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Partnering will get you everywhere!
Tue, 1st Aug 2006
FYI, this story is more than a year old

It’s a big world out there, with business differences, cultural differences and of course language barriers and it always takes exponentially more time, resources and money than you could ever plan for.

When going global, nothing comes easy and the only way to succeed is by finding and driving the perfect partnership.

Two years ago Enprise discussed becoming an SAP Business One partner, providing solutions to New Zealand’s small and medium businesses. It subsequently became a huge opportunity.  

When we met with SAP the company told us that historically, as a large company, it was used to being a freight train that carried carriages (service partners) but was now taking small and medium business by storm with its new solution SAP Business One. SAP was looking for business partners like Enprise to become an engine with its freight train in order to own this market.

Since this concept had been unheard of in our 25 years experience in the ERP space we wanted to be part of it.

Enprise has developed a Business One job costing module and SAP has helped us take this solution global.  We have partners and customers in Europe, US, Canada, Asia and South Africa – it’s all growing rapidly.

SAP has handed up its global partner channel to help Enprise and other (ISV’s) development partners be a global success, in turn rapidly growing its success and enabling its goal of being the leader in small medium business ERP applications.

Our challenge was to be ahead of the rest and, as a hungry, motivated New Zealand business, we went out there and took the challenge head-on by joining SAPs global channel and building partnerships using the huge eco-system SAP has invested heavily in.

Due to our success in its channel SAP asked us to join its global ISV (development solution) partner council.  This council was formed by SAP to get partners to tell SAP what it needed to do to ensure we are all successful partners.  This opportunity on the council has enabled Enprise to be a household name to SAP partners worldwide. 

In addition SAP invited me to join a new partner council to drive a new strategy – the partner to partner collaboration portal.  This council assists all partners to collaborate in order to build their businesses globally.  I think this portal is revolutionary and will be the standard in the future on how to truly collaborate.  I am the chair person for Asia Pacific on this council and am proud Enprise is part of driving a worldwide success.

In addition to help from SAP, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has also helped Enprise tackle the global market by supporting us with global grants to drive our business forward into offshore markets.

Partnering is definitely the key to global success and Enprise has found that key.

My team is proud of where we have come from, admittedly it’s hard work and there’s still a long way to go.  We are driven and our engine is in top condition so we are ensuring our company is right up there -  the world is huge so there are plenty more places to drive to.

New Zealand is a fantastic country with amazing skills and passion to succeed and I’m very proud to be part of that.