SAP Unveils Accelerated Cloud Strategy

 ByD, Newsbyte, On Demand  Comments Off
May 152012
 

ORLANDO — SAP today unveiled its accelerated cloud strategy by announcing cloud solutions for four lines of business to manage people, money, customers and suppliers. These are planned to be offered in a consistent way and seamlessly integrated into enterprise resource planning (ERP) business software. SAP will leverage the market strengths of SuccessFactors, an SAP company and one of the fastest growing cloud providers in the world, and its founder and CEO Lars Dalgaard. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14−16, 2012.

“As a long-time customer of both SAP and SuccessFactors, we see this strategy as a clear way forward, harnessing and streamlining the best of what each side brings to the table,” said Troy Barnett, director of HR Processes, Under Armour. “SAP has the process and industry expertise that we rely on every day to run our business, and SuccessFactors gives us cloud applications that our teammates love to use. With the resources at SAP’s disposal coupled with Lars’ vision and passion, we expect great things from this combination.”

“The cloud is a completely new paradigm. Our team of 5,000 will provide customers and all their people with rock-solid access to best-in-class business functionality for people, money, customers and suppliers,” said Dalgaard, SAP Executive Board member. “They aim for the highest level of reliable security in the cloud. We will provide integration among the cloud solutions and external content out-of-the-box with on-premise business software. We are passionate about bringing creative and innovative first-in-class applications to market with a beautiful user experience.”

The New Cloud Powerhouse
Since the close of SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors in February 2012, the combined teams immediately joined forces to begin delivering on an accelerated cloud strategy. SuccessFactors is a pioneer in the cloud and a clear leader in the human capital management (HCM) space, while SAP has deep and unmatched end-to-end business process know-how across on-demand and on-premise solutions, hard-won from 40 years of intellectual property, experience and customer success. Together, and with Dalgaard at the helm of the combined Cloud business unit, SAP is now investing more than 5,000 people dedicated to designing, building and delivering beautiful cloud solutions that enable people to love work again and perform at their best. The newly formed Cloud business unit, serving more than 17 million users, will be focused on four solution areas aimed at helping customers manage their most business-critical assets and relationships.

SAP plans to deliver its multitenant cloud solutions as a loosely-coupled suite of best-of-breed applications. The company plans to offer customers the choice and flexibility to adopt these applications at their own pace, as their business needs evolve. When used together, these applications aim to offer the value of a single solution with a consistent user and customer experience, process and data integrity. The cloud portfolio will focus on solutions that help SAP customers better manage:

  • People: SAP announced the addition of its industry-leading global  payroll software as a cloud-based offering integrated with SuccessFactors’ core human resources (HR) solution, Employee Central. The solution is planned to be available in 10 countries, and is today leveraged by a number of strategic partners as a platform to offer business process outsourcing (BPO) services. SAP has more than 200 resources throughout every region in the world to help ensure local regulations and complexities are addressed and updated within its payroll solution. With the addition of global payroll to the SuccessFactors talent management and core HR solutions, SAP intends to offers the most comprehensive suite of applications in the cloud to help customers manage their people more effectively along end-to-end HR processes, from strategy to execution.
  • Money: With decades of deep expertise in global localization of sophisticated financial applications, SAP announced the planned availability of the SAP Financials OnDemand solution, targeted for large enterprise customers to manage their core financials as well as order-to-cash and invoice-to-pay processes. It is planned to be integrated with SuccessFactors’ core HR solution Employee Central. In addition, SAP intends to deliver a new release of the SAP Travel OnDemand solution with additional integration and mobile capabilities, including the ability to capture and process expenses directly from a mobile device.
  • Customers: The SAP Sales OnDemand solution, with new innovations now released quarterly, goes beyond the outdated capabilities of existing cloud-based sales force automation tools by delivering new marketing and social selling capabilities, new configurability and customization tools, and new integration to on-premise SAP Business Suite software, including the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application. SAP is now broadening its portfolio of CRM solutions to help companies leverage the full power of social networks. SAP today also announced the general availability of the SAP Social Customer Engagement OnDemand solution to help companies engage intelligently with their customers via social media such as Facebook and Twitter as part of their multichannel approach for both marketing and service professionals.
  • Suppliers: Supplier interaction continues to be a key lever for customers. SAP intends to invest in the SAP Sourcing OnDemand solution for strategic sourcing, supplier and contract lifecycle management integrated on premise with SAP Business Suite, as well as its business networks solutions, including the SAP Information Interchange OnDemand solution, for networked-based invoice management and information exchange for the procure-to-pay process.

