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SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced added innovations to its SAP® Business All-in-One fast-start program by more broadly deploying its innovative solution configurator-an online tool for midsize companies to easily configure SAP® Business All-in-One solutions targeted to their particular needs and to better control their IT investment needs based on cost estimates that are instantly provided. Midsize customers get further value from the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program from an additional configurator tool that allows them to configure customer relationship management (CRM) functionality online. In addition, the solution configurator will be made available for partners participating in the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program to deploy on their Web sites. They can then showcase SAP offerings and their own industry-specific solutions. Hence customers receive more functionality to choose from and receive immediate cost estimates, while partners can more efficiently reach their target markets. The announcement was made at CeBIT 2009, the world's leading information technology show, being held March 3-8 in Hannover, Germany.
The solution configurators have proven to be successful and are widely used by over 2,600 midsize companies in manufacturing, services, and trade industries in 47 countries. In four easy steps, a company can input its industry-specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) needs, resulting in a solution blueprint and cost estimate that includes costs for software licenses, implementation services, and hardware components optimized to run SAP Business All-in-One.
"As a new and growing company, we knew we needed an ERP solution, but because we were young and operating in new territory, our business IT requirements were not fully determined upfront," said Paul Minjauw, CFO of Enfinity, a Belgian renewable energy producer. "The solution configurator from SAP gave us the comfort to navigate through the SAP Business All-in-One solutions with ease, and because of the configurator's vast amount of information, we were able to document our needs and receive a listing of recommended business scenarios. We ended up purchasing the majority of the scenarios recommended because they mapped directly to our needs. In the end, with confidence, we were able to speed up our solution selection process, and we would recommend this to other midsize companies."
Through the introduction of a CRM solution configurator, SAP provides midsize companies with an easy method to evaluate their CRM needs and receive a cost estimate immediately. The configurator is already live in Germany and will be made available globally throughout 2009. Providing a configurator to easily configure a customer's CRM needs is just another step that SAP is taking to accommodate the demand from its midsize customers to have a strong customer relations offering at an affordable price. Functionality from the SAP® CRM application has been integrated into the SAP Business All-in-One solution (see May 19, 2008 press release, titled "SAP Empowers Midsize Companies to Deliver Superior Customer Value"). Nearly 100 SAP Business All-in-One customers have already selected this CRM functionality to focus on their customers, drive their business for growth, and enhance their competitiveness. SAP will be showcasing the CRM solution configurator at its booth in Hall 4, booth D12 at the CeBIT conference.
SAP will expand the reach of its SAP Business All-in-One solution configurator by enabling partners taking part in the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program to offer their own solution configurator incorporating the best practices-based SAP solutions, giving customers the opportunity to directly choose their system integrator. Three partners have piloted a test implementation of their own solution configurator tools: Seidor, in the U.K.; cormeta, in Germany; and itelligence, in the U.S.; all of which are SAP partners participating in the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program will be enabled by SAP to leverage the tool throughout 2009. Cormeta and itelligence will both present respective showcases of their solution configurators at CeBIT.
"We have qualified for the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program early on, and have since received leads from SAP that have been created via the solution configurator," said Holger Behrens, member of the Board, cormeta. "We believe that SAP's decision to open the tool to partners will give us great opportunities to offer our own industry-specific solutions to their full extent and will provide a great way to reach new potential customers."
The solution configurator is part of the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program. This program focuses on putting midsize companies in the manufacturing, services, and trade industries on a fast track to the adoption of industry-specific business software and optimized hardware from both SAP and its strategic hardware partners. The solution configurator is designed to capture the essence of the fast-start program by enabling companies to quickly evaluate their solution needs and automatically get in contact with local qualified partners with the corresponding industry expertise, who will manage the implementation and customer support.
