SAP says Business Suite 7 strategy will help in tough times

The software giant says that it has been designed to ease upgrades and help customers control IT costs through enhancement packages. It also says users will gain better business insights with analytics capabilities from the SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence portfolio, and achieve end-to-end process improvements, using modular industry best practices and service-oriented architecture (SOA). Users broadly agree. Jennifer Allerton, CIO of healthcare group Roche, which is implementing the new suite, says: “The software helps us to achieve cost savings through easier release management and to further broaden the functional support in areas like treasury, talent management and supply chain control.” And, commenting on the industry functionality, she adds: “The ability to better support our clinical trial management will speed up the introduction of new medicines for patients.” SAP says the new suite delivers more than 150 functional innovations, aimed at cost cutting, through enhancement packages – as well as a synchronised release schedule for all applications, including industry applications. The company says its enhancement packages allow customers to select and deploy only the functionality they need, without upgrading their solutions – leaving long implementations, upgrades and disintegrated point solutions in the past. “SAP Business Suite software, with the synchronised release strategy and enhancement packages, will deliver value by fully supporting our integrated end-to-end business processes,” comments Ed Toben, SVP, GIT & Business Services, Colgate-Palmolive. “We anticipate that the enhancement package strategy will remove the upgrade barrier and help us to more efficiently deliver the innovation we need for continued success. With all components of SAP Business Suite on the same release cycle, the costs associated with implementation and testing of new functionality are greatly reduced.”