SAP and EMC to Deliver New Solutions That Automate and Optimize Paper-Intensive Processes for Financial Services Institutions

FRANKFURT, Germany and ORLANDO, Fla., May 17 /PRNewswire/ -- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and EMC® Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced an expansion of their global strategic alliance which includes a reseller relationship, deeper technology integrations, and joint sales and marketing activities designed to benefit financial services customers worldwide. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE® NOW, being held simultaneously in Frankfurt, Germany, and Orlando, Florida, May 17-19, 2010.

Under the agreement, SAP will resell newly developed solutions – leveraging EMC Documentum® enterprise content management, EMC Captiva® intelligent enterprise capture and EMC Document Sciences® customer communications management – beginning with SAP® Insurance Broker Statement Processing by EMC. The solution is planned to be available in the third quarter of 2010 and will be offered as part of SAP's portfolio for the insurance industry. Additional solutions for the banking industry are planned to be available in quick succession. As a result, financial services customers worldwide can accelerate their business processes, improve information sharing, reduce transaction costs and enhance compliance.

Financial institutions are experienced in delivering automated, straight-through processing of data-intensive business processes. However, many real-world processes, such as loan and mortgage origination or claims handling, are content-intensive and require efficient, enterprise-class systems to automate document capture, content management and correspondence management. Banks and insurers can further improve process efficiency, cost control and customer loyalty by integrating with other systems to collect existing structured and unstructured data, capturing paper-based content digitally and delivering a rich, highly personalized customer experience.

"It is welcome news that SAP and EMC are committing to deeper product integrations," said Ken Casey, executive vice president, Major Initiatives at ATB Financial, a full-service financial institution headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. "As a customer of both companies, this expanded partnership will deliver tremendous value by enabling a higher degree of automation to our loan origination process. This will further improve productivity and efficiencies so we can better serve our customers."

SAP and EMC will collaborate on building solutions to provide a new avenue for financial firms to solve many of their process-based challenges by adding capabilities to support the most effective use of all enterprise information resources. One example is to eliminate the manual effort traditionally required for the insurance broker reconciliation process. By providing the digital capture of broker documents, e-mails and faxes into the reconciliation process, insurance brokers can increase their productivity and reduce the cost of errors and manual workarounds. Another example is to address the problem of time-consuming paper handling and manual intensive processes required to manage a loan. The incorporation of document processes into business processes is not a new challenge to banks, just one which hasn't been tackled successfully through a standard approach. By digitizing content early and creating digitized loan folders, banks can accelerate and potentially increase their loan sales production and closure rates as well as enhance customer communications throughout the loan lifecycle.

"SAP has a long-standing commitment to help financial services customers transform their business and IT models," said Kevin Ichhpurani, senior vice president, Business Development and Strategic Alliances, SAP. "Today's announcement with EMC allows us to deepen our focus on fulfilling financial services customer requirements by delivering a comprehensive range of solutions that contributes towards meeting the evolving needs of banks and insurers."

"Our mutual customers have expressed a need for enhanced integration between SAP applications and EMC's technologies for intelligent enterprise capture, enterprise content management, information governance and document output," said Mark Lewis, president of Information Intelligence Group,** a division of EMC. "Together with SAP, we will develop new and innovative solutions to enable financial institutions deliver unrivaled levels of service and agility while dramatically reducing operational costs and organizational risk."

SAP and EMC Alliance

SAP and EMC have worked together since 1997 and have engaged in a number of joint technology and marketing initiatives including projects at SAP's Global Solution Center in Newtown Square, Penn., and EMC's technical center at SAP headquarters in Germany. SAP is an EMC Global Alliance Partner and EMC is an SAP global technology partner. The two companies have formal maintenance and technical support agreements to provide mutual customers with the highest level of service and support.

SAPPHIRE® NOW

With SAPPHIRE® NOW, SAP marks the next evolution of its SAPPHIRE customer conference and networking events, offering SAP customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held simultaneously in Orlando, Florida, and Frankfurt, Germany, May 17-19, 2010, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and a newly designed online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether onsite or online, participants can gain insight on how innovative business solutions from SAP are enabling long-term, profitable business growth. For more information about the Orlando show, visit www.sapandasug.com; for the Frankfurt event, visit www.sap.com/sapphire/emea. Join the conversation via Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW.

SAP and the Americas' SAP Users' Group (ASUG) are co-locating their premier events in Orlando, where the 2010 ASUG Annual Conference takes place May 16-20.

Note to Editors:

Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and podcasts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the event's newsroom at: http://sapphirenow.blogs-sap.com/. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via e-mail links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

About EMC

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information.  Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

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 97,000 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.

EMC, Documentum, Captiva and Document Sciences are registered trademarks of EMC Corporation.  All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ** Formerly Content Management and Archiving Division.

SOURCE EMC Corporation