New Round of Enhancements Leads SAP® Business Suite Software Innovation Strategy

WALLDORF, Germany, Nov. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Keeping to its pledge to deliver greater innovation without disruption, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced new enhancement packages for SAP® Business Suite software. The innovations span various lines of business and industries and will deliver enhancements to solutions developed to keep customers competitive in the global marketplace. In early October, SAP announced its plans for the accelerated delivery of business and technology innovations for SAP Business Suite along a clear road map. Customers are offered the choice as to which innovative updates they would like to implement, at what time and via a simplified process that minimizes disruption to the business.

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Line-of-Business Developments Improve Operations

Solution innovations for lines of business serve to help customers run their own operations as efficiently as possible — from managing supplier relationships to determining the best possible procurement strategy for various products. Line-of-business innovations for SAP Business Suite enable a company to grow its core processes without slowdown or disruption, helping ensure that the most cutting-edge technology is in use at all times.

Increased commodity price volatility has a high impact on a company's profit margins and results in a growing need to closely manage business risks and comply with government regulations. These are critical drivers that make commodity management a key business priority for all industries utilizing commodities in core business operations. The SAP® Commodity Risk Management application is planned to enable companies to accurately identify and measure their commodity price and currency exposure and take the appropriate steps to mitigate these risks. The SAP® Commodity Procurement application is planned to enable customers to manage the end-to-end process of buying commodities and integrate tightly with quality management, financial settlement and, notably, SAP Commodity Risk Management. The SAP® Commodity Sales application is planned to enable companies to capture commodity contracts with commodity price definitions based on market quotes, and streamline the invoicing process by enabling automated provisional, differential and final invoicing. Commodity management applications from SAP are planned to be enterprise-service enabled to integrate third-party solutions.

A smart supply chain allows customers to efficiently manage fluctuating demand and high product complexity across a globally distributed supply network. In the area of manufacturing network planning and execution, an update to the SAP® Response Management application by ICON-SCM is planned to allow customers to react to demand and supply changes in a matter of minutes, coordinating planning across internal manufacturing and outsourced manufacturing, while reducing lead times, improving service and lowering inventories.

While procurement departments focus on saving money, they are also tasked with managing supplier relationships, contributing to top-line growth and aligning sourcing programs with corporate goals. New capabilities within SAP Business Suite support these ever-growing requirements. The planned SAP® Supplier Lifecycle Management application aims to provide companies the ability to manage supplier information, sustainability criteria and performance data in a single hub, which can be distributed to various SAP backends and other systems to help ensure consistency. Among its many new features, enhancement package 2 for the SAP® Supplier Relationship Management application 7.0 is planned to include updates for sustainable procurement, featuring sustainability information in the catalog for use while shopping so employees can make informed buying choices.

Effective product development is a prerequisite for profitable growth and requires the management of product data, engineering changes and overall costs in an integrated way. Within SAP ERP, planned integrated product development for discrete industries functionality, embedded for the entire product life cycle, is intended to help reduce time to profit and increase revenue contribution through new and enhanced products. Integrated product development for process industries functionality aims to meet challenges in change management processes by delivering one synchronized product structure among development, manufacturing and service.

Industries Grow the Core With Solution Innovations

In a volatile economy, tools that deliver the best practices possible are necessary to make an impact during challenging times. Industry innovation updates to SAP Business Suite help customers in multiple industries to keep competitive on their own terms, improving their processes without facing jarring disruptions.

Within the banking industry, the SAP® Leasing for Banking package aims to automate and integrate lease contract management and accounting to streamline operations end-to-end, as well as help increase revenues with value-adding services.

For utilities companies running SAP® Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) for Utilities software, smart meter data management and operations functionality is intended to automate and streamline end-to-end processes, helping to increase transparency and deliver more timely information on energy usage. Integrated sales management functionality for SAP AMI for Utilities and the SAP® Customer Relationship Management and Billing for Utilities package aims to describe the required processes for energy retailers and utilities to define and sell energy while at the same time helping ensure regulatory compliance.

"SAP is making a distinct effort to ensure that our customers receive the highest quality enhancements to their SAP systems in the simplest way possible," said Peter Kuerpick, executive vice president, Application Strategic Innovation, SAP AG. "With this group of new and enhanced solutions, we are pleased to deliver innovations across lines of business and industries that are both easy to consume and essential for best-run businesses."

For more information, visit the Industries newsroom.

Next Major Event: SAPPHIRE® NOW + SAP® TechEd Madrid

In 2011, SAP brings together its largest ecosystem education event series with its premier customer conference for a co-located event being held in Madrid, Spain, from November 8-10. 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, and can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. SAP® TechEd brings IT managers, software developers, administrators, and business process experts together for a look under the hood of today's business motors: the latest advances in in-memory and mobile technologies, and in on-premise, on-demand, and on-device applications from SAP and more. Follow on Twitter at @SAPTechEd and @SAPPHIRENOW, and join the conversation at #SAPTechEd and #SAPPHIRENOW. For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during the event, visit the Events newsroom

About SAP

As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 176,000 customers (includes customers from the acquisition of Sybase) to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

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