By 2020, SAP to train 1.5 million staff in digital skills

“The Indian economy is growing and the way customers are adapting and adopting the technology is changing with it. There is a massive boom in e-payments and e-commerce,” Anthony McMahon, Senior Vice President, General Business (SME) and Channels, SAP Asia Pacific Japan, told reporters at the annual ‘Partner Summit 2017’ here.

“Our aim is to bring in an influx of skilled consultants to increase the capabilities of our partners and customers and grow the ecosystem of experts,” he added. According to the company, after the Goods and Services Tax (GST) roll-out and ‘Digital India’ initiative, the over 51-million small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country will have to scale up their technology infrastructure. To enable transition to a digital platform, enterprises will require experts and SAP, with its programmes and initiatives, will provide expertise to fulfil this digital gap, the company said. Currently, an estimated two lakh SAP consultants thrive within SAP India partner ecosystem, which contributes approximately $8 billion in revenues. 

Over 320 Indian universities and education institutes are members of SAP university alliance programme, under which more than three million students have been introduced to SAP technologies. On a question of the problems faced by SAP India in imparting digital expertise to its customers, McMahon said: “We spent a lot of time in educating our partners about the technology and functional capability of the solutions. We also needed to have a business conversation to bring out transformation for the customers. We realised that we had to make this change.”