SAP previews R/3 Release 4.0; next-generation solution improves customer agility for global supply chain management; extends R/3 enterprise solution to retail, public sector markets; delivers on the business framework architecture

Business Wire, August 26, 1996

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 26, 1996--Building on the functional and technical leadership of the SAP R/3 business application solution, SAP AG today announced R/3 Release 4.0.

The next generation of R/3 -- with early availability to customers during the third quarter of 1997 -- will provide powerful enhancements for market- driven global supply chain management, include new comprehensive retail and public sector industry solutions, and deliver new components of the Business Framework architecture.

R/3 4.0 will allow customers to accelerate their time to market for products and services by improving the agility of their supply chain management solution and the flexibility of supporting business processes. As the next step in the evolution of R/3, SAP will deliver new business component functionality with R/3 4.0, allowing customers to implement new enhancements independent of other R/3 capabilities.

"We are developing R/3 4.0 in close partnership with our customers to address their needs to streamline mission-critical links in the supply chain and improve their ability to react to ever-changing markets," said Dr. Peter Zencke, member of the SAP AG executive board.

"We also provide substantial enhancements to speed up R/3 implementations, making R/3 an easy-to-use business solution that is upgradeable `on the fly.' Using SAP R/3 Business Engineering Workbench, R/3 4.0 customers will have the industry's most advanced system for model-driven configuration and continuous change management."

Supply Chain Enhancements Improve Customer Time to Market

R/3 4.0 contains a significant array of new functionality and Internet capabilities to improve customers' supply chain management and time to market within and beyond traditional corporate boundaries. To help customers balance the speed and agility of their supply chain against the need for controlling costs and managing business risk, SAP has added several financial enhancements to R/3 4.0 for corporate treasurers and controllers. These supply chain and financial enhancements include the following:

-- Advanced production planning and manufacturing processes that maximize time-to-market efficiencies in manufacturing environments. Specific enhancements to these processes include easy-to-use flow manufacturing processes for reduced order time and work-in-progress inventory; an integrated, constraint-based planning component to optimize manufacturing operations; and a campaign-planning solution that dramatically improves product-line-oriented manufacturing planning and execution for process production.

SAP will provide an advanced application link enabling (ALE)-based scenario that will allow customers to run distributed manufacturing execution and manufacturing planning processes. Customers also will benefit from R/3 4.0's enhanced engineer-to-order capabilities -- including project-driven MRP, project simulation and enhanced cost-planning and tracking capabilities -- to further streamline the supply chain for this industry.

-- Sales and distribution features allow customers to prioritize and optimize the transportation and shipment of manufactured goods.

With R/3 4.0, SAP delivers a comprehensive distribution resource planning (DRP) component for streamlining sales channel-oriented deployment operations, new processes for quickly and reliably managing payment-card operations, enhanced transportation-management features that allow customers to better control and track transportation costs, and new business application programming interfaces (BAPIs) designed to streamline communication with transportation partners.

SAP also will create a BAPI-enabled solution for managing the environmental and regulatory requirements associated with processing dangerous goods.

-- Customer service enhancements to R/3's Service Management software adds new "as-built" and "as-modified" capabilities, allowing customers to more easily track configuration information about shipped products, manage product and component life-cycle information, and to better service installed products.

-- SAP's Global Enterprise Management solution provides corporate controllers with crucial, timely business information -- with new management consolidation and transfer pricing tools for managing decentralized business units -- and "target costing" and activity-based cost management capabilities for optimizing internal processes.

-- R/3 4.0's Corporate Finance solution provides treasurers with comprehensive tools for enterprisewide investment and risk management. When combined with R/3's existing capital budgeting, financial planning, cash management and treasury management tools, R/3 4.0 provides customers with a best-in-class corporate finance solution.

-- European Monetary Union (EMU) currency Intelligent Conversion, a forward-looking function that will allow R/3 4.0 customers to seamlessly convert to and from the central EMU currency slated for introduction in 1999. This R/3 feature will offer customers full flexibility to decide in which specific areas of their R/3 installations to deploy the conversion capabilities while offering full support for the initial (dual-currency) phase of the EMU project.