United VARs APJ Regional Summit – The First of its Kind! 12 local member companies from APJ meet to expore project opportunities

United VARs alliance expanding to APJ

Following the strong economic upswings in many regions of Asia, United VARs made clear its intention to focus on this area to capitalize on the favourable conditions. The APJ Summit, held from July 4-6, 2018 in Bangkok, Thailand, marked the first important step to make good on United VARs’ promise and demonstrated the alliance’s successful expansion into the region, as three companies that joined the worldwide network in recent months—MIT, Soltius and AXXIS—were founded in the region.

United VARs believes that actions speak louder than words. That is precisely why it has created the opportunity for its 12 Asian members to get in touch and network with each other in person, encouraging meaningful and lasting collaboration between the participating companies, which include Answerthink - The Hackett Group (from the USA and India), DXC Oxygen (Australia), DynaSys Solution Limited (Hong Kong), Fasttrack Solutions Inc. (Philippines), Axxis Consulting (Singapore), IPS Co. Ltd (Japan), Myanmar Information Technology Pte Ltd (Myanmar), Shanghai Acloudear Info. Tech. Co. Ltd (China), PT Soltius (Indonesia), ISS Consulting (Thailand), ETC Technology Systems (Vietnam), and HAND (China).

The first cross-funcional United VARs meeting 

In fact, this event is unprecedented in United VARs history, as it has been the very first cross-functional meeting of its scope and kind. In this way, people with a variety of backgrounds, especially those that are actively in charge of project execution, had the chance to meet face-to-face, thus fostering strong relationships and mutual trust between their companies making it a tremendous success. 

In order to personalize the experience for the colourful audience and make it suitable to the various interests of the distinct business functions, workshops and conferences were divided into four main categories: Top Management, Marketing, Sales, and Consulting/Solution. 

During the three days, the twelve VARs, together with their global partners Huawei and Symmetry, as well as SAP, provided key information to the participants including regional updates, enablement sessions and presentations on globally and regionally relevant topics. “The APJ Summit is a great opportunity to transform the successful United VARs best practices into regional and local adoption and execution. Here we discussed how to drive success in the local context,” said Steffen Burger, Global VP Partner Solution Centers at SAP.

Taking advantage of the regional growth in Asia

According to IMF Standard Chartered Research, one third of the world’s largest economies are in Asia and, over the next 25 years, Asia will add three Eurozones to the global economy. For United VARs members, joining forces is the best way to take advantage of the regional growth. Satya Bommireddy, Managing Director of Answerthink in India exemplified this and stated, “We are currently working on an SAP rollout project for APTAR Group with the Chinese United VARs member HAND. Meeting people face to face that you have worked with is a great benefit for this and future projects.”

After such a rewarding kick-off, we can expect the eastern United VARs members to rapidly become an integral part of the United VARs organization. And the extended collaboration is not only likely to occur within Asian markets but also with cross-regional members for future international rollouts. Building bridges among these companies is the best way to assure smooth and genuine cooperation, which has always been the hidden advantage of the United VARs’ worldwide network as well as what makes it so unique. 

When asked about his experience, Wisit Wirayagorn, Managing Director from ISS Consulting (Thailand), summed it up by stating, “This is the first regional United VARs meeting, not only with the C-level, but with our operational team, which gives me the chance to align my operational staff with our members’ people and give them the opportunity to communicate directly with each other by themselves. They gained insights into the current opportunities our collaboration platform offers. And, last but not least, I can now assign my people to the CoE (Centers of Excellences) which United VARs has established. There they can actively participate in focus topics such as S/4HANA, Business by Design, and C/4HANA.” 

Check out the video below and see for yourself what Ronnie Sung, Managing Director of DynaSys Solutions Ltd. and Director of United VARs had to say about how fruitful the APJ Regional Summit was!