INDUSTRY

SAP AG today announced extensions to its customer relationship management software that increase the speed and expand the reach of analytics applications for users across the enterprise. Utilizing advances in SAP NetWeaver(TM) technology, mySAP(TM) CRM now provides users with automated software agents to apply real-time customer insight to everyday business processes in marketing, sales, service, channel management and interaction centers. The SAP CRM solution leverages a new high-speed search engine in SAP NetWeaver to transform customer segmentation from a day-long processing task to a matter of seconds. Companies can now gain faster and deeper insight into valuable enterprise-wide customer data to take quick action on fleeting business opportunities, increase campaign response rates and gain higher return on marketing investments. The announcement was made at CeBIT 2004, the world's largest technology trade fair, being held in Hanover, Germany, March 18 - 24. mySAP CRM was one of the first mySAP(TM) Business Suite solutions powered by SAP NetWeaver and its new analytics extensions are based on the business intelligence and portal components in the 2004 release of SAP NetWeaver, being launched today. For more information, please see today's press release "SAP Announces 2004 Version of the Technology Platform SAP NetWeaver." Complementing these new analytics features, the number of "out-of-the-box" user-based roles available in mySAP CRM will be increased to more than 20. These roles address the unique demands of users in various job functions across diverse industries, delivering portal access to all applications and real-time analytics functions necessary to drive effective customer-facing business processes. Bringing Real-Time Analytics to the Front Lines With SAP's CRM enhancements, the ability to develop advanced analytical methods reserved until now for specialized consultants and developers are made accessible to a broader base of CRM software users to improve their everyday customer interactions. Through an easy-to-use analysis process designer workbench, users can custom design software agents that run unattended in the background, analyzing data from multiple sources and automatically feeding the results back into operational processes. For example, using an intuitive interface, a user can easily create a software agent that identifies the most profitable customers for a particular product area and updates the customer master file accordingly. Users can access this information quickly in order to make the best decisions for improved customer interactions. Accelerating Advanced Analyses for Immediate Actions Whereas customer segmentation analyses traditionally involve batch processing running overnight, campaign managers can now run thorough analyses within seconds-taking into account millions of address records and performing numerous requests in parallel. The new search engine utilizes in-memory database technology in SAP NetWeaver for high-speed processing and retrieval of customer-related data, achieving especially fast results using blade servers. The new search engine takes advantage of SAP NetWeaver integration capabilities to expand the reach of searches across multiple databases. The powerful search engine brings a new level of performance to the campaign automation process, enabling companies to model target groups in real time and take faster action on market insight. For instance, database marketing managers can more quickly identify customer segments that display similar behavior patterns and immediately target campaigns to directly address, and benefit from, customer needs. Also, interaction center agents now can perform even complex searches across millions of accounts, enabling immediate response times to inquiries during the customer interaction. "Today's companies need business agility to respond quickly to their customers' demands and, even more importantly, to proactively seize new opportunities before they pass," said Peter Kirschbauer, member of the extended management board, SAP. "SAP is leading this business process evolution with technology advances such as real-time analytics-a CRM solution that improves user productivity and turns static data into actionable business insight to drive bottom-line results." The real-time analytics extensions for mySAP CRM will be available to customers in June 2004 and the high-speed search engine will be available in September 2004.