Kelley Lear: Winning Together with SAP, SIs, and the Cloud

Chip Rodgers  0:01  
Welcome Hey. Welcome back everybody. Gosh, we've had a lot of a lot of, it's just been a fantastic event. SAFIRE here, it's Wednesday afternoon now, or early afternoon, and starting to think about wrapping up, you know, get winding into the end, into the final stretch. And, gosh, I'm so excited to be joined by Kelly. Lear Kelly is vice president of partnerships and alliances at Thomson Reuters, and just welcome and really glad to have you here join us.

Kelley Lear  0:34  
Thanks for having me. Chip. I'm excited to be here. It's been a really fun event. We started off on Monday afternoon at partner connect, and that was a pretty exciting part of the event. A lot of the board support came in from SAP, and a lot of the SAP leadership really expanding upon the partner channel, which, of course, is very important to us as a premier partner with SAP. And so we're doing a lot of exciting things, and we had some announcements there.

Chip Rodgers  1:05  
Yes, yeah. So it was, I mean, you're right, it was, well, I want to get into that, but it was really great that, that the there was so many board members and participants that were in the partner session, that's a, really a change from from the past that SCP at the very you know, senior love, from Christian on down, really, are really embracing so many the partner ecosystem and building, building it and showing that strength.

Kelley Lear  1:33  
They are truly and I think we're excited about that. We were talking to some of our very large customers while we're here as well, and they are finding that complete 180 degree shift, and are excited about that kind of road map, the collaboration, how we're kind of working closer together with SAP org and across the entire ecosystem. So we're happy about that as well. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  2:01  
that's fantastic. So let's talk about the announcements. You had some exciting announcements this week, so tell me about the doorsteps and spotlight. So tell me, tell me more. Great.

Kelley Lear  2:12  
Yeah, so this year, we did get the spotlight Partner Award for Ariba, so we're going to be doing a lot of go to market on our procure to pay solution for indirect tax, and we've been a long term partner with SAP on this solution, so it's exciting to see us get it again this year. We also have reached industry cloud this year for chemicals and oil and gas for our indirect tax solution and super fund excise tax. So that's a new regulation that's impacting the environment the those industries very forcefully this year, a lot of regulatory and penalties and so forth. So it's, it's got heightened focus this year, and then we're also working on we just announced at partner connect that we have endorsed app status for three of our solutions. So that's awesome. Congratulations. Yeah, it was a huge effort on both the SAP side and our side. It's for one source tax provision and also our indirect tax solution for ERP ECC and S for HANA. So we're excited to have that launch now.

Chip Rodgers  3:28  
That's, that's fantastic. The the endorsed apps program is really, really a strong program and and, you know, collaborating with technology partners and helping you, you know, go to market together, and CO sell, and all of those things

Kelley Lear  3:44  
it is. And it also kind of gives you, it's that premium certification as well. So it really shows the IT groups of our our customer organizations out there, that we're kind of collaborating on the roadmap and making sure that our integrations to s4 Hana and SAP ERP have a long term scale security and all the things that they care about as an organization. So we're excited to be part of that program, yeah,

Chip Rodgers  4:15  
so as a technology partner, I mean, with Thomson Reuters, with SAP, you know, you guys are great partners, and have been for, you know, for a long time. How, how does that, you know? How do you connect together and work like, get the product teams together and build solutions together so that you're, you're building complementary capabilities that are, you know, you can, you can bring to market together and really bring value to your shared customers.

