Press Releases

The subscription-based hosted delivery model for SAP Business All-in-One solutions is available immediately in the U.S. market on a two-, three- or four-year contract basis from CIBER, itelligence, Optimal and RunE2E, All are participating in the SAP® Business All-in-One fast-start program and are certified by SAP to provide application management and hosting services for SAP Business All-in-One solutions.

“Being a small business focused on Hispanic cheese and dairy products we wanted to stay true to our business, but knew we could not do this without a software solution to help us better manage our operations,” said Guy Paproski, President, Nuestro Queso. “We were pleased to know that we could receive industry-leading software from SAP that could be hosted by a reliable partner such as Optimal. Optimal provides the technology infrastructure and predictable cost that fits perfectly with our business model. With SAP and Optimal we will realize business benefits out of the gate, as well as down the road.”

From a customer’s perspective, partner offers like Optimal’s FlexChoice Advantage appear identical to a software as a service (SaaS) model. For example the expenses of software, hardware, implementation and operation of the SAP software are combined into a single, fixed monthly fee. The partner will configure SAP Business All-in-One software to the customer’s specifications utilizing industry-specific best practices, procure all hardware, host the hardware and run the SAP software using standard Application Management Services (AMS) offering, which includes an integrated Help Desk. Thus customers receive the best of both worlds — the world-class functionality and scalability of SAP software and the financial benefits and ease-of-adoption associated with a subscription-based pricing model.

“In these tough economic times, it’s definitely not lack of need or desire slowing down SAP implementations among midsize companies,” said Elliott Garofalo, senior vice president, SME Practice, Optimal Solutions. “In fact, most companies we speak with openly acknowledge an immediate need for a more efficient and reliable system to run core business processes. The problem is closely guarded capital expenditures. The Optimal FlexChoice Advantage offering enables midsize companies to implement SAP solutions today and lay the foundation for future growth without impacting their tight fiscal budgets.”

With 20 years of SAP experience and 100 SAP customers in the midmarket, CIBER understands that one size and one delivery model does not fit all.

“CIBER knows the current economic situation in which many of its midsize customers struggle to get much needed investment capital to contest in a highly competitive market place,” said Sam Wood, vice president, CIBER. “We appreciate SAP working with us to provide the subscription-based offering that will provide our joint customers options, allowing them to provide a comprehensive, transparent overview over their entire operations to stay competitive.”

By demonstrating clear understanding of the business needs of midsize companies across diverse, rapidly changing industries, itelligence practices effective collaboration with customers to fulfill their most critical business goals.

“As a partner in the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program, itelligence strongly believes in offering customers practical, customizable and rapid go-to-market options,” said Steve Niesman, U.S. president and CEO, itelligence. “We are excited to offer customers this new structure to flexibly and affordably license and deploy world-class SAP solutions for critical business applications, and we look forward to providing customers with world-class knowledge and support to successfully achieve their unique objectives.”

RunE2E is a market leader in SAP solutions for customer relationship management (CRM) for small and midsize businesses. The company’s SAP-certified solution, RunCRM, can be quickly and cost-effectively deployed to help customers achieve rapid return on investment (ROI) through sales, marketing and service optimization.

“Offering the flexibility to fund CRM through operational budgets on a subscription basis meets a critical requirement for many businesses in today’s marketplace,” said Mark Alexander, CEO, RunE2E. “The combination of our powerful CRM solution and flexible deployment and pricing options significantly strengthens our value proposition for small and midsize businesses.”

“The addition of a subscription-based hosting option to the product portfolio of SAP Business All-in-One solutions provides customers with even more choices to find the right solutions for their individual business needs and preferences,” said Tom Cooper, senior vice president, SME United States, SAP North America. “Our proven industry partners CIBER, itelligence, Optimal and RunE2E possess in-depth market knowledge that will help to make this expansion of the fast-start program a success to the benefit of our joint customers. With the subscription-based hosted delivery model, we further increase the value of our entire solution portfolio for small and midsize enterprises by providing options not only in functionality, operating system and databases, but also in deployment and licensing.”

Due to the success of hosting offerings for SAP Business All-in-One in general (see “Hosted SAP® Solutions from Channel Partners Free Midsize Companies from Day-to-Day IT Challenges”), the subscription-based hosting option for SAP Business All-in-One offers customers the powerful functionality of the flagship enterprise resource planning (ERP) application, SAP® ERP; industry-specific SAP® Best Practices packages; the SAP® MaxDB™ database; standard SAP® Enterprise Support services; and application hosting, management and maintenance. In addition, customers can optionally choose CRM for SAP Business All-in-One and payroll processing software from SAP. Customers maintain the flexibility to configure their solutions to fit their business needs and the choice to move at a later time to an on-premise deployment model.

Customers interested in buying perpetual SAP Business All-in-One licenses can evaluate the solution and receive costs estimates through the innovative solution configurator for SAP Business All-in-One solutions — an online tool for midsize companies to easily configure SAP Business All-in-One solutions targeted to their particular needs. In addition to evaluating an ERP solution, the solution configurator can configure CRM functionality. In four easy steps, a company can input its industry-specific ERP and CRM needs, resulting in a solution blueprint and cost estimate that includes costs for software licenses, implementation services and hardware components optimized to run SAP Business All-in-One. SAP partners that participate in the fast-start program can take part by offering their own solution configurator to showcase their best practices-based SAP solutions (see “Expansion of Midmarket Program Provides Greater Cost Transparency and Shorter Project Cycles”).

