Company Welcomes New Era of Convergence Between Enterprise Performance Management, Business Intelligence, and Governance, Risk and Compliance Solutions
Business Objects and SAP Deliver on Pre-Acquisition Enterprise Performance Management Road Maps and Introduce New Solution That Extends Reach From Finance to Operations
BOSTON, Aug. 12 -- Business Objects, an SAP (NYSE:SAP) company, today announced the latest versions of its solutions for enterprise performance management (EPM), which will provide customers with improved control and agility, enabling them to enhance performance across both finance and operations. Responding to customer demand, Business Objects also introduced a spend analytics solution, a new EPM solution that will enable companies to extend performance management beyond finance to business operations. These new versions and additions to the Business Objects EPM portfolio will deliver, to both SAP and non-SAP customers, benefits such as expanded ability to leverage enterprise data, lowered total cost of ownership and increased scalability. The announcement was made at the Business Objects Influencer Summit, being held in Boston on Aug. 12.
Enhancements to the existing EPM solutions represent the fulfillment of road map commitments made by SAP and Business Objects to their EPM customers prior to the SAP acquisition of Business Objects. New functionality has been added to the EPM portfolio, as well as tighter integration with the Business Objects business intelligence (BI) platform and SAP NetWeaver(R) technology platform. The new versions of the market-leading EPM solutions from Business Objects also integrate with SAP(R) solutions for governance, risk and compliance (SAP solutions for GRC), introducing the industry's first EPM solution that enables customers to link strategy management with risk management.
Business Objects Unites EPM, GRC and BI
Business Objects is the only vendor to offer both the vision and products that unite EPM, GRC and BI. Traditionally distinct disciplines, the combination of EPM, GRC and BI enables deeper visibility into unified information, greater context for collaborative decision making and better organizational alignment. For example, without a foundation of trustworthy and accurate business data, companies cannot effectively manage EPM processes such as financial consolidation. Similarly, the combination of GRC and EPM is critical to helping customers clearly understand potential risks to their business strategy.
"The convergence of EPM, GRC and BI lies at the heart of our performance optimization strategy," said Tom Greene, CIO, Colgate-Palmolive. "Colgate- Palmolive believes that the holistic approach taken by Business Objects will help us enhance our business performance at every level. We will be able to empower business users throughout our company with deep insight and user-friendly solutions, enabling a larger community of users to more easily make valuable contributions to our continued business success."
"As EPM extends beyond finance to include operational performance and GRC, companies can make a significant step forward to manage their businesses more efficiently and within compliance requirements," said Kathleen Wilhide, research director of Compliance and Performance Management, IDC. "Aligning risk and strategy management helps business users plan and execute corporate strategy within the context of managing risk. The comprehensive suite of EPM solutions offered by Business Objects -- in conjunction with GRC and BI -- gives companies the foundation for developing effective, far-reaching EPM strategies. This latest EPM release also shows that SAP is executing on the strategy it has outlined and is delivering its commitments."
Together, EPM solutions from Business Objects and pre-existing EPM solutions from SAP provide customers with the broadest range of EPM solutions, enabling them to optimize business performance within their organization and across their entire business network. Furthermore, Business Objects is expanding its EPM portfolio with a new solution that empowers operations managers to better understand purchasing patterns and steer their business toward success. EPM solutions from SAP and Business Objects are comprised of: the SAP(R) Spend Analytics, SAP(R) Strategy Management, BusinessObjects(TM) Profitability and Cost Management, BusinessObjects(TM) Financial Consolidation and SAP(R) Business Planning and Consolidation applications.
New Spend Analytics Solution Extends EPM Beyond Finance to Improve Operational Efficiencies
SAP Spend Analytics is an all-new EPM solution that furthers extends EPM into business operations and delivers actionable visibility into purchasing detail, enabling business users to formulate better procurement strategies and controlled-purchasing patterns. The new solution automatically aggregates, cleanses and analyzes procurement data from across enterprise systems -- as well as information from third-party vendors. The solution has been further strengthened with data services and technology from industry leader Analytics Inc., which recently was acquired by SAP. The acquisition provides customers with the leading solution to help them pinpoint potential opportunities for cost savings, rationalize suppliers in tune with corporate strategy and track compliance with vendor contracts.
