Customers Demonstrate Accelerated Innovation on the SAP Platform

by Shabana Khan

Showcasing how leading companies are leveraging enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA) for business success, SAP AG today announced the winners of a first-ever enterprise SOA contest. The contest recognizes the efforts of customers and partners who have created a new breed of composite applications to achieve significant business impact. Entries were submitted from SAP's North American customers and partners within the SAP Developer Network (SDN) community, and more than 30,000 votes were cast against a list of the top 10 entries, determined by a panel of industry experts and luminaries. Sharp Electronics was honored as the contest's top winner for its advanced use of enterprise services and portal technology to drive sales and customer satisfaction. The awards were presented at SAP(R) TechEd '07, being held in Las Vegas, Nevada, Oct. 1 - 5, 2007.

Driven by SAP Developer Network, the award recognizes companies that have created a highly flexible IT landscape based on adoption of enterprise SOA and the usage of the SAP NetWeaver(R) technology platform. This enabled them to more rapidly respond to changing business requirements and address real-world, unique business challenges through the creation of composite applications. Composite applications orchestrate how processes cross system boundaries, are quick to implement, easy to scale and deliver a rapid time-to-value. A panel of industry experts, including renowned author Geoffrey Moore and ASUG (Americas' SAP Users Group) President Rod Massney, evaluated entries and identified a top 10 list of companies whose efforts building composite applications and leveraging the SAP NetWeaver platform epitomize the SAP vision of enterprise SOA. A business-driven approach to services-based software architecture, enterprise SOA leverages ready-to-run Web services co-defined by SAP's vibrant ecosystem and implemented by SAP. Once the panel identified the top 10 nominees, SDN members were invited to vote for the eventual winner.

Sharp Electronics Corporation Improves Customer Relationships and Drives Sales

Grand prize-winner Sharp Electronics identified an opportunity to use portal and process integration technology from SAP NetWeaver to enable an automated credit card process for customer and employee orders, reducing time spent manually entering and authorizing purchases. The integration of Sharp Electronics technology with services from Paypal (credit card payment gateway) and First Data Corp (credit card clearing house) through SAP NetWeaver delivered improved customer satisfaction, efficiencies in ordering processes, and reduced delayed or missed payments. In addition, the company was able to consolidate the number of third-party manual credit card solutions in use and eliminate liability of manual credit card processing. As Sharp Electronics uses this project to lay the foundation for additional e-commerce projects, the company predicts a potential sales increase of seven to nine percent.

Molson Canada Speeds Up Supply Chain Responsiveness

Award-winner Molson Canada, a subsidiary of Molson Coors Brewing Co., used Web services to improve visibility into supply chain key performance indicators including customer service, sales, inventory and production scheduling. Data that once took hours to gather is now displayed at the push of a button and refreshed every 30 minutes, resulting in the ability to make manufacturing and distribution decisions in real-time.

"The flexibility we have through enterprise SOA and SAP NetWeaver has made it possible for us to provide data in an easy, up-to-date and user-friendly fashion," said Todd Campbell, director, supply chain planning and scheduling, Molson Canada.

Responding to customer demand quickly and efficiently is one of the key success factors in today's supply chain. By taking advantage of the flexibility provided by SAP NetWeaver and enterprise SOA, Molson Canada can now address day-to-day challenges in a timely fashion, resulting in increased customer service satisfaction.

"The ease of use and the resulting business efficiencies of the on-demand data cockpit has made other business units demand similar projects. This will enable them to gain the same benefits and drive additional business excellence," said Serge Fortier, vice president, IT Business Applications Solution, Molson Canada.

SEAL Reduces Lag Time and Brings Workflow Alerts to the Desktop

Award-winner SEAL Consulting Inc. EDN, an enterprise desktop notification solution for SAP users, extends enterprise SOA capabilities by combining Google Gadget technologies with enterprise SOA to provide SAP workflow and alert notifications directly and non-intrusively to the user's desktop. Users enjoy an improved speed to action due to reduced information time lag across the enterprise. Users are alerted of business events from SAP and can move directly from the SEAL EDN to the SAP transaction requiring their attention. The solution features user personalization, presence detection and audit log capabilities to track business events, provides a log of who received the event, when it was received and who reacted to the event.

SEAL EDN was used at O.C.Tanner for the company's manufacturing operations to alert the line supervisors and planners of unforeseen manufacturing events.

"SEAL effectively demonstrated how quickly its EDN solution could be developed to meet a requirement of our proof of concept," said Wayne Carlston, director, manufacturing systems development at O.C.Tanner, a market leader in the recognition industry. "Both the technology and SEAL were impressive."

SAP NetWeaver Momentum Continues To Build

Since outlining its 2007 road map of innovations for the platform (see April 24, 2007 press release titled, "SAP Unveils Road Map for Next Wave of SAP NetWeaver Innovations"), SAP has continued to measure accelerated adoption rates for SAP NetWeaver. At SAP TechEd '07, SAP also announced continued innovations to its platform (see Oct. 2, 2007 press release titled, "SAP Delivers New Capabilities for SAP NetWeaver To Power Accelerated Business Innovation").

"From cost containment to business process innovation and improved relationship management, our customers are reporting significant successes enabled by enterprise SOA," said Klaus Kreplin, corporate officer and member of the Executive Council, head of SAP NetWeaver Technology, SAP AG.

"Across all industries, our customers are able to experience the real benefits, in real-time, of the shift to enterprise SOA and are creating composite applications that address their needs. The rapid adoption of SAP NetWeaver has delivered a multitude of customer successes."