About SAP® Business All-in-One
SAP® Business All-in-One solutions are comprehensive and flexible business management software with built-in support for industry best practices. The solutions best fit the needs of midsize companies looking for a comprehensive, integrated industry solution to power their business end-to-end. In one configurable solution, SAP Business All-in-One helps companies manage everything from financials, human resources, procurement, inventory, manufacturing, logistics, product development and corporate services, to customer service, sales and marketing. SAP Business All-in-One solutions are available from a wide network of qualified partners that deliver more than 700 industry-specific solutions in 50 countries. SAP provides all the deployment tools and methodologies that partners need to deliver fast, predictable implementation with low risk, low cost and rapid time to value. Additional information is available at www.sap.com/businessallinone.

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 92,000 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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The application is an extension of RunCRM, a qualified SAP® Business All-in-One partner solution for small and midsized businesses. With RunMobile, sales, marketing and service professionals can use a Blackberry® or iPhone® for real-time interaction with the RunCRM solution, increasing their productivity and efficiency.

RunE2E’s mobile offering comes as businesses increasingly turn to mobile computing for field use. In a recent Information Week Analytics survey of business technology professionals, two-thirds had deployed or planned to deploy mobile apps at their companies.

“Enabling field personnel to input and access customer data through mobile devices increases the value of CRM solutions for any business,” said John Brasch, RunE2E CEO. “By improving sales efficiency and effectiveness, RunCRM with RunMobile can drive revenue and enhance customer relationships.”

Today”s announcement was made at SAPPHIRE® 2009, being held here May 11-14, where RunE2E is exhibiting in booth 641.

About RunE2E

RunE2E is an SAP channel partner and leader in customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for small and midsize businesses. We deliver cost-effective, easy-to-deploy and easy-to-use solutions that help customers achieve rapid ROI thru sales, marketing, and service optimization. The leadership and engineering team at RunE2E bring a combined 100+ years of enterprise-level CRM experience to our customers. Our domain expertise, combined with our singular focus on delivering affordable CRM solutions, make us an ideal partner to meet your business needs. To learn more, visit www.RunE2E.com or email info@RunE2E.com.

With its designation as an SAP channel partner in the SAP PartnerEdge™ program, RunE2E now provides a complete solution that encompasses all facets required for end-to-end CRM success, including SAP Business All-in-One software licensing, setup services, implementation services, training and documentation, staffing and optimization and support.

“SAP and its partners offer midsize companies the solutions they need to weather the current economic storm and grow their businesses profitably,” said Glenn Wada, senior vice president and general manager, SAP America, Inc. “We look forward to working with RunE2E as an SAP channel partner and helping companies gain a competitive advantage and accelerated growth through the use of RunCRM, a qualified SAP Business All-in-One partner solution.”

With RunCRM, marketing personnel can drive customer demand and increase ROI by running marketing campaigns, organizing segments and lists, and managing leads to close new business. The software also enhances sales effectiveness by helping sales executives better manage territories, accounts, contacts, activities, leads, and opportunities. Pre-built reporting tools and custom dashboards give users quick visibility into key metrics.

RunCRM can be deployed and remotely managed in a customer’s data center or in a hosted application management environment provided by RunE2E. Offering both options gives businesses greater flexibility in managing their resources. Comprehensive application support is also a standard component of the RunCRM solution, allowing customers to focus on their core business.

“RunCRM is a comprehensive, turnkey solution offered at an affordable fixed price. By leveraging the SAP Business All-in-One solution sets and SAP’s proven implementation methodology, RunCRM can be quickly deployed to speed time to value,” said John Brasch, CEO, RunE2E. “Working in partnership with SAP, RunE2E is delivering business-critical CRM software that delivers powerful revenue generation tools to our customers.”

SAP Business All-in-One partner solutions such as RunCRM are qualified by SAP and developed, sold and supported by SAP channel partners as a defined-scope implementation with consulting services, and offer the flexibility to accommodate the unique business needs of each customer. Qualified SAP Business All-in-One partner solutions are preconfigured, industry-specific versions of the SAP ERP application combined with SAP Best Practice offerings, enabling streamlined operations, lower costs and a proven path to growth.

About RunE2E

RunE2E is an SAP channel partner and leader in customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for small and midsize businesses. We deliver cost-effective, easy-to-deploy and easy-to-use solutions that help customers achieve rapid ROI thru sales, marketing, and service optimization. The leadership and engineering team at RunE2E bring a combined 100+ years of enterprise-level CRM experience to our customers. Our domain expertise, combined with our singular focus on delivering affordable CRM solutions, make us an ideal partner to meet your business needs. To learn more, visit www.RunE2E.com or email info@RunE2E.com.

