Newsbyte: Supplier InfoNet Site Illuminates Supplier Performance for SAP Customers

WALLDORF, Germany, July 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- To address the critical needs of improving supply chain visibility and minimizing supplier disruptions for customers, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the introduction of the Supplier InfoNet site. This cloud-based solution enables companies to be part of a business network that helps participants improve the performance of their supply base and proactively manage the risk and opportunities in the extended N-tier value chain.

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Supplier InfoNet helps unleash the value of the information in companies' business applications and enables collaboration with other companies in the site network to define industry-leading best practices and KPI benchmarks. It is now commercially available in North America following a successful pilot phase with companies including Powell Electronics and Dresser-Rand.

Companies require a broad look and continual management of their suppliers from every level. Supplier InfoNet solves this challenge by collecting historical and current operational performance metrics and combining them with both structured and unstructured external content that might indicate operational disruption, such as news of natural disasters or pending litigations.

In addition to providing customers a comprehensive view on their suppliers, Supplier InfoNet delivers benchmarks on the performance of those suppliers, comparing them with peers and assessing their performance for other customers. Using proprietary machine learning models on top of this data, customers can also view predictions of future performance along with the root causes to proactively mitigate any disruptions. These insights are presented via a unique business social network that allows the customer to see relationships among the network of participants and determine weaknesses multiple tiers down in their supply chain. For example, the devastation caused by the recent earthquake in Japan left companies unsure of how their global supply chains might be affected. Using the social networking concepts embedded in Supplier InfoNet, a customer could get visibility on these issues by sending access requests, through several tiers, to help mitigate risk of disruption at any level.

"SAP is committed to bringing forward industry-shifting innovations, and Supplier InfoNet is a strong example of this for supply chain professionals," said Jason Yotopoulos, senior vice president and head of the Global Business Incubator, SAP AG. "By providing a robust view with predictions of future supplier behavior, we can help our customers deliver the very best to their customers."

For more information, visit the Technology and Platform newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

Media Contact:
Janice Edman, +1(650) 320-3238, [email protected], PDT

SOURCE SAP AG