SAP and itelligence Deliver Greater Value and Innovation for Midsize Companies

SUN CITY, South Africa, Nov. 9, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that itelligence AG has signed a global value-added reseller (VAR) agreement, a program that transforms high-growth partners from local resellers into managed, global partners. The goal of the global VAR program is to provide customers with greater value through close collaboration of SAP and itelligence. The announcement was made at the SAP® World Tour 2010, the global road show that takes place in more than 80 cities in over 50 countries and is being held in Sun City, South Africa, November 7–10, 2010.

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20050310/SFTH009LOGO-a)

(Logo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050310/SFTH009LOGO-a)

Global VARs: SAP's Overachievers

VARs sell SAP® software licenses in the midmarket and constitute a key pillar in the SAP go-to-market strategy in this segment as they expand standard SAP solutions for industries and their distinct sub-segments. Alongside extensive programming expertise and up-to-date knowledge of SAP solutions, VARs offer a profound knowledge of micro-vertical industries, which enables them to optimize highly specialized industry solutions.

The global VAR program is highly selective via invitation through SAP management only, and is targeted at partner candidates that must comply with certain program entry requirements, such as geographic coverage, reseller and services practice coverage, as well as specifically defined revenue achievements for the SAP® Business All-in-One solution. The program demonstrates another way that SAP is supporting and enabling its partners to overachieve in their business.

Understanding Midsize Companies

With more than 20 years of SAP experience  and more than 3,000 SAP customers in the midmarket worldwide, itelligence meets customers' diverse requirements with its customized SAP Business All-in-One solutions across 14 industries. Accompanying SAP's own growth serving small businesses and midsize enterprises (SMEs), itelligence has grown from an organization of 10 employees in 1989 to its current presence of about 1,800 colleagues in 19 countries. As a trusted advisor for SMEs, the company's success is derived from its understanding of customer needs for easily adoptable business applications that comprise preconfigured, industry-specific best practices with flexible payment options. itelligence continues to be a key partner in the SAP® PartnerEdge™ program — as an SAP global services partner and an SAP channel partner. In addition, itelligence is an SAP global hosting partner as well as an SAP-certified provider of application management services.

Meeting all criteria to merit its status as a global VAR, itelligence demonstrates in-depth knowledge and successful products in a range of different markets. The company successfully operates as a VAR at a supra-regional level in several countries. It also meets the global VAR program's quarterly requirements for jointly assessing resources, strategy, support and partnership alignment.

"Achieving global VAR status clearly emphasizes our unique selling point as a global partner of SAP for SMEs," said Uwe Bohnhorst, COO, itelligence AG. "It shows that we offer a uniform standard worldwide. Our customers can rely on this, and will benefit from the very close collaboration the new global status shows. I'm very proud that we will be an SAP gold partner in every country in which itelligence complies with the global VAR requirements and subsequently joins the program."

Successful Customers in More Than 19 Countries Across 14 Industries

By demonstrating clear understanding of the business needs of companies across diverse, rapidly changing industries, itelligence practices effective collaboration with customers to fulfill their most critical business goals. Customers such as Armacell GmbH, Cintas Corporation, COMET Group and David Brown Gear Systems Limited have grown their businesses internationally with itelligence.

Armacell GmbH, a global leader in engineered foams based in Germany, has 20 manufacturing facilities in over 13 countries. The time of the international rollouts of it.chemicals – the SAP Business All-in-One solution for the chemical industry – in China, France, Germany, India, Spain and Switzerland has accelerated by 30 percent. Therefore, Armacell benefitted directly from the close cooperation and subsequent knowledge transfer between SAP and itelligence. In addition, the greater transparency gained through the close collaboration improved the decision-making process across international subsidiaries.

"We have selected the industry-specific SAP Business All-in-One solution with itelligence as our service provider," said Rigobert Kuhrmann, CIO, Armacell GmbH. "We decided on itelligence because it was capable of offering the SAP expertise required by us, including high-quality standards across language and country borders. We are a global company with deep industry know-how running an SAP solution; these are standards itelligence also meets."

Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, Cintas Corporation provides highly specialized services to businesses of all types. Cintas designs, manufactures and implements corporate identity uniform programs, and provides document management, fire protection, first aid and safety products. In 2009, the U.S.-based company selected itelligence's hosting services in order to flexibly support company growth, quickly respond to business landscape changes and always meet their customers' expectations.

"itelligence Outsourcing provides a distinct edge — services regardless of our locations, a large team of reliable, deeply skilled SAP experts and technical SAP services and support for all modules, operating systems and databases," said Tom Thornley, vice president and CIO, Cintas Corporation. "This enables us to maximize our IT resources and clearly focus on our core competencies."

Swiss-based COMET Group, one of the world's leading provider of systems, components and services for non-destructive testing, security and semiconductors, has implemented it.manufacturing, the SAP Business All-in-One solution from itelligence for the discrete manufacturing industry, as well as the SAP® Product Lifecycle Management (SAP PLM) application. Implementation began in Switzerland and was successively rolled out in Germany, Denmark and the U.S. The rollout in China is intended to begin soon.

After COMET acquired x-ray system manufacturer YXLON in 2007, a worldwide restructuring on the process as well as organizational level was necessary to secure an integrated system landscape to help enable seamless information exchange and international collaboration. In addition, COMET benefits from more transparency in finance and controlling and one consolidated data pool that provides role-based information, as well as standardized processes and improved process efficiency.

"As a globally successful company, we value itelligence as a partner that is no stranger to internationality," said Christian Schulthess, head of SAP CC, COMET Group. "Over the years, itelligence has proved that it thinks and operates internationally – always with the customer's requirements in mind. The fact that SAP has included itelligence in its global VAR program vindicates our confidence in itelligence. As a result of the close cooperation of itelligence and SAP, we will also benefit from firsthand information such as new product strategies, release updates and new technologies."

David Brown Gear Systems Limited is a UK-based manufacturer of gearing products and services that has been providing engineering expertise to a range of industries worldwide for nearly 150 years. David Brown expanded to China and realized that the company needed to accelerate the access to its financial data as well as to its production status in order to quickly react to market changes.

The customer selected the modules financials and controlling (FI/CO), materials management (MM), production planning (PP) and sales and distribution (SD) of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application SAP® ERP in order to gain immediate, holistic insight across its entire organization in the UK and its Chinese joint venture. The system has been set productive recently. Today it provides David Brown with consolidated information the company needs to improve the decision-making process and to smoothly run its operations in China.

"We appreciate the global strength of our SAP solution, implemented and supported by itelligence, as we complete our first system roll-out in China," said Andrew Stevenson, director, Global Supply Chain, David Brown Gear Systems Limited.

"SAP is a 'partner-first' company," said Pat Hume, senior vice president, Global SME Indirect Channel, SAP. "Our goal is to support and develop all of our partners into high-growth and successful businesses. Having achieved exceptional growth in the past few years, itelligence clearly underscores our partner-first tenet. The company has demonstrated a profound commitment to SAP through investment and local engagement with our support and enablement programs."

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 105,000 customers in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol "SAP." For more information, visit www.sap.com.  

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, 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 © 2010 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.

Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

SOURCE SAP AG