SAP has launched GROW with SAP in Southeast Asia, an offering aimed at small and medium-sized businesses that want to run its cloud ERP software without a large internal information technology team. The package combines the public edition of S/4HANA Cloud with the company's Business Technology Platform, so customers can build their own applications and automate processes without writing code. It was announced at a regional partner event attended by more than 300 partners.

SAP's president and managing director for Southeast Asia, Verena Siow, says small and medium-sized enterprises make up nearly 99 per cent of businesses and contribute 90 per cent of employment and nearly 60 per cent of gross domestic product in many ASEAN countries.

Who actually does the work

SAP says the offering is delivered entirely through partners. That is the detail that decides what a customer pays. A software subscription is a known, repeating cost; the implementation, the data migration and the process design that follow are not, and they are usually the larger part of the bill. A small firm that buys a cloud ERP system and then needs a consultant for every change has not simplified anything.

The company cites its own study that more than two-thirds of small and medium-sized businesses consider digital transformation critical to their survival, and names one early customer, a Singapore fund called T-PRIDE. A vendor's survey is not evidence about a customer's outcome, and the claim that a product is easy to adopt is best tested in the second year of a contract, when the renewal and the change requests arrive. SAP says the offering also includes accelerated adoption services and free learning resources, the parts meant to shorten the distance between signing a contract and running a business on it.