are on PMMI, and it has already made more than 700 recommendations, with search the most common gap.
And it shows what is working. Partners who have been scored a second time have improved by up to 14 points, so SAP can see which help pays off and put more money behind it. Every new score sharpens the picture, so the longer PMMI runs, the smarter SAP's funding decisions get.
PMMI has changed the conversation we have with our partners. Instead of guessing where to invest, we can see exactly where each partner stands, point them to the help that will make the biggest difference, and prove it is working.