SAP Cloud Solutions Built With “Social, Mobile, Analytics-First” Approach
Harnessing the power of its mobile, collaborative and analytic expertise for the cloud, SAP cloud solutions can create synergies for customers to realize business value in entirely new ways. A beautiful and intuitive user interface (UI) enables people to easily navigate the system to get their work done more efficiently. Built-in social collaboration aims to help teams work together to achieve business goals faster— whether across the globe or in the next cubicle. With these capabilities powered by the SAP HANA platform, people can make better-informed decisions while integration with the existing portfolio of on-premise solutions from SAP allows for faster innovation across lines of business.

Social Collaboration Where People Work: In Every Application and Business Process
SAP continues to reinforce its social collaboration strategy with new people and data collaboration capabilities: analytics directly in social software for fact-based decision-making, social communities easily blended with formal training for increased learner engagement and an iPad application for collaboration on-the-go. Additionally, in less than two months, social capabilities have been activated for millions of users, letting them easily share and tap into the expertise of their colleagues, unlocking the value of social software.

Sameer Patel, a social software influencer who recently joined SAP, is driving the development of the next-generation social strategy at SAP. The goal is to combine the company’s broad footprint in systems, data management and business processes with SuccessFactors’ leadership and knowledge of cloud solutions to deliver social and collaborative capabilities in a way that accelerates process and business performance. SAP plans to announce further details in the coming months.

Mobile, Extensible, Powered by SAP HANA: Cloud Applications Using SAP and Third-Party Platform-as-a-Service
Across its rich portfolio of mobile cloud solutions, SAP announced today the planned availability of SAP NetWeaver Cloud as its unified platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering. It is intended to be powered by SAP HANA with application design and runtime capabilities, as well as a rich set of services that are planned to include security, mobile and collaboration. SAP today also reaffirmed its commitment to openness by announcing its partnership with leading third-party PaaS offerings, including VMware Cloud Foundry™, that customers will be able to use together with platform services from SAP NetWeaver Cloud to extend SAP solutions.

Integration of Hybrid Landscape Using SAP and Third-Party Integration-as-a-Service
SAP recognizes that for many of its customers, heterogeneous IT landscapes and deployments across on demand and on premise will continue to be the norm and it is crucial to provide integration to make such a hybrid solution landscape work. To address this need, SAP intends to deliver a cloud-based integration technology, comprised of on-demand solutions for process integration and data services, with out-of-the-box content to connect the loosely coupled line-of-business on-demand solutions to other SAP solutions whether on premise or on demand. For integration to third-party solutions, SAP plans to offer its own cloud-based integration technology and also plans to enable its vast ecosystem of partners, including solutions from Dell Boomi, IBM Cast Iron and Mulesoft.

SuccessFactors and SAP Run Better Together
Wasting no time, SuccessFactors implemented several key SAP cloud solutions internally in only six weeks. SuccessFactors, previously a user of multiple, disparate cloud applications, now boasts the title of world’s largest implementation of SAP Sales OnDemand. In the weeks since the companies came together, SuccessFactors has also gone live with SAP Sourcing OnDemand for its strategic procurement management; SAP Travel OnDemand for expense and travel management of its U.S. and German employees; and the SAP Business ByDesign solution, supporting finance and professional services processes.

In parallel, SAP will also use SuccessFactors BizX suite internally as its new HCM system. The use of Success Factors’ cloud solution will simplify HR processes for managers and employees, help managers better align their daily management activities with the corporate strategy and provide the best tools for employees to take more control of their career development. Thirteen hundrend internal early adopters have been working with SuccessFactors since April with enthusiastic feedback about its ease of use and simplicity. The solution will be globally available on May 14 to every SAP employee.

Run Better: Full Business – Any Size – In the Cloud
SAP will continue to offer fully integrated suites in the cloud, with SAP Business ByDesign for mid-market customers via its reseller channels and for subsidiaries of large enterprise customers, as well as the SAP Business One OnDemand solution served by certified SAP partners for smaller customers.

For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom.

SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Note to Editors:
Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

For more information, press only:
Dorit Shackleton, SAP, +1 (604) 889-7841, dorit.shackleton@sap.com, PDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com
Andrea Meyer, SuccessFactors, + 1 (415) 370-7329, ameyer@successfactors.com, PDT

During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

McLaren Group Runs Faster With SAP

 Analytics, HANA, Newsbyte, On Demand  Comments Off
May 152012
 

ORLANDO — The McLaren Group, known for its Grand Prix racing team and iconic Formula 1 cars, will integrate its growing portfolio of businesses using solutions from SAP as its technology backbone. McLaren selected SAP for enterprise applications that improve efficiency across all lines of business, combined with an innovative vision that promises to amplify that value via mobile devices, the cloud and in-memory technology. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012

SAP has a long-standing relationship with various parts of the McLaren Group. This latest deal marks a new stage in their relationship aimed at transforming the IT infrastructure of the entire McLaren Group. McLaren is a midsize company, quickly growing across multiple business centers and regions. As the company expands its investment into diverse markets, including applied technology, electronic systems and high-end hospitality, it needed a technology engine that was integrated, scalable and delivered maximum performance.

McLaren chose SAP to help create a holistic approach, enabling the company to gain better visibility and leverage best practices more easily across the business divisions. With the SAP HANA platform and mobile apps, the company will be able to empower everyone — from tire changers to executives — with the real-time information needed to keep ahead of competitors. The McLaren Group is looking forward to a fast time-to-value using SAP Rapid Deployment solutions, pre-configured software and implementation services.

“The McLaren Group is a rapidly growing business and has unique demands for our software implementation,” said Ron Dennis, executive chairman, The McLaren Group. “These are exciting times for our business, and as we look to the future, we’re pleased to be able to partner with a company like SAP that shares our values – passion, commitment and the willingness to make sacrifices in order to be the absolute best. The growth and longevity of our brand are dependent on our having a varied portfolio, supported by a strong business plan, implemented by the best people – with input from the best partners.”

The McLaren Group’s core activity is Formula 1 racing, a data-intensive sport that demands technical agility and continuous, rapid invention. And McLaren has perfected telemetry systems, which use data generated by race car sensors, so much so that it is the official electronics system for all Formula 1 teams as well IndyCar and NASCAR series. SAP HANA will help turbo-charge both the speed and depth of McLaren’s telemetry technology allowing the teams to look at much larger data sets and ask more complex questions. This real-time analysis of car sensor data can be run against both historical data and predictive models, helping the team to make immediate proactive corrections, avoid costly, dangerous incidents and win the race. With instant analysis of what is happening to the car while the race is on, the driver and engineers can work together to ensure a winning result.

“At McLaren we’re accustomed to handling ‘big data,’” continued Dennis. “On every lap of every Grand Prix, practice or test session, our Formula 1 cars generate vast quantities of performance data. Our ability to process that data and act on it rapidly is crucial to creating the kind of prescriptive intelligence that enables us to transform the outcome of races. And that need resonates through every other facet of our business.”

As McLaren diversifies its business, its electronic systems — including telemetry, modeling and real-time simulations — are being used widely in other areas, such as to help Olympic athletes hone their performance and in rapid transit systems in the U.S. to optimize traffic flow. The company plans to use SAP innovations to augment the competitive advantage it provides across these various areas.

“Transforming information into intelligence in real time is a cornerstone for McLaren’s winning formula – and increasingly critical for the future of every company,” said Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-CEO, SAP AG.” With SAP HANA, mobile and the complete SAP portfolio underpinning its business, McLaren can now bring increased intelligence across the full spectrum of its business operations. SAP will be able to help McLaren better anticipate, accelerate and differentiate its business — keeping them very much in the driver’s seat. In short, working together, SAP will help McLaren run like never before.”

For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom.

SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Note to Editors:
Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

For more information, press only:
Robin Meyerhoff, +1 (650) 440-2572, robin.meyerhoff@sap.com, PDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com

During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

SAP Customers Embrace Breakthrough Technologies for Innovation, Growth and More Powerful Business Models

 Newsbyte  Comments Off
May 142012
 

ORLANDO — The SAPPHIRE NOW conference from Orlando kicked off today with 60,000 customers, partners and employees of SAP  gathering in person and online to understand how profound new technologies are reshaping companies, industries and the way people live and work. On the opening day, SAP customers, including Coinstar, Inc., Burberry and Ace Hardware, demonstrated how forces shaping today’s IT landscape — big data, cloud and mobile — are helping them keep pace with rapidly changing customer needs and buying behavior. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012.

Today’s businesses operate in a digital economy where information is vast, interconnected and automated. Companies must continuously transform their business models to remain competitive in a world with rapidly changing global economic conditions and events.

