Frost & Sullivan Confers Supply Chain Management Product Quality Leadership of the Year Award on SAP AG

The 2009 Frost & Sullivan Global Supply Chain Management (SCM) Product Quality Leadership of the Year Award is presented to SAP AG, the market leader in the SCM market, for its commitment to superior product quality and for being a one-stop solution for the supply chain requirements of all types of businesses. The company's unique ability to address and fulfill customer requirements has resulted in a high degree of customer satisfaction and supported the increase of its SCM customer base by 8 percent from 2007 to 2008.

More than 15,000 customers across all market segments rely on the SAP(R) Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM) application, including automotive, aerospace and defense, chemicals, consumer products, hi-tech, telecommunications, logistics, and oil and gas. SAP SCM is part of SAP(R) Business Suite software, which gives organizations the unique ability to perform essential business processes with modular software that is designed to work with other SAP and non-SAP software. Organizations and departments in all sectors can deploy SAP Business Suite to address specific business challenges at any time and without costly upgrades.

"With companies increasingly focusing on making their supply chain lean, SAP AG is found to reduce the inventory levels effectively by 10.0 to 70.0 percent," notes Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Archana Rajagopalan. "With a 30 percent increase in the forecasting accuracy observed by customers, SAP SCM is found to offer return on investment (ROI) within six months of its implementation even as SAP SCM implementation has been observed to enable 99 percent inventory accuracy."

Some of the benefits offered by SAP include the better responsiveness to changes in supply and demand. SAP SCM enables customers to sense and respond to potential risks, and capitalize on any new opportunities in a short duration.

The company's solutions also result in enhanced customer satisfaction. By offering a common information framework supporting communication and collaboration, SAP SCM helps in building a responsive supply network that is adaptive to ever changing customer demands. In addition to having made the supply chain demand-driven, the software product also helps in monitoring supply chain compliance in areas such as environment, health and safety.

"SAP enables improved cash flow for its clients since lower inventory levels directly translate to reduced overall logistics cost," states Rajagopalan. "Its solutions also support higher margins for clients."

Moreover, SAP SCM helps in maintaining strong connections and collaboration with trading partners to ensure that a company's supply network is aligned with its current business strategies and priorities, improving the overall performance and facilitating the achievement of goals.

Exceptional software maintenance and support has been another hallmark of the company; the SAP(R) Active Global Support (SAP AGS) organization helps its customers in gaining skills and resources to optimize solution performance and business processes," remarks Rajagopalan. "SAP AGS offers a range of services to help its customers in becoming a best-run business."

Among these services are end-to-end solution operations. This involves providing an overall blueprint to optimize the operations of SAP solutions and ensuring the availability of mission-critical business processes by managing performance and volume. This also improves data transparency and consistency across the entire business.

Other outstanding services include SAP(R) Enterprise Support services, SAP(R) MaxAttention(TM) support, SAP(R) Safeguarding services, the SAP(R) Solution Manager application management solution and SAP(R) Test Data Migration Server software.

"SAP is honored to receive this award, and believes that it is a testament to our long history in the supply chain space and our continued effort to deliver innovation to our customers ever evolving supply networks," says Lori Mitchell-Keller, Senior Vice President, Suite Solution Management at SAP. "As a core application solution of SAP Business Suite, we believe that SAP SCM enables companies with fluctuating demand or high product complexity to sense and respond faster and smarter to demand and supply dynamics across a diverse global network".

The Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Quality Leadership of the Year is bestowed upon the company that has demonstrated superior quality control over its competitors in product manufacturing. Quality control is an essential element of satisfying customers, increasing repeat buying behavior, and assuring long-term market survival.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About SAP(R) Business Suite

SAP(R) Business Suite software enables enterprises to execute and optimize their business and IT strategies. SAP Business Suite gives organizations the unique ability to perform their essential industry-specific and business support processes with modular software that is designed to work with other SAP and non-SAP software. Organizations and departments in all industries can deploy SAP Business Suite software in a step-wise manner to address specific business challenges on their own timelines and without costly upgrades. SAP Business Suite provides better insight and visibility across organizations, improves operational efficiency and effectiveness, and increases the flexibility to address business change.

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 89,000 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.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best in class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from more than 35 offices on six continents.