SAP Extends Leadership in Delivering Solutions to the CFO With New Acquisition

by Shabana Khan

Delivers Most Comprehensive Solution for CFOs - Spanning Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM)

Extending its leadership in delivering complete solutions for the CFO, SAP AG today announced its intention to acquire OutlookSoft Corporation, a privately held provider of integrated planning, budgeting, forecasting and consolidation software. Today's announcement marks another milestone in SAP's multi-year plan to holistically address the increasingly sophisticated requirements of the CFO around driving business performance, managing risk, ensuring compliance and spearheading financial transformation in their organizations. In making the announcement, SAP stated that the acquisition is expected to be completed in June 2007, pending approval from the respective antitrust authorities. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

CFOs today face increasing pressure to meet regulatory requirements and drive efficiencies while at the same time playing a strategic role in driving the growth and profitability of the business. SAP's build/partner approach, supplemented by strategic "fill in" acquisitions, has enabled CFOs to benefit from the most comprehensive, integrated set of financial business processes. Building upon the market-leading, cross-industry financial applications suite within SAP ERP, CFOs can ensure business compliance and manage risk with integrated governance, risk and compliance management applications (SAP solutions for GRC) and improve their business performance linking strategy to execution with risk-adjusted planning and corporate performance management (SAP solutions for performance management). The transaction with OutlookSoft is continuing evidence of SAP's strategy to use well-placed acquisitions to complement its broad solution offering by gaining innovative technologies, while maintaining its successful organic growth track record.

"Across industry segments and global markets, CFOs are under tremendous pressure to improve business performance, predictability and stakeholder confidence," said Doug Merritt, corporate officer and member of the Executive Council, head of Business User Development, SAP AG. "Leading companies are looking to establish unified, easy-to-use best practice business processes that enable a predictive and risk-adjusted approach to performance. OutlookSoft completes another key component of our multi-year strategy to build, partner and acquire unique offerings for CFOs, a strategy based on thorough market analysis and customer input. OutlookSoft brings the people, intellectual property and expertise that will enhance the SAP business user experience and add value for a strong cross-section of our customer base."