A referral program for SAP partners rolling out to US subsidiaries

Why is an SAP rollout to a US subsidiary an introduction moment?

When a group template goes live at a US subsidiary, the old ERP, the spreadsheets around it and often the helpdesk and document stores are about to be retired or frozen. That is the one point at which a company decides what happens to years of operational history. An SAP partner in Frankfurt, Pune, Warsaw or Sydney is in the room when that decision is made.

SourceX is the data transaction layer between companies that hold operational records and AI developers who license them. The company keeps ownership and signs only if price and terms work. As the SAP partner you introduce; you do not extract, copy or look at any data.

The rollout gives you an honest reason to ask a question you would otherwise have no business asking: before the legacy system is decommissioned, does anyone want to know whether its history has value?

Which US subsidiaries fit?

The baseline for the entity or group is 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded), several years of documented operations, rights to license the data and an authorized sponsor. In a subsidiary, the harder test is usually rights and which entity holds the records.

Who holds the records when the instance is shared?

Many groups run one SAP instance with company codes for each entity, or a shared client for several subsidiaries. That means a table of US transactions may physically sit in a German or Indian data center and belong legally to the US entity, to the group parent, or to both.

Before anyone discusses a license, the questions are legal rather than technical:

1. Which legal entity owns the US records under the intercompany agreements?
2. Does the group parent have the right to license them, or only the US entity?
3. Do customer or employee contracts, works council agreements or group policies restrict use?
4. Are third-party records mixed in, such as shared-service customers?
5. Who at the group can authorize a license?

Do not try to answer these yourself. Raise them as questions and let the company's legal team decide. The company completes a data inventory with SourceX after it applies, and rights are reviewed there.

Who should you ask?

The sponsor who can say yes is an owner, CEO, CFO or authorized representative. Ask the steering committee chair who that is rather than assuming.

When in the project do you raise it?

What to say

Offer the owner the choice of applying directly through a referral link. The link sends the company to sourcex.si/apply with your referral code attached, so credit is preserved.

Illustrative scenario

Illustrative and fictional: a Munich consultancy is migrating a Texas distribution subsidiary, acquired six years ago, onto the group S/4HANA template. During data-migration design, the consultancy's lead asks the US controller what happens to the old ledgers, order history and the helpdesk that sits beside them. The controller says the old system will be archived read-only for audit purposes.

The lead then asks who could authorize a license, learns it is the subsidiary's president with sign-off from group legal, and offers a referral link. Group legal replies that the acquisition agreement needs checking before anything proceeds. The consultancy waits, does nothing else, and the company decides. Nothing here involved extracting a single record.

What does the partner never do?

• Never export tables, reports or extracts from the client's system.
• Never describe confidential records in an email or chat.
• Never hold credentials or run transactions for this purpose.
• Never promise a license, a price or a reward.
• Never delay or alter the client's retention and archiving duties.

De-identification and redaction requirements are agreed with the company before any work begins, and data is delivered only after an executed agreement and the company's authorization.

How do rewards work?

Partners earn 25% of the eligible platform fees SourceX actually collects from the referred company's licensing deals, capped at $100,000 cumulative per referred company. Rewards become payable only after the buyer pays and SourceX receives its fee. A lead, meeting or signed agreement alone does not trigger payment. No reward is guaranteed. Check your SAP partner agreement for rules on outside referral income and any conflict with your customer's contract. If your consultancy is the payee, the IRS describes Form W-8BEN-E for foreign entities; our guide to filling out a W-8BEN-E for a consulting firm covers the sections. This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Confirm with your own counsel or tax adviser before acting.

When not to bother

Skip subsidiaries with fewer full-time employees at peak than the baseline, groups where a court or trustee controls assets, records already licensed for AI training, or projects where nobody can say who owns the data. Skip any rollout where you would need to look at records to make the case.

Next step

Register as a partner, then compare the playbook for offshore delivery partners and nearshore software firms. If you also advise on finance, read the fractional CFO guide. Confirm whether non-US residents can join, see how this differs from a customer referral program, and use the referral earnings calculator. Final economics are in the program terms.