Kelley Lear  4:44  
Great question. So we're historically, we have had collaboration with the engineering teams within our organizations and then the leadership teams from the partnership perspective. But now I think, with their new move towards BT. P and the, you know, kind of larger lean into the partner ecosystem. We're seeing much more enhanced collaboration, and then we're doing it across the platform. So traditionally, we had worked in our indirect tax base, and now we have a much more holistic solution set with SAP, so we've moved into the direct tax side, and we've done co innovation projects with the engineering teams on BTP. And so we're adding more solutions to that, so we'll have it for tax, legal and risk across the board, is what we're hoping to get to

Chip Rodgers  5:38  
that's exciting. Yeah, yeah. So, and once you, you know, have gone through that process and come up, you know, start with an idea. You go through the, you know, the the sort of the design and business case, and, you know, bring now you ready to bring it to market. How does that process work for Thomson Reuters, and, say, with SAP or other partners where you're, you know, bringing the solution, then to market, and then starting to co

Kelley Lear  6:08  
sell, awesome question. So we're doing a couple of things. One is for, like, our global next certification, you know, it starts with, like, press releases and things like that. And then we're working with the regional managers across sap to kind of do some rep enablement and get the education and awareness out there within the teams. And then we are working together on CO marketing and CO selling in the market as well. So we have some webinars coming up in June, and we hope to kind of leverage that across the different regions as we progress, yeah. And then endorsed app status is another whole love level. So we will have a different partner manager that will help us with the go to market on the endorsed apps play. And so we'll be working very closely with that new person very quickly here to try to work on the go to market with them.

Chip Rodgers  7:05  
Yeah, it's so interesting because the the education process as you're bringing something to market, it's, it's, you know, of course, you try and reach the customer, but you also have to educate the field and both field teams, right?

Kelley Lear  7:17  
That's right, both field teams. So it's, it's not for the faint of heart, but it's going really well, and we have a ton of support from the sap organization, so that makes it very helpful for us, and they give us some support in terms of understanding what is the best way to educate the reps on The SAP side, and how can we simplify the messaging and make sure that it's very clear for our customers and our joint customers on the value proposition and what we can bring to them? And then we are working with the SI community as well, so it's really helpful to bring them in, because they have such on the ground, you know, expansive knowledge of the customer infrastructure, what the migration path is for S for HANA, they're doing a lot of the fit gap analysis and things like that. So they can say where, you know, some of your solutions really need to play and help out the organization, so they can stick to the core, but that we are serving around the core of SAP, so that they're not having to customize the application and it's seamless integration. So I think educating the SIS too is very important, so we've been doing a lot of that while we're here at SAFIRE as well. Is getting that education going with all of our SI Partners as well. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  8:45  
fantastic. A lot of work. Yes, a lot of work. So we talked a lot about SAP, and SAP is obviously a critical, you know, technology partner for Thomson Reuters, talk a little bit about, sort of more broadly, the Thomson Reuters, you know, ecosystem in partnering strategy. Just share, you know, what are you know, what are your goals and how do you, how do you see the partner ecosystem around Thomson Reuters?

Kelley Lear  9:19  
Great question. So our partner ecosystem, over the last three to four years, we've grown it from kind of more like sis only and some some technology partnerships. SAP has been one of them for many, many years, over 20 years now, but now we have, we've kind of created the partner program to scale, so we are working on programmatizing the programs. So you've got the consulting partner program and you have our technology partner program and strategic alliance. Is and cloud providers, yes, that's right. Cloud providers, ERP systems and hyper scalers, etc, like AWS. So we're we've got all of those in our partner community, and we have support systems, we have processes, we have rules of engagement, we have enablement programs and all of that, and now we're implementing tool sets as well too, so that we can actually communicate better with our partners and make sure that we're sharing and collaborating on company accounts, so that we are sharing knowledge and helping each other for the betterment of the customer. So really trying to add value to the customer, reducing our, you know, manual processes and getting more efficient so that we can scale. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  10:49  
that's fantastic. So exciting, exciting stuff. Yeah. So Kelly, I really appreciate you taking some time today and talking a little bit about the partnership with SAP and partnering more more broadly. So fantastic. Congratulations on the the announcements and award and all those things. So thank you. Yeah, thank Thanks for Thanks for joining us today. Thanks chip. Appreciate it awesome. And thank you also for joining and so on to the rest of SAFIRE, and we'll see you. See you later today. Thanks everybody. Bye.

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