Speaking at the SAP SME Summit in Sao Paolo, Brazil, this week, Graham said looking at the Latin American market has "opened up our eyes in North America." Discussions with various SAP executives at the conference brought out the company's belief that South America has done a better job getting the direst sales staff on board with SAP's push for increasing revenue from the indirect channel. Graham says the United States "is very much a direct sales culture." Changing the culture will involve education, along with the right compensation models. In a separate interview, Kevin Gilroy, SVP of global indirect channels, also said that the U.S. channel is too far upstream. SAP needs more industry-focused resellers, he added, and cloud specialists. While Graham and South America's channel head Emilio Marino noted the difficulties in switching from license sales to subscription revenue and the fears resellers will simply become sales agents, Gilroy had no doubt,  "The VAR is here to stay. We need the channel more than ever." Gilroy said that the switch to indirect needs to be driven by management reminding account executives that the company wants to know how much the channel contributes to results.