Inside a Global SAP Implementation Partner Alliance: How Independent Firms Deliver as One

International SAP projects rarely fail because the technology is wrong. They fail because no single SAP consulting partner has people on the ground everywhere a project needs them. UNITED VARS is a strategic alliance built to solve exactly that problem – and the mechanics behind it are less about goodwill and more about a set of rules every member signs up to. Franziska and Rafael sat down with Emily and Alex to find out how it actually works.

This post is adapted from "Life@All for One," the podcast from UNITED VARS member All for One, in an interview-style format.

Guests: Emily Rebmann, Business Development at UNITED VARS, and Alexander Herfort, Managing Director of UNITED VARS.

Hosts: Franziska Völker, Project Manager ERP Public Cloud, and Rafael Wedemeyer, Senior Expert Employer Branding & Social Media.

The Airline Alliance Analogy

Host: If someone asked you in an elevator what UNITED VARS actually does, how would you explain it in the time it takes to ride between floors?

Alex: The simplest comparison is an airline alliance – Star Alliance, One World, SkyTeam. Those combine services from different airlines under one roof, so if your flight is cancelled you have an alternative, and your miles land in one account no matter which airline you flew. UNITED VARS does the same thing for SAP consulting. We bring together hand-picked local market leaders – we call them local heroes – under one alliance umbrella. If a project needs boots on the ground in Brazil, we don't need our own office there. We need a member in Brazil who already speaks the language, knows the legal requirements, and can deliver.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE →

Why International Projects Get Complicated Fast

Host: Many companies want to run global SAP projects with standardized processes. What actually makes international SAP projects so challenging?

Alex: Changing how a company runs is hard enough in a single country. An SAP project already ranks among the most complicated things a company can take on. Push that across borders, and you add cultural differences, legal requirements that vary by country, language, and time zones on top. Something as simple as scheduling an alignment call across four time zones becomes its own small project.

Vetting New Members Before They Join

Host: Behind every successful alliance are shared standards and processes. How do you ensure quality, trust, and consistency across so many independent members?

Alex: It starts before anyone joins. We generally keep one member per country, and every candidate goes through an assessment – company KPIs, how much SAP business they run, their five-year strategy, their competitors, even ownership structure. Think of it as a compact due-diligence process. That assessment goes to a steering committee of seven to ten elected UNITED VARS members, chosen to represent different regions of the world, and they decide whether a candidate fits – culturally and strategically.

Almost ten years in, I've noticed something I didn't expect: most of our members are owner-driven businesses with twenty to thirty years of history, and that decides how they treat people in strikingly similar ways, wherever they are. It's by invitation only. We spent the last two years assessing the whole of Latin America and, as of a few weeks ago, we've covered nearly every relevant market between Mexico and the southern tip of the continent.

The vetting is only step one. It's backed by joining contracts that set out the rules of collaboration, a code of conduct on how members treat each other fairly, and a project handbook with RACI matrices and an escalation path for when something needs fast attention. The hard part is making sure everyone actually knows these exist – which is one reason UNITED VARS runs an Annual Meeting for CEOs and C-level leaders from every member, plus Regional Summits and Centers of Excellence throughout the year, so people can pick up the phone before a small issue becomes a large one.

Spot Consulting: Same Priority, Any Size Request

Host: Tell us about Spot Consulting – what is it, and how does it help customers solve challenges faster?

Alex: People picture UNITED VARS around the big, planned rollouts – thirty consultants onsite in Tokyo, scheduled a year out. But just as often, an existing customer needs one specific resource for a short engagement – say, a manufacturing execution systems specialist in Brazil for a single plant. I had exactly that request recently: one email from a colleague, and within days they had a CV and could offer their German customer a solution for their Brazilian site. That's Spot Consulting, and it only works because of a rule in our code of conduct: any request that comes through UNITED VARS carries the same priority as your own project – even if it's five days of work. Without that rule, a five-day ask from a small partner abroad would never get priority on anyone's calendar.

For a mid-market customer, that rule is the difference between waiting weeks for a niche skill and having it solved by the end of the week. The call to action for any member listening: don't let the customer go it alone. If you don't realize a request is coming through UNITED VARS, you might turn it away. If you know it is, it gets the priority it deserves – and that positions you as the customer's trusted advisor for whatever comes next.

A Life Sciences Deal Across Three Continents

Host: Can you give an example of this working at scale – a project that really shows what the alliance can do?

Alex: The customer is a life sciences company with operations across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Eight digits, in USD, for services alone – probably the largest project anyone in our alliance has delivered.

Before the deal was even signed, the consulting lead at Answerthink reached out directly to our teams in the relevant markets to bring them into the pre-sales process. They visited the customer together, built a relationship across the buying center, and in the end won the business together – against much larger, "Big Four"-style competitors – because the customer became convinced that independent companies really could operate as one. All for One alone recognized seven-digit revenue from a single part of that deal. The key learning: bring partners in early, and it only works if nobody doubts sharing that customer will come back to bite them. That trust is earned over years of working together across the UNITED VARS alliance.

For a mid-market company, the takeaway isn't the deal size – it's that there's genuinely no other mid-market player that can deliver true end-to-end global SAP service like this. Mid-market customers also tend to want mid-market consulting partners: a 5,000-employee company in Germany gets far more attention from a member here than it would ever get as a line item inside a 200,000-person global consultancy.

What AI Will and Won't Change

Host: Looking ahead, how do you think AI will change international consulting over the next five to ten years?

Alex: Being a good consultant was never only about technical skills. You need to train people, communicate, and have the empathy to be a change agent at the customer. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will likely automate a lot of the deep technical work. What it won't replace is someone standing in front of the customer, convincing them, training them, and driving the change through – and that's still about trust, both within the alliance and with the customer. We also bring in specialized solution partners for capabilities none of our country-based members could deliver alone, and AI is a good example: we've recently added iprosis, a specialist AI and data consulting partner, to cover that gap. Being a trusted advisor was never only about the technology. It's about knowing who can solve the problem and being willing to pick up the phone.

Mid-sized companies should go global without losing speed or local identity. UNITED VARS brings together hand-picked local market leaders with real people on the ground in 100+ countries to remove legal, cultural, and language barriers. As a strategic alliance, UNITED VARS provides clear accountability from start to finish. UNITED VARS is the world's only SAP Platinum Partner alliance, delivering end-to-end SAP services for the mid-market.

stronger than one.

FAQ

What is UNITED VARS?

UNITED VARS is a strategic alliance of independent SAP consulting firms – the world's only SAP Platinum Partner alliance – spanning more than 100 countries. Each member is a hand-picked local market leader in its own country, and together they deliver end-to-end SAP projects for mid-market companies without any single member needing an office everywhere a project touches down.

How is working with UNITED VARS different from hiring one large global SAP consultancy?

UNITED VARS members stay independent and mid-market-focused, so a project gets full local commitment while still reaching every country a rollout needs.

What is Spot Consulting?

Spot Consulting is how UNITED VARS handles short, specific resource requests rather than a full multi-year rollout. Members commit, by code of conduct, to treat any request that comes through the alliance with the same priority as their own projects.

How does a company become a UNITED VARS member?

Membership works by invitation-only. Candidates go through an assessment covering company KPIs, SAP business volume, five-year strategy, competitors, and ownership structure, and finally a steering committee of elected UNITED VARS members – chosen for regional balance – decides whether the fit is right.