“When I talk to CEOs, I hear three big problems consistently, across all industries: How can we innovate better? How do we grow profitably? How do we transform our business models?” said Bill McDermott, co-CEO, SAP AG. “Businesses today must must be serial innovators and move in almost surreal time to anticipate the needs of customers and deliver an incredible and personal customer experience.”

Top Executives Share Success Stories at SAPPHIRE NOW
Top executives from Ace, Burberry and Coinstar are participating in a keynote panel discussion with McDermott on Monday, May 14, at 4:30 p.m. EDT. Representatives joining McDermott on stage at SAPPHIRE NOW include Ray Griffith, CEO of Ace Hardware; Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry; and J. Scott Di Valerio, chief financial officer of Coinstar, Inc. The panel will be broadcast via the virtual platform at www.sapphirenow.com, with a replay available following the session.

Solving Retail Problems With SAP Solutions
Embracing technology has helped Burberry, the iconic British luxury brand, to build a “young, old” company that combines a 156-year heritage with a modern attitude. Once a federation of businesses, Burberry today is one globally SAP-connected organization, with full visibility across its retail network and a pure, consistent brand worldwide. From concept to customer, every part of the business and culture has been touched and transformed by technology, enabling greater responsiveness, deeper engagement and compelling customer experiences that blur the boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds. Burberry has used solutions from the SAP for Retail solution portfolio and other industry-specific solutions from SAP for business-critical functions in the fashion world that include optimizing supply chain logistics, customer segmentation, spotting hot items and driving down stock inventory.

Coinstar, Inc., a leader in automated retail, was faced with a positive yet challenging problem: outdated legacy systems supporting its growing core businesses and promising new ventures. It needed a way to identify synergies and share information to enable the company to continue providing its simple and convenient solutions to a growing number of consumers. Coinstar tackled the problem by revamping its IT infrastructure, retiring legacy systems and adopting a shared-services environment. The company divested under-performing ventures and used that capital to reinvest in its core businesses, Redbox® movie rental and Coinstar® coin-counting kiosks as well as new automated retail concepts. Today, Coinstar is a large enterprise with more than 50,000 kiosks in the market and annual revenue of approximately US$2 billion.

Similarly, Ace Hardware was at risk to the “big box” retailers. Priding itself on being “the helpful place,” Ace understood that customers were becoming increasingly social. Consumers shared experiences – good or bad – with their friends and neighbors verbally and electronically. Ace wanted an enterprise that enabled small retailers to enjoy bulk-buying prices but maintain a local, personal feel. As a prime user of SAP solutions for supply chain management and with SAP Rapid Deployment solutions, Ace has been able to rapidly enable business processes, gain real-time data and distribution for quick reaction to global changes and develop specialized merchandizing capabilities. Ace used its data to understand demographics, and for visibility into things such as seasonal buying trends. Using mobile connectivity, personalization and buyer insight, the company not only maintained profitability, it remained a vital part of the community.

For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom.

SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Note to Editors:
Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

For more information, press only:
Andy Kendzie, +1 (202) 312-3919, andy.kendzie@sap.com, EDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com

During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

Virtual SAPPHIRE NOW 2012

 Corporate Topics, News  No Responses »
May 112012
 

Watch SAPPHIRE NOW keynotes and customer-sessions Live on May 14-17.

SAP KEYNOTES: SAP executives share their vision for using SAP solutions to transform your business and run like never before. Log on to watch our keynote broadcasts online from Orlando, Florida.

  • Monday, May 14, 4:30 p.m.–6:00 p.m. EDT — SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott
  • Tuesday, May 15, 8:30 a.m.–10:30 a.m. EDT – SAP co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe and Lars Dalgaard, member of SAP Executive Board
  • Wednesday, May 16, 8:00 a.m.–10:30 a.m. EDT — Prof. Dr. h.c. Hasso Plattner, Chairman of the SAP Supervisory Board, and Vishal Sikka, member of SAP Executive Board, Technology and Innovation

Press Virtual Activites:

  • Tuesday, May 15, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.  EDT — Co-CEO Q&A with Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe
  • Wednesday, May 16, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.  EDT — Executive Q&A with Vishal Sikka, member of SAP Executive Board, Technology and Innovation

View SAPPHIRE NOW From Orlando Online

You can also watch live events – such as campus keynote speeches and customer-driven sessions – streamed live from the SAPPHIRE NOW broadcast centers and campus theaters. Share your favorite sessions with colleagues, view the most popular discussions from Orlando, or watch especially valuable presentations again, all at your convenience. All sessions broadcast online (except microforum, demo stations and discussion tables) will be available as replays – most within 24 hours. You can even build a playlist for replays.

