China Telecom and SAP have joined force to offer the SAP Anywhere service for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in China.
Targeting retailers and wholesale distributors as well as business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies, SAP Anywhere is a front-office solution specifically tailored to the e-commerce needs of SMBs with 10 to 500 employees.
It enables SMBs to monetize digital sales channels by using a full set of customer experience and commerce features, including inventory control and insight, online marketplace management and business and customer engagement.
SAP Anywhere is designed to allow SMBs to create their own online stores in minutes. It gives access to shared inventory and logistics insights in real time with unified order management software.
SMBs can integrate SAP Anywhere with internal and external back-office data sources to create real-time analytics for decision making, SAP said.
Provided as a software-as-a-service platform run by China Datacom (CDC), a subsidiary of China Comservice (CCS) and China Telecom, in a public cloud, SAP Anywhere can be accessed via mobile devices and desktops.
The platform promises to deliver a consistent customer experience beginning with online and offline marketing campaigns and extending to shopping functions. It brings together traditional and online shopping features, making it possible to buy and sell goods with the help of an integrated digital product showroom on a tablet.
Edward EJ Jackson, SVP and GM of SAP Anywhere, said China is the first country to launch SAP Anywhere, and it will be sold through the strategic partnership forged with China Telecom.
“SAP worked closely with China Telecom to customize SAP Anywhere for the Chinese market within its telecom infrastructure, and the partnership aims to leverage the huge network, including the existing 50,000 online sellers and 40 million SMBs that China Telecom supports,” said Jackson.
“With both efforts of SAP and China Telecom, we now provide more comprehensive solutions, comprising of SAP Anywhere, Tianyi 4G, and professional services to Chinese customers, and help our customers come into this new era of mobile commerce to improve their competitiveness,” China Telecom deputy general manager Chen Zhongyue commented.
Prior to the launch, Jackson added, SAP and CDC (a joint venture between SAP and CCS established in 2013) have been working together for more than a year on co-innovating the SAP Anywhere solution and establishing the new category of Front Office solution.
SAP has been running an early adopter program before the official launch with selective candidates.
“There have been hundreds of trials in China and we now have Early Adopter Customers such as creative studio MRKT and JCloud are using the service,” Jackson said.
SAP will be taking a targeted approach with SAP Anywhere by initially launching for China, US, and UK markets, with plans to expand to others markets beginning in 2016.
The launch of SAP Anywhere marks the latest collaboration between SAP and China Telecom, which have been cooperating in areas such as big data and cloud computing in past years.
“The unveiling of SAP Anywhere pushes one step further for this cooperation in terms of data analysis and information management,” Jackson noted.