SAP AppHaus Network & WillowTree: New Year, New Partner, New Opportunities
The addition of WillowTree expands the SAP AppHaus Network and brings an innovative co-creation space for customers in North America.
In January 2021, WillowTree, based in Durham, North Carolina, freshly joined the SAP AppHaus Network. To seal the newly formed partnership, the team from WillowTree and SAP AppHaus jointly celebrated the virtual opening of a new, innovative customer-facing design space.
To get a sense of the WillowTree spirit watch this amazing welcome video:
WillowTree — Where Digital Experts Thrive
Founded in 2008, WillowTree is a mobile app and web development company. Their goal is to help international companies build applications, websites, and bots. In doing so, WillowTree comprises more than 500 full-time team members working from Charlottesville, VA, Durham, NC, Columbus, OH and New York City.
In the past years, WillowTree adapted to the digital ecosystem with the desire to support customers in every stage of the product life cycle. Accordingly, the teams develop digital products to solve business needs and drive market differentiation. Their offerings range from app and web development over product design and research, up to growth marketing. What makes them a particularly fitting addition to the SAP AppHaus Network is their innovative mindset and commitment to provide the best possible solutions for customers through a human-centered approach.
SAP AppHaus Network — A Community of Like-Minded Partners
Under the roof of SAP’s Customer Innovation organization, the SAP AppHaus Network is a community of SAP partners united by the belief that innovation needs a creative environment, a multi-disciplinary team with designers, design thinking coaches, domain experts and enterprise architects as well as a human-centered approach to make innovation real.
The now thirteen SAP AppHaus Network members, including the newly onboarded WillowTree team, commit to always put people first in their engagements with customers and end users. In doing so, they ensure that implemented solutions create real customer value. Only then can innovative solutions leverage the full potential of SAP solutions building upon the future-oriented SAP Business Technology Platform.
“We are very excited to welcome WillowTree to our SAP AppHaus Network. Over the past six months we have gotten to know the WillowTree team well: what they care about, where they excel and what their goals are. During that time we saw a team that brings a truly inspiring level of thoughtfulness into their work without losing any creativity. Their new AppHaus space in Durham will play an important role in guiding them on their business transformation journey and we are convinced that WillowTree has the right combination of business, design and development skills to make innovation real with the SAP Business Technology Platform.”
Andreas Hauser, SVP, SAP AppHaus Network
As new member, WillowTree will contribute to the success of the SAP AppHaus Network while also benefitting from the resources and best practices of SAP and the other partners. A big part of this is also the establishment of an innovative environment that encourages guests and customers to think outside of the box and be creative. And this is exactly what was done, when WillowTree officially inaugurated their new collaborative space in Durham, North Carolina, USA, last Thursday, January 21st, 2021.
Virtual Opening Celebration of the New WillowTree Innovation Space
Given current travel and gathering restrictions, the opening ceremony took place virtually. SAP AppHaus Partner Network director Birgit Fien-Schmalzbauer shared a warm welcome with SAP and WillowTree attendees, and introduced Andreas Hauser, SVP of the global SAP AppHaus team. He shortly talked about the purpose and approach of the SAP AppHaus and how the SAP AppHaus Network came to be. The team welcomed WillowTree as a new member and gave an outlook on the future collaboration, which he described as a “win-win-situation”.
After that, Tobias Dengel, founder and CEO of WillowTree, and Ryan Ritter, VP of Strategic Alliances shared interesting insights about their company’s history and approach, such as their strong partnership with Apple.
“We are absolutely delighted to partner with SAP on an AppHaus focused on bringing a human-centered innovation approach to the clients that we serve in the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and beyond. The data continues to show that companies who invest more in consumer and employee user experience significantly outperform those who invest less. The partnership among the SAP AppHaus Network, Apple and WillowTree is ideally positioned to help companies optimize their UX investment and truly differentiate themselves from their competitors.”
Tobias Dengel, CEO, WillowTree
As a great virtual video experience, Nate Wootten and his team in Durham invited all participants to take a tour in their newly designed collaboration space. They also shared insights in a typical workday in their office and how they manage to support customers in making the life of end users easier.
To finish off with a bang, the team revealed their new AppHaus space that features areas for different types of collaboration and workshops, all spread over around 160 square meters.
In the end, WillowTree revealed a world map on the wall, showcasing all locations of the SAP AppHaus partner network.
Thank you WillowTree for organizing this great event!
The whole SAP AppHaus family looks forward to many years of successful and harmonious collaboration.
For more information about WillowTree and insights into their new AppHaus space visit: https://experience.sap.com/designservices/location/durham