Please register in advance to access the online platform for SAPPHIRE NOW from Orlando. If you are attending the event in Orlando, use your SAPPHIRE NOW registration name and password to access the online assets. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com.

Kerry Group Transforms Its Global Procurement Group in Weeks With SAP Sourcing OnDemand Solution

 Newsbyte, On Demand, SME  Comments Off
May 012012
 

TRALEE, Ireland —  Companies seeking a more strategic and cost-effective approach to procurement are realizing close to instant value with the SAP Sourcing OnDemand solution from SAP. Based in Ireland, Kerry Group is a EUR 5 billion world leader in food ingredients and flavors serving the food and beverage industry, and a leading supplier of added value brands and customer-branded foods to the Irish and UK markets. An existing SAP ERP application customer since 2010, Kerry Group realized almost immediate value with SAP Sourcing OnDemand, given the implementation time of less than four weeks.

“What we needed was an intuitive sourcing system that would be completely integrated with our SAP back-office for an end-to-end procurement process,” said Peter Fotios, director of e-procurement Services, Kerry Group. “SAP Sourcing OnDemand gave us the strong sourcing functionality to capture the end-to-end negotiation cycle with our suppliers, as well as the added benefit of being up and running in weeks, not months. We rolled it out smoothly in Ireland first, then England and then throughout our global operations in 23 countries.”

New Wave of SAP Sourcing OnDemand Provides Standard Integration With SAP SRM
The latest wave of SAP Sourcing OnDemand, released in the first quarter of 2012, delivers on standard integration with the SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SAP SRM) application, building on existing integration with SAP ERP, to help enable greater compliance and realized savings for customers. Designed with the sourcing professional in mind, the most recent release offers customers the opportunity for greater cost savings through enhanced strategic sourcing and contract management — two areas integral to helping lower customers’ overall business costs.

“Visionary procurement organizations such as Kerry Group are driving real cost-savings through sophisticated sourcing and superior contract and supplier management,” said Kevin Nix, executive vice president, Line-of-Business Cloud Solutions, SAP. “SAP Sourcing OnDemand is a proven and easy-to-use cloud solution that is helping our customers take full advantage of their existing ERP and SRM investments without having to wait to see a return.”

To learn more about SAP Sourcing OnDemand, visit www.sap.com/sourcingondemand. For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews and @SAPCloud.

Next Major Event: SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. To be held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Media Contacts:
Dorit Shackleton, SAP, +1 (604) 889-7841, dorit.shackleton@sap.com, PDT
Torrey Fazen, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (617) 912-5401, torrey.fazen@bm.com, EDT

SAP to Work Closely With Citi and The Royal Bank of Scotland to Co-Innovate a Cloud-Based Services Platform

 Newsbyte, On Demand  Comments Off
Apr 192012
 

WALLDORF — SAP today announced that it will work closely with Citi and The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to co-innovate a cloud-based services platform. The highly interoperable, multi-bank platform aims to seamlessly integrate banks with their corporate customers. A combination of SAP’s deep expertise in enterprise resource planning (ERP), treasury management software and new cloud services technologies is driving the solution development. Together with the industry expertise and global networks of Citi and RBS, SAP aims to deliver a new, innovative solution to the corporate banking marketplace.

“SAP has prided itself in customer-centric innovation, in this case creative innovations in banking that can increase the velocity of information flow between banks and their corporate customers,” said Sanjay Poonen, president, Global Solutions, SAP. “Integrating banks with corporate ERP and treasury systems has always been an expensive proposition for banks and corporations alike. Furthering SAP’s commitment to the cloud, the banking industry and our many thousands of corporate customers, this solution will dramatically ease corporate banking. This will allow corporate customers to seamlessly extend their ERP and treasury systems and interface with multiple banks.”

Due to size, complexity and a reliance on non-standardized legacy systems, banking architectures have historically been isolated entities unique to each bank. This has led to businesses and banks shouldering the burdens of higher connectivity costs and juggling multiple relationships with one another. SAP, Citi and RBS have tasked themselves to define a new, more flexible architectural model that reduces the cost and time-to-value of these interactions.

SAP is taking the lead in developing the solution, which is intended to more closely link banks’ transaction systems with the ERP and treasury systems at corporate businesses. This aims to help streamline financial transactions, such as payments, while enabling new, on-demand banking services to be delivered via the cloud.

