SAP business intelligence combo woos Oracle users

Among its new EPM customers are: Ballast Nedam NV, Foundation Coal, KPN Telecom BV, Rezidor SAS, Sandvik AB, Skandia Informasjonsteknologi AS and TPG Headoffice BV. SAP says it convinced these organisations that solutions from other vendors provide only partial insights and require ongoing investment in integration – whereas SAP offers a pre-integrated portfolio of EPM, governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions. Sanjay Poonen, senior vice president EPM at Business Objects, now owned by SAP, says SAP’s solutions unify the full range of financial and operational processes in a single stack, equipping finance with capabilities such as strategy, profitability, cost and planning management – while also providing solutions for GRC. Part of that has come from SAP’s acquisition of organisations such as OutlookSoft and Business Objects – reversing its former approach of organic development only. And part of it comes from easy interchange with Microsoft Office and the web – meaning an easy-to-use interface for all business users. “Existing solutions for performance management were built with the finance department of the 1990s in mind – with a patchwork of products, on old architectures, a rear-view approach to budgeting, and no links to the actual business processes,” says Poonen. “With continued investment and innovation in SAP solutions for enterprise performance management, we can offer modern CFOs a more compelling value proposition, especially when customers pair EPM solutions with our GRC offerings. “We have seen a strong, positive response by customers, as demonstrated by the strong success SAP had during the second half of 2007. Customers value a more complete EPM and GRC solution.”