>

SAP’s New ERP Release Shows Record Speed Customer Adoption

More than 1,000 go-lives with SAP® ERP in just seven months since general availability; Ensures and eases transition through upgrade initiative

PhilippinesManila, Philippines, March 26, 2007 — In a powerful demonstration of its ability to easily and successfully deliver the value of enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA) to customers, SAP announced that more than 1,000 customers are live on SAP ERP—the latest release of SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. The milestone marks the fastest adoption rate of an ERP release in the history of the company.

Generally available for customers since May of 2006, the latest version of SAP ERP together with SAP NetWeaver® serves as a stable business process platform and delivers continuous innovation through optional enhancement packages that customers may adopt at their own pace, without disrupting day-to-day operations. Offered as part of customers’ license and maintenance agreements, SAP® enhancement packages for SAP ERP make it simpler and faster for customers to adopt new product functionality and industry-specific features without the risk of business disruptions. SAP’s evolved delivery model shields customers from the complexity of multiple upgrades and portends the impending inflection point in the IT sector—the transition to SOA, a blueprint that enables software functions, or “services,” to be combined quickly and flexibly to perform new business processes.

“SAP ERP is the market-leading enterprise resource planning application, providing our customers with a proven foundation to improve performance, support growth, lower operating costs and achieve operational excellence,” said Krish Datta, managing director, SAP Philippines & Indonesia. “The incredible pace of customer adoption is a testament to the evolution of SAP ERP into an industry and business process platform, and is spurring our partners to provide new and exciting capabilities that leverage SAP ERP and SAP NetWeaver. As we continue to deliver continuous innovation through enhancement packages, our customers are able to benefit from improvements to critical business processes in a much faster, easier and cost-effective fashion than ever before.”

Gearing their businesses for new levels of business agility and competitive edge, customers worldwide are embracing SAP’s evolved road map for software design and delivery based on the business-driven blueprint of enterprise SOA. These customers are tapping the benefits of the simple, cost-effective and value-generating upgrade and implementation of SAP ERP.

“SAP looks at our relationship with customers as a long-term strategic partnership,” said SAP’s Datta. “Business needs change, and so does the technology that supports the business. SAP upgrade provides the low-cost and fastest adoption to these changes. We take the extra effort to go to our customers, understand their business needs, evaluate the impact the new technology adoption may have on their operations and existing software, and help them manage these changes. Our objective is to make our customers more successful.”

Market-Leading Solution Delivers Turn-Key Enhancements
Enhancements delivered by SAP ERP include new user experience options and simpler, more intuitive user interfaces, including pre-configured role-based work centers, self-service capabilities and key functional enhancements, including:
-Integrated talent management functionality that helps organisations to increase workforce value and productivity.
-New capabilities that simplify establishing HR Shared Service Centers to automate and standardise HR core processes, improve the quality of services from HR departments and provide global access to HR services.
-The new General Ledger that automates the reconciliation processes, streamlines manual processes and minimises user errors, enables organisations to reduce the cost of finance and close their books faster and with greater accuracy.
-Streamlined invoicing and collection processes that help customers enhance cash flow and improve working capital management.
-Integrated real estate and travel management capabilities to help companies contain costs and effectively manage corporate real estate.

Organisations in diverse industries around the world benefit from a non-disruptive, fast and cost-effective upgrade, and realise the value of SAP’s market-leading ERP solution that also represents the industry’s first business process platform. Hence, SAP has also offered an upgrade initiative to ease customer adoption.

“SAP is fully committed to supporting our existing customers in continually improving their business by increasing your return on investment and the value delivered by your technology investments while also helping you to reduce Total Cost of Ownership,” said Krish Datta, Managing Director, SAP Philippines and Indonesia. “At a time when companies are ever more careful with their business investments, upgrade issues can complicate decisions about adopting updated business management solutions and business integration models.”

SAP is offering a range of services to support customers in smoothly upgrading to SAP ERP and moving to an enterprise SOA. SAP has put together three special offers for customers who plan to upgrade in 2007, which includes a free SAP Quick Upgrade Analysis, Extended Maintenance, and the Bundle of SAP Premium support and Extended Maintenance.