APPLICATIONS

SAP AG today unveiled more than 100 industry-specific analytic applications that empower users with innovative new ways to drive core processes and business decisions based on actionable business insight. SAP Analytics are a new breed of model-driven composite applications that change the analytic application playing field across more than 25 industries. By merging data from SAP and non-SAP applications with business intelligence queries, SAP Analytics eliminate disparate islands of data and seamlessly combine transactional, analytic and collaborative steps across multiple business functions, departments and even organizational boundaries. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE '05, SAP's international customer conference, being held in Copenhagen, Denmark, April 26-28. Unlike after-the-fact reporting tools, SAP Analytics applications will pull all relevant information-whether historical or up-to-date-from across a wide variety of enterprise systems to deliver clear and comprehensive business insight that helps users drive current processes and take the wisest next steps. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver platform and compliant with SAP's business-driven Enterprise Services Architecture blueprint, the applications are unique in their ability to deliver data in the business context of the specific process at hand-letting a business manager know, for example, not only the day's sales figures but also whether these figures are on target compared against past performance and the current year's revenue goals. "High-performance organizations have three prerequisites that allow them to consistently reach their stretch goals in an agile way: strategic focus and alignment, a strong set of shared values and, often forgotten, a common business model," said Frank Buytendijk, research vice president, Gartner, Inc. "Being able to analyze processes crossing multiple domains and using the same definitions and the same integrated set of high-quality data will provide the next competitive difference. Being able to create, maintain and optimize a shared business model gives organizations the confidence to deal with compliance to all kinds of external regulations and to become a high-performance organization." Tapping Newfound Business Value Each SAP Analytics application can easily be combined and extended with other analytics applications, and each plays a specific role across areas such as supply chain management, customer relationship management and product life-cycle management. SAP is presenting more than 100 industry-specific analytic applications in more than 25 industries SAP serves today. Some examples include: -- SAP Analytics for retail will help store managers better understand and predict the performance of core activities, such as trade-promotions, in order to make adjustments to processes and strategies while there is time to impact outcomes. -- SAP Analytics for credit management will allow financial service companies to display customers' credit information, buying behavior, past purchases and credit lines in the historical context of data stored in SAP and non-SAP systems or syndicated data sources such as Dun & Bradstreet. From inside the same application, users can increase or stop access to credit lines for a given customer or partner and even block or authorize individual purchases. -- SAP Analytics for tax management complements the SAP for Public Sector solution, and will allow organizations to better monitor and understand the tax basis -- where contributions are coming from in the context of historical tax collection -- and take steps to reclaim amounts due using the same application. -- SAP Analytics for high-tech manufacturing will allow managers and other employees at production plants and warehouses to gain an unprecedented level of insight into order status, plant utilization, order backlog and restock levels. SAP partners have built SAP Analytics applications that unify manufacturing execution system data with order supply chain and production data from SAP systems in order to provide highly granular views down to individual machines' uptime status and throughput capacity. -- SAP Analytics for CRM will continue to complement the mySAP Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM) solution by providing extensive visualization across marketing, lead generation, pipeline visibility, sales effectiveness and individual customer views. By unifying sales data with financial data, fulfillment data and manufacturing inventory data, SAP Analytics for CRM empowers sales executives and corporate offices with a complete view of customer buying patterns and profitability for detecting hidden opportunities for future business growth. With its model-driven, code-free and services-enabled design environment, SAP Analytics will allow business users and analysts to easily deploy, configure and combine analytic applications to customize SAP Analytics for to support evolving business requirements as business and industry needs change. SAP Analytics' user interface also can leverage Macromedia Flex technology. "SAP Analytics applications underline the business value of our Enterprise Services Architecture blueprint, enabling companies to analyze and execute innovative new business processes without having to re-create the underlying information and application foundation," said Shai Agassi, president of the Product and Technology group and member of the executive board, SAP. "SAP Analytics represent an evolution in business intelligence capabilities, providing business users with the ability to innovate by aligning strategy and execution, leveraging existing applications in new ways throughout the entire value network." Whirlpool Turns Insight into Action For globally operating enterprises such as Whirlpool, the ability to analyze pricing realization on a global basis is critical to bottom-line business results. The company needed to enable an enterprisewide standard analysis process across key parts of the business. By leveraging its SAP platform and combining SAP Analytics, Whirlpool has eliminated disparate islands of information to deliver insights in the context of global pricing analysis. "Corporate performance management is all about aligning strategy and execution," said Sherry Buck, vice president, Business Performance Management, Whirlpool. "SAP Analytics offer comprehensive and detailed insights that help ensure the success of businesspeople and provide actionable information for better business decisions. This enables all levels of our organization to have access to the right information at the right time to drive critical business decisions." System Integrators and Independent Software Vendors Benefit from SAP Analytics Powered by SAP NetWeaver, SAP Analytics leverage SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer and multiple platform capabilities including business intelligence and enterprise portal. SAP Analytics will provide system integrators (SIs) with the applications and tools to support their clients' evolving business needs. SIs, leveraging their industry and functional expertise, can easily deploy and extend SAP Analytics applications to meet the needs of their clients. Independent software vendors (ISVs) and syndicated content providers will benefit from new applications and tools to help mutual customers. Partners and ISVs are able to build new analytic applications by becoming certified in the Powered by SAP NetWeaver program. "The business environment is becoming more challenging as Sarbanes-Oxley, regulation and competition all drive organizations to evolve their business models, improve the alignment between strategy and execution and empower their business users with actionable insights in the context of business processes," said Mitch Morris, director, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "SAP Analytics can help drive and solve the need for business user empowerment by placing actionable insights in the context of the users' regular activities, helping to improve overall organizational effectiveness and competitiveness." SAP Analytics will be available toward the end of 2005 and sold as add-on products. Further details will be made available on its Website.