Erica Lailharcar: Activating Demand, Empowering Partners at SAP

Chip Rodgers  0:01  
Hey everyone, welcome back. We're here again in Paris at this tremendous, awesome event, here at Air calls offices, and I'm joined. I'm really excited to be joined by Erica lilacar. And Erica is VP of partner demand activation, partner demand activation globally. And Erica, welcome for SAP.

Erica Lailharcar  0:25  
Thank you, Chief. Great to have you here in my hometown. And thank you for the opportunity to be live sharing a few moments with the audience.

Chip Rodgers  0:38  
Yeah, so Erica, tell us a little bit about what you and your team do globally and the kinds of partners that you work with. You're working with both resellers and also software partners. But tell us a little bit about the you know, what it is that you your team is doing, and how you're trying to help partners be successful.

Erica Lailharcar  0:58  
I lead a global team of demand effort experts as part of the partner activation organization. And what we do is, you know, we we look into what partners need to be successful going to market with SAP. So our goal is to provide partners. You know, we work with the resellers. We work with software partners, with everything they need to be able to successfully go to market with our solutions, and, you know, to successfully get to our customers

Chip Rodgers  1:32  
and so. So those are you're doing some training and providing the kinds of assets and things like that. Tell, tell us a little bit about what that what that involves. How do you, how do you help

Erica Lailharcar  1:44  
them? And it's a combination of things. So we look at the end to end partner demand journey. So what is it that our partners need to to do better planning with us, to to do the demand execution also, you know what? Whether it is funding enablement or demand services, so we look into making those best practices available to our ecosystem so that they have everything they need to be able to go to market.

Chip Rodgers  2:16  
So how are you? Does that include sort of getting connected into SAP demand and you know capabilities as well, and getting, you know, connected into SAP programs?

Erica Lailharcar  2:33  
Well, a big part of what we do is making sure that the ecosystems is well integrated into saps, demand processes, demand tools in the way we work with partners. So that's very important, right? And speaking of tools, you know we are, we are a user of work span. And this is an excellent example of no systems that we put in place to to help the collaboration with with their partners better and increase the transparency, and really, at the end of the day, you know, you know, build, build, build, a stronger model for building demand with them.

Chip Rodgers  3:18  
Yeah, that's, that's, that's tremendous. So, and when you're, when you're going to market with partners, then you're, how are you like, maybe talk about it like a success story or something, where, then you don't need to name names, but where that, you know, where you've really helped partners, you know, go to market and build their business with SAP. Well,

Erica Lailharcar  3:45  
there are many, there are many successes stories. And really the success stories is that when we get to work very closely with partners on the ground, right, whether we, when we were running in the market, units and the regions are running events and bringing partners in and, you know, allowing partners to bring their own customers, and, know, going to together with the one customer voice, that's, that's what the biggest success stories are. So I know, I know. I don't want to call the one particular example, but in general, there are many successful examples where we really, you see SAP and the partners as one talking to our customers. And that's the, that's the best example of no where one plus one equals three in terms of partnerships.

Chip Rodgers  4:48  
That's That's fantastic. So Erica, we have a lot of partner managers, partner leaders that you know are, you know, pay attention and are listening. Maybe, I. Um, any advice that you would have, or any things that you picked up along the way that you would, that you would share with with a, maybe a, you know, a newer partner manager, someone that's starting out like, what does any something, some things that you would suggest that they think about.

Erica Lailharcar  5:18  
Yeah, so think for for partner managers is like, no, get get to know your partner, right? Get to know very well where what the unique strengths of your partners are. Every every partner brings unique strengths and capabilities to our ecosystem, so and it's critical that as a partner manager, you need to know what those are, and in really feed that strength to make that one plus one equal equals three, and find the Win Win situations always right so They're amazing opportunities to be doing more with our partners and and the you know, department managers play the key role in that.

Chip Rodgers  6:07  
That's fantastic. Erica, thank you so much for taking some time today, and I'll let you get back to the to the group, but really appreciate you sharing your thoughts.

Erica Lailharcar  6:17  
Merci beaucoup.

Chip Rodgers  6:20  
That the end. How appropriate here we are. So thank you all for for joining and we'll see you next time you.

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