Press Room
Applicon celebrates ten years jubilee as SAP partner by appointing to the first Nordic Gold-partner
When Applicon started as SAP partner in Iceland in 1997 the company had only a handful SAP-consultants and only a couple of SAP-customers. Today after ten years Applicon employs about 180 SAP experts and is one of the fastest growing SAP-partners in the world. All that combined with an impressive high level of customer satisfaction is the natural reason for appointing Applicon to the first Gold-partner in the Nordic region (in SAP named Partner Edge).
"For us the Gold Partner status in the SAP´s Partner Edge program is recognition of our high ambition and focus on selling the SAP software and providing superior SAP service. We have a clear focus and ambition of being a successful partner in Iceland and Denmark and currently we are expanding our services to the other Nordic countries and UK by establishing local offices. Our vision is to be a leading SAP service provider and reseller in Northern Europe providing superior services to local markets. Our mission is to empower out customers to gain leadership through flexible standardized SAP business application and intelligent consultancy," says Applicon Iceland Managing Director Kristján Jóhannsson
Applicon's ambition is to be the most competent SAP Partner in the Nordic region and to be the best employer for consultants in their field of expertise. Now receiving the SAP Gold Partner status is an important step for SAP to honor that impressing work that is done in Iceland and in their offices in Copenhagen, Reykjavik, Stockholm and London.
"Applicon is doing a fantastic job. Through the ten years as SAP partner they have succeeded in growing together with their customers and everybody knows how fast and strong the Icelandic companies and business have grown in the last ten years. Applicon is a role model for other customers as an example on how the SAP solutions are scalable from small and mid-size companies to very large companies." said director of Sales in Denmark Jens Bager SAP.
Currently Applicon has offices in Copenhagen, Reykjavik, Stockholm and London and the number of employees is close to 200 and expected turnover in 2007 is around 35 million EUR. For the past couple of years the Applicon companies have been growing organically by more than 20% per year. The initiative to construct a strong group of independent AppliCon companies in the Nordics and UK was based on the fact that Icelandic companies have been expanding outside of Iceland. Investments in the other Nordic countries and UK have been quite substantial and the expanding Icelandic companies have been establishing themselves in these countries. As a result there is a need to support the IT business applications needed for these countries and this is one of the cornerstones of the Applicon strategy. The Icelandic economy has been growing in terms of GDP by more than 4% for the past 4 years which is much higher than in other western countries.
"We now can see that SAP is focusing much more on building up a strong channel in the SME segment with a selection of competent and reliable partners. For us the future is therefore bright. We have grown fast and we aim to continue to grow. Our strategy has been to develop packages, solutions and accelerators in order to improve and complement SAP software for particular industries and countries. We believe that this expertise will give us a leading edge to continue to be successful and fuel our growth and expansion into new geographic areas." says AppliCon Iceland Managing Director Kristján Jóhannsson
Applicon's globalization strategy is based on providing SAP solutions to the financial services industry. In this vertical AppliCon has specialized in order to be a highly competitive SAP partner. Applicon will continue to focus on this area as the company believes there are tremendous opportunities for SAP software in banks and financial institutions. This means offering scalable and reliable solutions in various areas such as core banking based on SAP strategy for Service Oriented Architecture. A lot of financial service companies need to replace their old legacy systems in the coming years and the SAP value proposition here is excellent. Applicon also plan to have complementing solutions such as the Applicon Internet Bank solution closely developed in cooperation with SAP core product development.
"SAP has been a strategic partner for us for a decade and we rely on our business partnership with SAP. We believe that the SAP PartnerEdge program is by far the biggest step taken be SAP in its 35 year history towards strengthening the SME channel. Based on our constructive co-operation so far we believe that this will give us unexplored opportunities and we will be one of SAP´s most strategic service and reselling partners in North Europe in the next 10 years to come," says Applicon Iceland Managing Director Kristján Jóhannsson.
