SAP to Power the Customer Experience Transformation 

(MENAFN Press)DUBAI, United Arab Emirates “ November 13, 2012 “

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the new SAP 360 Customer solution. Powered by the SAP HANA platform, the solution will harness the power of in-memory computing, cloud, enterprise mobility and collaboration to enable organizations to revolutionize the way they engage with their customers beyond the traditional customer relationship management (CRM). The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW SAP TechEd, being held as a co-located event in Madrid from November 13-16.

This engagement enables companies to improve customer loyalty, maximize customers' lifetime value and optimize their resources to create more value for the customers and the shareholders alike. The breakthrough in-memory technology of SAP HANA will turn this vision into a reality for enterprises around the globe.

"This is a game-changing solution that will help companies market better, sell better, service better and truly create remarkable experiences for their customers," said Bill McDermott, co-CEO, SAP. "With SAP 360 Customer powered by SAP HANA, companies gain true 360-degree customer insight that is real-time, actionable and available anywhere."

SAP 360 Customer will provide unique capabilities to turn insight into action and engage with customers one-to-one - in context and in real time. It will enable organizations to create a superior customer experience while driving operational excellence by empowering the mobile workforce, fostering collaboration, executing transactions faster and providing better response times. The solution is already transforming the way companies engage with customers.

Three Essential Elements of SAP 360 Customer
Customers will benefit from three elements of SAP 360 Customer, including:

Real-time insight: Organizations will gain proprietary customer insights, understand customer needs and preferences and predict future behavior. This real-time and true 360-degree view of the customer will be based on the most accurate front-office interactions, back-office transactions and publicly available information from social networks. Organizations will be able to access large amounts of data in shorter periods of time, dramatically increase the speed of existing processes and revolutionize decision-making - anywhere, on any device.

Real-time interactions: Companies will be able to leverage just-in-time customer insight to deliver one-to-one interactions through any channel. Organizations will be able to deliver a differentiated customer experience and provide customers with highly personalized offerings, which will accurately reflect the specific customer needs and wants. They will be able to act on information as it happens and proactively engage with customers to resolve issues, introduce new products and services and decide on future course of actions.

Real-time execution: Companies will be able to instantly carry out end-to-end customer processes beyond the front office, truly deliver on their brand promise and create differentiated customer experiences. By leveraging industry best practices inherent in SAP solutions, organizations will be able to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of every customer process. This will enable companies to truly transform and empower the front line employees to better engage with customers across marketing, sales and service functions.

SAP Accelerates Innovation in the World's Largest Business Network

1 Million Connected Companies Gain New Levels of Productivity, Agility, Insight on the Ariba Network

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today unveiled plans to infuse SAP innovations into the world's most powerful business network. Through the recent combination of SAP and Ariba, an SAP company, close to 1 million companies are now connected to the Ariba Network - more than any other trading network. As a result, enterprises are collaborating in new ways that help drive unprecedented levels of productivity in their sales, procurement, invoice and payment processes. The introduction of SAP innovations in social, mobile, cloud and the in-memory technology of the SAP HANA platform will drive global business-to-business collaboration and even higher levels of efficiency and insights through the business network. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW SAP TechEd, being held as a co-located event in Madrid from November 13-16.

"Online social networks tools have transformed our personal relationships by connecting us to people and information in new ways," said SAP Co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe. "We are enabling businesses of all sizes to do the same. With 1 million companies connected, SAP and Ariba have created the largest business network in the world. Together we will deliver game-changing gains in productivity, collaboration and agility across the entire value chain of suppliers, partners and customers."

Removing Business Boundaries

Through the acquisition of Ariba, SAP has created a new operating model for business, which effectively eliminates the boundaries between individual companies. Enterprises can now work in a fully-networked environment to more efficiently discover, connect and collaborate with their customers, suppliers and other partners. In addition, new processes and community-based insights are enabled that can drive unprecedented levels of productivity across more geographies and lines of business. Using the Ariba Network, companies today can:

Receive active leads from a global community of qualified buyers rather than simply tracking them
Manage orders and statuses in real time rather than chasing paper
Accelerate payments for goods and services and optimize cash by making early payments
Gain new community-based intelligence and insights to make more informed decisions