News Brief: West Central Cooperative Prepares for Growth With SAP

RALSTON, Iowa, March 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- As the recession eases, 2010 offers opportunities for growth in the agricultural industry. To capitalize on this prospect, many companies are looking to identify ways to make their business processes more flexible and adaptable to change. SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that West Central Cooperative, the 15th largest grain company in North America, has selected SAP® software to assist in better aligning business processes with overall company objectives, evolve with changing business requirements and scale for future growth. The grain and soybean processing cooperative will deploy SAP® Business Suite 7 software for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) to streamline internal and customer-facing processes across its nationwide and international operations. Aimed at improving productivity and efficiency while also reducing overall costs, the SAP solutions will automate business processes that are currently being performed through the company's legacy system.

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"In a cooperative marketplace marked by fast-paced, daily national and international business transactions, we must continually respond more quickly to customer demands and market changes," said Chris Coen, executive vice president of administration and chief information officer at West Central. "SAP is providing us with a holistic solution that will allow us to become more dynamic and effective so that we can continually adjust to meet the needs of our members and customers while growing our business. The SAP team of professionals understood our business and demonstrated how we could take full advantage of the software's native features to meet our specific industry requirements in order to gain a competitive edge."

In addition to SAP Business Suite 7, West Central Cooperative selected the SAP® Incentive Administration application by Vistex, a partner solution extension that will integrate with the SAP software to provide industry-specific functionality to maximize its technology investment. Specifically, the company will utilize SAP Incentive Administration to align its business activities and objects to help support the cooperative's patronage and advance rebate management processes. The application offers administration, analysis and reporting capabilities that help efficiently manage commissions and other incentive programs to enhance sales, improve production and build customer satisfaction.

About SAP® Business Suite

SAP® Business Suite software enables enterprises to execute and optimize their business and IT strategies. SAP Business Suite gives organizations the unique ability to perform their essential industry-specific and business support processes with modular software that is designed to work with other SAP and non-SAP software. Organizations and departments in all industries can deploy SAP Business Suite software in a step-wise manner to address specific business challenges on their own timelines and without costly upgrades. SAP Business Suite provides better insight and visibility across organizations, improves operational efficiency and effectiveness, and increases the flexibility to address business change.

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SOURCE SAP AG