Frost & Sullivan Recognizes SAP for the Strong Value It Offers Contact Center Clients through SAP Business Communications Management Software

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 20, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the contact center systems market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes SAP with the 2012 North American Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Enhancement Award for the all-in-one functionality that SAP® Business Communications Management software offers. The value that SAP provides is in the integration of the contact center and communications functionality with the broader business software that SAP has been traditionally known for.

SAP Business Communications Management is natively integrated with the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application SAP ERP, and the SAP BusinessByDesign® solution, which means no additional software or hardware components are required. This integration allows existing SAP enterprise software customers—that often have a long-term investment in their business process software—to immediately see value through deployment of SAP Business Communications Management.

"SAP Business Communications Management provides SAP customers with maximum interoperability and enables employees inside and outside the contact center with the same features," said Frost & Sullivan Principal Analyst Customer Contact, Nancy Jamison. "Value is therefore provided to customers through end-to-end communication, collaboration, and business process automation, all without the complexity of different vendors' systems."

Being able to combine CRM and other business data with the communication structure allows companies to manage business processes more effectively in realtime and increase accuracy in those business processes with SAP Business Communications Management. So, while the competition is doing integrations with SAP software, SAP customers have end-to-end communications with native integration to SAP business software without any additional integration costs, making it a cost-effective solution for SAP customers.

"Since it is pre-integrated, SAP Business Communications Management reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) for customers by eliminating the complexity and cost of supporting, maintaining, and integrating different communications systems with contact center and business application software," explained Ms. Jamison. "In fact, our research reveals that SAP Business Communications Management customers utilizing SAP CRM can save, on average, 25 to 30 percent in costs over three to five years compared to other competing solutions, with greater savings seen in larger and more distributed contact centers. Product license costs are roughly comparable for smaller centers but are priced more competitively for larger, more complex configurations."

An additional success factor for SAP is that it provides multiple, flexible deployment options for customers, including rapid deployment. Whereas SAP Business Communications Management can be sold as a non-premise solution, SAP also offers hosted and hybrid deployment models that include support for public cloud, premises-based private cloud, and hosted private cloud, as well as a number of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) products, and integration middleware.

"Due to its all-software and all-IP-based product nature, SAP Business Communications Management is strongest in virtual contact center environments where contact center agents are physically distributed to multiple sites or regions, but are managed, monitored, and reported as one operation," noted Ms. Jamison. "This provides SAP customers with flexibility in designing or adding onto their contact center operations."

In short, SAP solutions are low cost and high value for its clients. In recognition of the breadth and depth of its solution offerings and demonstrated excellence in adding business value for its customers, SAP is the worthy recipient of the 2012 North America Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Enhancement Award in the contact center systems market.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in implementing strategies that proactively create value for its customers with a focus on improving the return on the investment that customers make in its services or products. The award recognizes the company's superior focus on enhancing the value that its customers receive, beyond simply good customer service, leading to improved customer retention and, ultimately, customer base expansion.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan