Johannesburg, 01 Aug 2013
The Solutions, VAR Applications, and SAP Partner Challenge EMEA 2013 Africa Crystal awards won by Britehouse at the annual SAP Partner Summit, held in Cape Town, in July 2013, demonstrate that the company's decision two years ago to focus its business in full alignment with the SAP roadmap is paying dividends for both Britehouse and its customers.
"The Solutions award, for instance, results not only from our commitment to SAP Rapid Deployment Solutions (RDS) - in buying and enriching 10 of them - but also from our using a combination of three of them to take to market in only 30 weeks, a R5 billion revenue business with 500 SAP users," says Britehouse CEO, Paolo Masselli.
"This one project proves that everyone in the value chain - SAP, Britehouse, and the customer - benefits from astute integration of the SAP strategy with partner experience and expertise. On its own, the project has given us a full return on our investment in all 10 RDSs, and because we could onboard such a large organisation in such a short time, applying three of the RDSs, it shows customers that the normal timelines of 10 to 18 weeks on individual RDS verticals such as CRM, environment, health, and safety (EHS), manufacturing, business analytics, or mobility, can most certainly be met."
Mainly focused on the company that is most successful in delivering RDS solutions, the Solutions award also looks at the number of RDS solutions sold, the number of RDS solutions qualified, certification of templates, certification of mobile applications, and locally relevant solutions developed.
The VAR Applications award recognises the most successful value added reseller of SAP software during 2012.
"When we made the strategic decision in 2011 to become a SAP software VAR, it positioned us as the only company in Africa able to offer the complete spectrum of SAP cloud, mobile, analytics, applications, and database and technology services, support, and solutions," Masselli says. "Because we can connect all the dots for customers, we are able to help them innovate and, as a consequence, prepare at least cost and with minimal effort for tomorrow's business models and market challenges.
"The fact that we've sold more SAP software than our competitors shows that customers believe that when we say they need software, it's because we see their big picture rather than our wanting to sell a product."
Britehouse won the Africa Crystal Award in the SAP Partner Challenge EMEA 2013 for its excellence in developing and executing on its SAP business plans and its capacity for innovation in moving its own business forward. Britehouse's motivation for competing in this challenge was to showcase its strengths: enablement adoption, product specialisation, expertise, competitiveness, and brand awareness. Winning this challenge also ensures that Britehouse maintains its SAP Gold Partner status. As a consequence of the Africa Crystal Award win, Britehouse has been entered for the Partner Challenge EMEA Champion award and the SAP Partner Hall of Fame.
"Since focusing our business to align with SAP's five strategic pillars in 2011, we've been able to increase our existing customer base in projects, which was our traditional area of strength, as well as bring in new and repeat business in other areas," Masselli says. "For instance, we've grown 50% year-on-year in the support and outsource pillar of our business, and although it's only a few months old, we already have 50 clients on our cloud offering, which includes a cloud version of SAP Business One."
"The Africa Crystal Award not only puts us ahead of our competitors, it acknowledges that Britehouse functions as an integrated team," Masselli says. "Market leadership is not possible without internal coherence. We outperform others because everyone in Britehouse works synergistically in applying their highly specialised talents to turning the company strategy into tangible business improvements for our customers."
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