Significant New Versions of EPM Solutions: On-Time Fulfillment of SAP and Business EPM Product Road Map
In addition to delivering an entirely new solution, today Business Objects delivered new versions of its existing EPM solutions, which fulfill road map commitments made to customers by both SAP and Business Objects.
The SAP Strategy Management application enables companies to define their business strategy and cascade business goals throughout the organization, making people more engaged in achieving business success. The new version of SAP Strategy Management is integrated with the SAP(R) GRC Risk Management application, providing customers with a single, combined process to define business strategy while taking into account risk factors, anticipate and manage financial risk, and comply with corporate governance policies. For example, if a consumer-packaged goods company wants to introduce a new product into the market, a combined risk and strategy management solution will help executives determine if there are any risks to supporting an expanded product line, such as a supplier bottleneck. Business Objects is the only vendor to provide a risk-adjusted approach to strategy, which allows companies to pursue expansion while proactively addressing any risks that might inhibit their success. The new version of SAP Strategy Management also delivers integration with the SAP NetWeaver technology platform, adding additional business context to the strategy management process and lowering the total cost of ownership for SAP customers.
BusinessObjects Profitability and Cost Management is a proven solution that helps business users more efficiently manage financial performance by providing a deeper view of cost drivers and their impact on profitability. Adding to Business Objects' domain expertise in profitability and cost management, the new version provides greater precision for organizations with large volumes of data by allowing customers to build models that can include the account, SKU and transaction-level detail. Enhanced scalability in the product will help particular industries like banking, where there is tremendous granularity in the financial details, to more easily manage their profitability and costs. This release also features deeper integration with BusinessObjects(TM) XI 3.0, the industry's first unified BI platform, allowing customers to distribute BusinessObjects Profitability and Cost Management insights to business users across the enterprise and providing more context for better business decisions.
The BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation application enables customers to bring together business performance data from across various lines of business, entities and geographies so that they can quickly produce accurate and trusted financial statements. The new version is more deeply integrated with BusinessObjects XI 3.0, allowing organizations to leverage their BI investment, and enabling users to quickly create and distribute ad-hoc financial reports to key stakeholders.
The SAP Business Planning and Consolidation application improves enterprise performance by uniting planning, budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting in a single, user-friendly application that can be independently owned and maintained by finance. Responding to customer requests, the new release will allow customers to easily configure their planning and budgeting application to run on the SAP NetWeaver platform, adding value to customers' existing SAP investments. The new version is also optimized for the Microsoft SQL platform, supporting customers with diverse IT environments. Also, new application lifecycle management features enable the solution to run more easily in standard IT environments, meaning finance can still maintain the solution independently, but any technical issues can be centrally administered by IT professionals.
"As customers look for a modern solution to manage performance, ensure compliance and drive visibility of information across the enterprise, Business Objects is making history in our market by bringing together the industry's leading solutions for EPM with BI and GRC into a holistic, integrated suite," said Sanjay Poonen, senior vice president and general manager of Performance Optimization Applications, Business Objects, an SAP company. "We are responding to customers' demand for a complete EPM portfolio, built on next-generation architectures. Business Objects looks forward to bringing this revolutionary convergence of EPM, BI and GRC to all customers and partners, something that no other vendor has delivered to date."
About Business Objects
Business Objects, an SAP company, transforms the way the world works by connecting people, information and businesses. With open, heterogeneous applications in the areas of governance, risk and compliance; enterprise performance management; and business intelligence, Business Objects enables organizations of all sizes worldwide to close the gap between business strategy and execution. Together with a strong and diverse partner network, Business Objects allows customers to optimize business performance across all major industries including banking, retail, consumer-packaged goods and public sector. Business Objects is committed to helping customers turn raw data into actionable decisions, regardless of their underlying database, operating system, applications or IT system.
For more information about SAP, visit: http://www.sap.com/.
Copyright (C) 2008 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. Business Objects and the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Crystal Decisions, Web Intelligence, Xcelsius and other Business Objects products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects S.A. in the United States and in several other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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