"The SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program is one example of how SAP is rapidly innovating and bringing affordable, predictable solutions that can be implemented with minimal business disruption and deliver a fast time to value," said Robert Vetter, senior vice president SME global business development and SAP Business All-in-One Go-to-market, SAP AG. "The solution configurators come at a time when midsize companies need to be more agile than ever and get closer to their customers in order to understand and quickly react to their demands. The configurators will reduce evaluation times and will help define the comprehensive, integrated, and targeted capabilities available in SAP Business All-in-One."
About SAP® Solutions for Small Businesses and Midsize Companies
With more than 64,000 small and midsize customers worldwide, SAP is a leading provider of business applications and an established and highly successful player in the small and midsize enterprise (SME) market. SAP offers a broad and innovative solution portfolio for small businesses and midsize companies to meet the heterogeneous demands of SME customers. SAP solutions for small businesses and midsize companies include SAP® Business One, a single integrated application for successfully managing small businesses; SAP® Business ByDesign(TM) , the software industry's most complete, integrated and adaptable on-demand solution for midsize companies; and SAP® Business All-in-One, a customizable and extensible solution for midsize companies with deep industry best practices built in. Sold, implemented and maintained through SAP and an expanding network of qualified partners, all of the solutions are competitively priced, easy and quick to implement and scalable to customers' growing business needs. The SAP solutions specifically designed for SMEs help enable small businesses and midsize companies to lower operating costs, improve operational excellence, gain better business insight and control, and grow their businesses flexibly. Additional information is available at www.sap.com/solutions/sme
About SAP® Business All-in-One
SAP® Business All-in-One solutions are comprehensive, highly configurable and extensible on-premise business solutions with industry best practices built in. Optimized to meet the business and IT resource challenges of midsize companies in their respective industries, SAP Business All-in-One is built on a proven foundation of SAP software and technology, enabling midsize companies to flexibly adapt and extend SAP Business All-in-One solutions to meet the unique and changing needs of customers. SAP Business All-in-One solutions are deployed and supported by both SAP and a network of 1,100 experienced SAP partners in more than 50 countries, delivering more than 660 microvertical solutions. SAP Business All-in-One solutions come with all the deployment tools and methodologies that partners need to deliver fast, predictable implementation with low risk, low cost and rapid time to value. About 13,500 customers around the globe use SAP Business All-in-One to optimize business processes and take full advantage of their growth potential. Additional information is available at www.sap.com/....
(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning and related applications.
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should" and "will" and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
Copyright © 2009 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serve informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary.
The solution configurators have proven to be successful and are widely used by over 2,600 midsize companies in manufacturing, services, and trade industries in 47 countries. In four easy steps, a company can input its industry-specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) needs, resulting in a solution blueprint and cost estimate that includes costs for software licenses, implementation services, and hardware components optimized to run SAP Business All-in-One.
"As a new and growing company, we knew we needed an ERP solution, but because we were young and operating in new territory, our business IT requirements were not fully determined upfront," said Paul Minjauw, CFO of Enfinity, a Belgian renewable energy producer. "The solution configurator from SAP gave us the comfort to navigate through the SAP Business All-in-One solutions with ease, and because of the configurator's vast amount of information, we were able to document our needs and receive a listing of recommended business scenarios. We ended up purchasing the majority of the scenarios recommended because they mapped directly to our needs. In the end, with confidence, we were able to speed up our solution selection process, and we would recommend this to other midsize companies."
Through the introduction of a CRM solution configurator, SAP provides midsize companies with an easy method to evaluate their CRM needs and receive a cost estimate immediately. The configurator is already live in Germany and will be made available globally throughout 2009. Providing a configurator to easily configure a customer's CRM needs is just another step that SAP is taking to accommodate the demand from its midsize customers to have a strong customer relations offering at an affordable price. Functionality from the SAP® CRM application has been integrated into the SAP Business All-in-One solution (see May 19, 2008 press release, titled "SAP Empowers Midsize Companies to Deliver Superior Customer Value"). Nearly 100 SAP Business All-in-One customers have already selected this CRM functionality to focus on their customers, drive their business for growth, and enhance their competitiveness. SAP will be showcasing the CRM solution configurator at its booth in Hall 4, booth D12 at the CeBIT conference.
