Software giant SAP AG targets small biz market. (Top of the news: the complete chronicle of news and trends shaping the profession)

Accounting Today, April, 2002 by John M. Covaleski

NEWTOWN SQUARE, PA. -- SAP AG, one of the world's largest developers of enterprise software for multi-national businesses, has launched a new effort to penetrate the small and midsized business market, which could include adding North American resellers familiar with that space.

The Germany-based company, with United States headquarters here in suburban Philadelphia, has released a new packaged financial management software product -- SAP for SMB -- as part of a strategy that it hopes would increase its SMB sales to 20 percent of worldwide revenue from the current 7 percent.

Distribution plans in North America could include using resellers that know the SMB space and have not handled SAP in the past, according to a company executive.

SAP has also...