Frost & Sullivan Names SAP 2005 CRM Company of the Year

Business Wire, Jan 12, 2005

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Frost & Sullivan announced it will present its 2005 CRM Company of the Year Award at tonight's Excellence in Information & Communications Technologies Awards Banquet.

Frost & Sullivan will present this Award to enterprise software vendor SAP in recognition of the initiatives that enabled the company to enjoy unmatched success in the global CRM market in 2004. SAP's achievement in the CRM market is the result of astute market strategy and excellent timing demonstrated over the last two years.

In 2003, SAP announced the launch of the SAP NetWeaver(TM) technology platform, which represented a large movement toward engaging its services-oriented architecture, Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA). SAP followed this with a new release of mySAP Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM), which offered a specialized vertical appeal, targeting 23 industries and approximately 280 end-to-end industry-specific processes.

"SAP's timing and messaging were commendable," said Fred Landis, research director, Frost & Sullivan. "Market trends indicated enterprises were increasing their focus on implementing solutions that help customers face hard ROI measures. With this trend, front-office (sales, marketing and service) solutions continued to receive attention from CIOs with an increased emphasis on integration with back-office solutions.

2004 was a landmark year for SAP in many ways. Its flagship product, SAP NetWeaver, was re-released with a worldwide tour, covering 50 cities across five continents. The campaign brought SAP executives, customers, prospects, partners and industry analysts together to discuss the opportunities that SAP NetWeaver presented to customers and partners.

SAP NetWeaver is a homogeneous and neutral platform that supports open industry standards and interoperability. Designed to help customers transition to a services-oriented architecture, it furthers ease of integration of SAP and non-SAP systems.

"The messaging resonated very well in SAP's customer and partner ecosystem, with commitment to NetWeaver well exceeding market expectations," said Ashwin Iyer, research analyst, Frost & Sullivan.

SAP also launched a differentiated and effective market strategy in the mid-market segment, announcing packaged offerings for CRM, ERP and vertical industries. The packages offer a high degree of industry-specific and business process-specific functionality and are available from SAP and its partners. The response from the mid-market to this offering has been very positive. This is quite an accomplishment, given SAP's heritage as a direct sales organization with exclusive focus on large enterprises and little dependence on application partnerships.

"Overall, SAP is well poised to rise to the number one position in CRM market share by the end of 2005. Its focus on internally selling, evangelizing and motivating employees to work cross-organizationally to accomplish their objectives make SAP a worthy recipient of the 2005 CRM Company of the Year Award," said Landis.

Frost & Sullivan presents its Company of the Year Award each year to the company that has demonstrated excellence in all operations, such as business development, competitive strategy and leadership. It recognizes outstanding management, consistent growth and positive social and economic impact on local and national communities and customers. It also highlights exceptional customer service and the ability to combine technology and successful strategic initiatives.

Held in Scottsdale, Frost & Sullivan's 2005 Excellence in Information & Communications Technologies Awards Banquet honors world-class companies for outstanding performance and achievements in the information and communications technologies markets. An annual event, the banquet recognizes the quality and merit of distinguished individuals and companies.

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software solutions(a). Today, more than 24,450 customers in over 120 countries run more than 84,000 installations of SAP(R) software -- from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize businesses to enterprise-scale suite solutions for global organizations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver(TM) platform to drive innovation and enable business change, mySAP(TM) Business Suite solutions are helping enterprises around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations. SAP industry solutions support the unique business processes of more than 25 industry segments, including high tech, retail, public sector and financial services. With subsidiaries in more than 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP" (additional information at http://www.sap.com).

(a) SAP defines business software solutions as consisting of enterprise resource planning and related software solutions such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, product lifecycle management and supplier relationship management.