SAP will expand the reach of its SAP Business All-in-One solution configurator by enabling partners taking part in the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program to offer their own solution configurator incorporating the best practices-based SAP solutions, giving customers the opportunity to directly choose their system integrator. Three partners have piloted a test implementation of their own solution configurator tools: Seidor, in the U.K.; cormeta, in Germany; and itelligence, in the U.S.; all of which are SAP partners participating in the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program will be enabled by SAP to leverage the tool throughout 2009. Cormeta and itelligence will both present respective showcases of their solution configurators at CeBIT.
"We have qualified for the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program early on, and have since received leads from SAP that have been created via the solution configurator," said Holger Behrens, member of the Board, cormeta. "We believe that SAP's decision to open the tool to partners will give us great opportunities to offer our own industry-specific solutions to their full extent and will provide a great way to reach new potential customers."
The solution configurator is part of the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program. This program focuses on putting midsize companies in the manufacturing, services, and trade industries on a fast track to the adoption of industry-specific business software and optimized hardware from both SAP and its strategic hardware partners. The solution configurator is designed to capture the essence of the fast-start program by enabling companies to quickly evaluate their solution needs and automatically get in contact with local qualified partners with the corresponding industry expertise, who will manage the implementation and customer support.
"The SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program is one example of how SAP is rapidly innovating and bringing affordable, predictable solutions that can be implemented with minimal business disruption and deliver a fast time to value," said Robert Vetter, senior vice president SME global business development and SAP Business All-in-One Go-to-market, SAP AG. "The solution configurators come at a time when midsize companies need to be more agile than ever and get closer to their customers in order to understand and quickly react to their demands. The configurators will reduce evaluation times and will help define the comprehensive, integrated, and targeted capabilities available in SAP Business All-in-One."
About SAP® Solutions for Small Businesses and Midsize Companies
With more than 64,000 small and midsize customers worldwide, SAP is a leading provider of business applications and an established and highly successful player in the small and midsize enterprise (SME) market. SAP offers a broad and innovative solution portfolio for small businesses and midsize companies to meet the heterogeneous demands of SME customers. SAP solutions for small businesses and midsize companies include SAP® Business One, a single integrated application for successfully managing small businesses; SAP® Business ByDesign(TM) , the software industry's most complete, integrated and adaptable on-demand solution for midsize companies; and SAP® Business All-in-One, a customizable and extensible solution for midsize companies with deep industry best practices built in. Sold, implemented and maintained through SAP and an expanding network of qualified partners, all of the solutions are competitively priced, easy and quick to implement and scalable to customers' growing business needs. The SAP solutions specifically designed for SMEs help enable small businesses and midsize companies to lower operating costs, improve operational excellence, gain better business insight and control, and grow their businesses flexibly. Additional information is available at www.sap.com/solutions/sme
About SAP® Business All-in-One
SAP® Business All-in-One solutions are comprehensive, highly configurable and extensible on-premise business solutions with industry best practices built in. Optimized to meet the business and IT resource challenges of midsize companies in their respective industries, SAP Business All-in-One is built on a proven foundation of SAP software and technology, enabling midsize companies to flexibly adapt and extend SAP Business All-in-One solutions to meet the unique and changing needs of customers. SAP Business All-in-One solutions are deployed and supported by both SAP and a network of 1,100 experienced SAP partners in more than 50 countries, delivering more than 660 microvertical solutions. SAP Business All-in-One solutions come with all the deployment tools and methodologies that partners need to deliver fast, predictable implementation with low risk, low cost and rapid time to value. About 13,500 customers around the globe use SAP Business All-in-One to optimize business processes and take full advantage of their growth potential. Additional information is available at www.sap.com/....
(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning and related applications.
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should" and "will" and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
Copyright © 2009 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serve informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary.