Currently working with nearly 40,000 small businesses and midsize companies, SAP understands the unique needs and challenges of family-run businesses in various industries. During these challenging economic times, small businesses and midsize companies are even more concerned with improving operational efficiency to support profitable growth – as well as developing the ability to adjust to changing environments and business demands faster than their competition.

SAP offers complete, proven business solutions with deep industry-specific functionalities that are quick to implement, easy to use and flexible to support the unique and changing business needs of small and midsize companies. These solutions optimize operations by providing one platform for all company processes, thus enabling transparency throughout the entire business so that informed decisions can be made in closing deals, managing financial information, tracking production, expanding relationships with business networks and delivering various services.

SAP® Business All-in-One solutions are based on SAP® Best Practices packages, and are designed specifically to enhance business agility, improve operational efficiency and strengthen customer relationships. SAP® Business One offers a single application for streamlining end-to-end operations by providing instant and complete information across the entire business. SAP® Business ByDesign™ is a complete and adaptable on-demand business solution designed to unify and streamline core business operations for midsize companies. All three solutions address the diverse needs of small businesses and midsize enterprises (SMEs), a rapidly growing segment that accounts for a significant percentage of SAP's total customers.

Family-Run SMEs Find Success With SAP

SAP has helped the following family-run businesses achieve business excellence and growth through the use of its small and midsize business solutions: Annin & Co., Ateeco Inc. (maker of Mrs. T's Pierogies), Barber Foods, Community Coffee, Drywall Supply, HB Communications, Inc., Life is good, Schumacher Elevator, Sentry Group and The Fruit Company.

Life is good is a New Hampshire-based apparel company that sells and markets an assortment of optimistic and humorous Life is good products, including clothing, accessories and footwear. The brand was growing, but the company was hindered by stove-piped master data management and disparate operating systems. Working on an aggressive timeline, the company implemented an apparel and footwear industry solution from SAP in only 24 weeks. Based on attune's pre-configured solution attune for Brands (a4B), the implementation has resulted in a highly visible, streamlined flow of information and collaboration across the company and its supply chain. The solution's capacity for growth and system-wide accuracy are further helping Life is good to tailor and grow its business.

"We have seen considerable results through the solution from SAP and attune," said Kevin Scheeler, director of technology, Life is good. "We now have improved visibility into the warehouse and can easily locate products on every level, allowing us to better control the quality of both inbound and outbound processes. SAP's solutions not only have an exceptional ability to cater to our specific industry needs as a family-run business, but they helped us realize tangible improvements to our bottom-line through increased order fill rates, reduced schedule changes on the shop floor and improved ability to match supply and demand."

The Fruit Company, located in Hood River, Oregon, is an online retailer of fine fruits and gourmet gift specialties. The Fruit Company required a single, integrated view into all of its departments – and found the answer in the SAP Business One application. SAP Business One provided a flexible business solution that the company could adapt to meet its own dynamic business needs, as well as integrate easily with The Fruit Company's existing operations, upgrading from one-dimensional spreadsheets.

"It was important for us to find a solution that could deliver the appropriate level of service, as well as be flexible enough to change with our business – and do so at a reasonable cost," said Scott Webster, chief executive officer, The Fruit Company. "The rich functionality of SAP Business One provided us with the cost-effective solution we were seeking to relieve our integration concerns. SAP Business One fit our needs as a growing business, with the added benefit of lowering overhead costs through its integrated view."

Jointly with its widespread global network of qualified and customer-focused resellers often specializing in a certain industry, SAP also has a presence in remote global locations and can provide its customers with the required service through experts who speak the same language of a small business or midsize company in a specific industry.

Providing Additional Benefits to Customers

In the current economic environment, the right technology solutions are essential tools to help businesses tightly manage cash, drive efficiency and reduce costs, which is what the SAP® Business All-in-One fast-start program enables companies to do. Companies need proven solution packages that help them quickly adjust to the new market reality and thrive in an uncertain economy, as well as enable them to make the appropriate investments to be best-positioned for business gains upon economic recovery. The best practices included in SAP Business All-in-One are built upon SAP's long proven experience in helping businesses manage through tough economic cycles.

About SAP® Solutions for Small Businesses and Midsize Companies

With more than 39,500 small and midsize customers worldwide, SAP is a leading provider of business applications and an established and highly successful player in the small and midsize enterprise (SME) market. SAP offers a broad and innovative solution portfolio for small businesses and midsize companies to meet the heterogeneous demands of SME customers. SAP solutions for small businesses and midsize companies include SAP® Business One, a single integrated application for successfully managing small businesses; SAP® Business ByDesign™, the software industry's most complete, integrated and adaptable on-demand solution for midsize companies; and SAP® Business All-in-One, a customizable and extensible solution for midsize companies with deep industry best practices built in. Sold, implemented and maintained through SAP and an expanding network of qualified partners, all of the solutions are competitively priced, easy and quick to implement and scalable to customers' growing business needs. The SAP solutions specifically designed for SMEs help enable small businesses and midsize companies to lower operating costs, improve operational excellence, gain better business insight and control, and grow their businesses flexibly. Additional information is available at www.sap.com/solutions/sme

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 approximately 76,000 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)