Why SAP partners compete in the sameness zone
Luk Smeyers maps the four commercial positions that decide a consulting firm's performance, and why most SAP partners sit in the one he calls the sameness zone: deep expertise, avoided commercial choices, and growth that depends on selling more capacity.
Across the hundreds of consulting firms we review each year, 98 to 99 per cent compete in what I call the sameness zone. SAP consultancies are no exception.
I keep coming back to the same question: how can an industry full of smart, experienced people end up looking so remarkably similar?
Open the websites of a dozen SAP partners and you will see the pattern at its purest. S/4HANA transformation. Cloud migration. Business AI. Industry expertise. Managed services. Every firm offers the same capability list, describes it in almost exactly the same way, and then wonders why buyers struggle to see meaningful differences.
The problem is not a lack of expertise. SAP partners employ some of the deepest technical expertise in enterprise software. The problem is a lack of commercial choices. Without a deliberate consulting proposition, firms keep adding capabilities, accepting more project variation, and broadening their message until they become increasingly difficult to distinguish. Those avoided choices accumulate, and the firm becomes harder and harder to tell apart from the next one in the directory.
The four commercial positions
When we map consulting firms, two dimensions decide commercial performance: commercial credibility, meaning the market’s confidence in your expertise, proof and ability to deliver outcomes; and commercial distinctiveness, meaning how clearly your firm is differentiated through a focused, outcome-driven proposition. Together they produce four positions. Every SAP partner sits in one of them.
1. The sameness zone: strong expertise, weak distinctiveness. This is where most firms compete. Deep skills, experienced consultants, a respectable track record, and a commercial appearance that looks remarkably like everyone else’s. Broad capabilities, generic messaging and highly customised work make it difficult for buyers to understand what makes the consultancy meaningfully different. Growth remains dependent on relationships, individual rainmakers, and selling more capacity.
2. The trusted generalist: strong credibility, difficult to distinguish. Some partners have earned considerable market trust over many SAP release cycles. Strong relationships, recognised expertise, plenty of delivery evidence. But the proposition remains broad, so buyers may trust the firm without clearly understanding why they should choose it over another credible alternative. Reputation helps them win; limited distinctiveness constrains pricing power and makes growth hard to systematise.
3. Interesting, but unproven: distinctiveness without enough proof. Other firms have made clearer commercial choices. The positioning is focused, the problem is easy to understand, the proposition feels genuinely different. But distinctiveness alone does not create buyer confidence. Without proof, repeatability and evidence of outcomes, buyers find the proposition interesting and still hesitate to commit. In a market where an ERP decision can define a career, hesitation wins.
4. Commercially distinctive: where credibility meets distinctiveness. The rare firms here combine a clear, focused proposition with strong evidence that they repeatedly deliver the promised value. They know the problems they want to solve, the clients they create the most value for, and the outcomes they want to become known for. Their expertise compounds around that focus, strengthening credibility, repeatability, pricing power and commercial performance over time.
Leaving the zone
Commercial strength starts with deliberate choices: the client context where your expertise creates the most value; the business problems worth solving repeatedly; the outcomes your firm wants to become known for; the expertise that should compound over time; and the work that no longer belongs in your proposition.
For an SAP partner that last choice is usually the hardest, because the ecosystem rewards saying yes. Yes to every module, every industry, every request that keeps the bench billable.
In our experience, only around 2 to 3 per cent of consulting firms have proposition foundations that consistently support those choices. That is not a depressing number. It is an extraordinary opportunity for every firm willing to choose.
Luk Smeyers has spent more than 20 years in the consulting business: European CHRO of Nielsen Consulting, founder of the analytics consultancy iNostix (acquired by Deloitte in 2016, where he led the analytics practice through its earn-out), and since 2019 founder of The Visible Authority, where he advises consulting firms on commercial performance. He writes The Authority newsletter; his Consulting Proposition Design Book is coming in 2026 (join the waitlist).
More from Luk at The Visible Authority and on LinkedIn.
Editor’s note (Andreas BORN): Luk’s map describes the whole consulting industry. In the SAP ecosystem one structural factor sharpens it: much of the demand partners compete for is created by SAP itself, through its cloud motions and partner programmes. A firm in the sameness zone is therefore not only hard to distinguish; it is also waiting in the same queue as everyone else. That is the subject of Luk’s second piece here.
Independent. Not affiliated with or endorsed by SAP SE. SAP is a registered trademark of SAP SE.
Next: meet all sapperment experts — or continue with the SAP partner ecosystem’s revenue quality problem.