SAP to Acquire Disclosure Management Solutions from cundus AG
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SAP Extends Market-Leadership Position in Finance With New Collaborative Solution to Support the Financial Close Process
WALLDORF, Germany, Dec. 16, 2010 - Adding to its portfolio of solutions that create instant value for customers worldwide, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced its intent to acquire disclosure management solutions from cundus AG -- headquartered in Duisburg, Germany -- comprising cundus Financial Statement Factory and cundus informationCollector, including intellectual property, customer contracts and certain employees. As a result of this acquisition, SAP will extend its market-leading portfolio of finance solutions with a collaborative offering that helps enterprises achieve a timely, accurate and more cost-effective financial close process.
In current economic conditions, companies and their finance departments are under greater pressure to comply with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and requirements to file financial and business information using extensible business reporting language (XBRL). For many enterprises, manual processes still dominate their financial close cycles, leading to data accuracy issues, compliance risks and a lack of control. In addition, collaboration is difficult and manual processes must be repeated during each reporting period. In need of a way to better streamline finance processes, disclosure management has emerged as a new high-growth domain within the financial close process. SAP has experienced strong demand for its portfolio of financial close solutions, and the acquisition of disclosure management functionality enables SAP to deliver another key element of its enterprise performance management (EPM) vision and roadmap.
The new disclosure management solution from SAP will accelerate the critical "last mile of finance" and help enterprises to reduce both compliance risks and costs. The solution will incorporate advanced XBRL functionality to support the electronic communication of financial and business data, as mandated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for most public filings after mid 2011, and numerous other regulators, tax authorities and banks around the world. Its collaborative framework will also enable users to streamline and automate processes, and drive projects forward in a fraction of the time compared to manual processes. SAP will take the new solution to market as part of its EPM solutions from the SAP® BusinessObjects(TM) portfolio.
Separately priced, the new solution will support customers as part of a complete end-to-end financial close solution with the best-available integration for the SAP® ERP Financials and SAP BusinessObjects EPM solutions, while also supporting open and heterogeneous non-SAP environments. The new solution will help users produce complex financial statements and reports based on data from disparate sources, as well as uniquely allow users to collect, consolidate, report on and analyze both structured and unstructured information at any time throughout the entire financial close process. The addition of this new capability builds upon the release earlier this year of a new version of SAP BusinessObjects EPM solutions, which are receiving wide-scale adoption with both existing and net new customers.
As part of the acquisition, SAP is acquiring cundus' disclosure management solutions -- as well as certain customer and partner relationships -- and extending offers to certain cundus employees. cundus will continue to operate as an independent company delivering strategic business intelligence (BI) consulting services in Germany and other European markets, including consulting services for the acquired disclosure management solutions.
"Disclosure management is a natural fit within the SAP solution portfolio -- it complements our existing performance management and financial close solutions, and addresses a need that we recognize many customers now have," said Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager, Business Analytics, Line-of-Business and Industry Solutions, SAP. "By acquiring this new and highly differentiated solution that has already had success with SAP customers -- and by taking it to market alongside our EPM solutions and SAP Business Suite software that already lead the industry -- we will further assert our proven leadership in providing robust solutions that help customers address all the demanding needs of the CFO."
"cundus is extremely excited that SAP, our long-term partner, has acquired these solutions," said Barbara Lix, member of the Executive Board, cundus AG. "SAP leads the market in delivering financial solutions to global enterprises, and cundus looks forward to supporting SAP as it takes the new solutions to market by continuing to provide implementation and consulting services to our joint customers."
SAP will provide additional details about future plans after the acquisition of assets from cundus is completed, which SAP anticipates will occur by the end of 2010. Terms and purchase price of this acquisition are not publicly disclosed.
About cundus AG
cundus AG offers services for the implementation of EPM solutions from SAP to support customers in achieving their business goals and objectives in the most effective way. cundus serves its customers throughout Europe and has subsidiaries in the U.K. and Switzerland. Visit www.cundus.com.
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 105,000 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 www.sap.com.
(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, and related applications.
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