“We are working toward a solution with SAP to remove integration barriers and facilitate greater connectivity to Citi’s global network of more than 90 countries and over 100 currencies,” said Naveed Sultan, global head, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi. “As a leading international bank, it is always Citi’s desire to bring new innovations to the forefront of the industry. Leveraging the cloud is one effort in Citi’s goal to be the world’s ‘Digital Bank.’ Through our pioneering work here, we hope to bring banks and businesses closer together and create a springboard to new innovations and value creation in the future.”

“The cloud-based corporate-to-bank initiative is an important step for corporate customers toward simplifying the complexity of connecting with their banks,” said Kevin Brown, global head, Transaction Services Product, International Banking, RBS.

For more information, visit the SAP blog Banking View and the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews and @sapforbanking.

Media Contacts:
Johannes Gillar, SAP, +49 (6227) 747177, johannes.gillar@sap.com, CET
Anthony Suarez, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (212) 614-4331, anthony.suarez@bm.com, EDT
Nina Das, Citi, +1 (212) 816-9267, nina.das@citi.com, EDT
Aoife Reynolds, RBS, +44 20 3361 1588, aoife.reynolds@rbs.com, GMT

New Executive Hire Sameer Patel to Advance Social Enterprise Strategy at SAP

 Newsbyte  Comments Off
Mar 132012
 

This week, we took another important step in accelerating our social enterprise strategy with the hiring of social computing and technology expert Sameer Patel as global vice president, Enterprise Social Software. Sameer will lead the solutions and go-to-market for collaboration and social software from SAP.

As companies that use social technologies are more likely to be market leaders(1) and ‘improving collaboration’ is a top 10 priority for 2012 for CIOs(2),  SAP is committed to enabling companies to reap the results of social technologies to drive their businesses ahead. I am pleased that Sameer will be joining us to deliver on our vision.

SAP has recognized and invested in the power of collaborative technologies for more than a decade, starting with SAP Enterprise Portal in 2001. Since then, we’ve added many key social advancements to our strategy including SAP StreamWork, Crossgate, SAP Sales OnDemand, our recent acquisition of SucessFactors Jam social technology and more. Today, more than 25,000 companies of all sizes use SAP social and collaborative solutions.

Our commitment to social and collaborative technologies is key to our company’s success and to the success of our customers. My boss, Sanjay Poonen, has passionately shared that collaboration, combined with our SAP HANA, in-memory technology, core applications, mobile solutions and analytics capabilities provides the most comprehensive approach in the industry to ensure our customers can drive the best results in an ever-changing, hyper-competitive environment.

Sameer joins us from The Sovos Group, a consulting and execution planning firm working with leading organizations to accelerate employee, customer and partner performance through the use of social and collaboration technology. Sameer was a fellow partner at Sovos where he led engagements for Fortune 500 companies such as Intel, Nike and McKesson to design business transformations via the use of social computing constructs and technology. Prior to The Sovos Group, Sameer held positions as managing director of Span and director of Strategy and Business Development at LiquidThinking and marchFIRST. Those of you entrenched in the enterprise social media arena are probably familiar with Sameer; others may want to get acquainted through his Pretzel Logic blog. We are looking forward to tapping into Sameer’s experience. Stay tuned for a future blog post from Sameer on his vision and plan for SAP’s social strategy.

John Schweitzer is senior vice president and general manager of Analytics for SAP.

Sources:

  1. McKinsey Quarterly, The Rise of the Networked Enterprise: Web 2.0 finds its payday
  2. InformationWeek, October 2011

SAP and SuccessFactors Accelerate Unified Product Direction

 Business Suite, Corporate Topics, Newsbyte, SME  Comments Off
Feb 222012
 

SAP and SuccessFactors, an SAP company, today announced their unified product direction for human capital management solutions. The combined portfolio will provide end-to-end integrated solutions to help with some of the biggest challenges that business leaders around the world are facing across all lines of business: managing their talent to top performance and turning their strategies into actions and results. Read the press release.

SAP to Accelerate Cloud Strategy With Acquisition of SuccessFactors

 Analytics, Newsbyte  Comments Off
Dec 032011
 

SAP and SuccessFactors today announced that SAP America., Inc. has entered into a definitive merger agreement with SuccessFactors, the market-leading provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solutions. The combination of SAP and SuccessFactors will establish an advanced end-to-end offering of cloud and on-premise solutions for managing all relevant business processes. Read the press release.

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