ONE of the world’s leading public transport organisations was able to make multi-million dollar savings by adopting IT systems based on enterprise services architecture, a step-by-step approach to help companies manage strategic transition based on their individual needs while maintaining the productivity of existing systems.
Using the same approach, a media company achieved benefits of $3.5 million at a cost of $650,000, and a theme park showed a 600 per cent return on investment over five years.
These success stories were reported by independent consultants speaking at the Middle East leg of the ‘2005 Best of SAP World Tour’ that covered Saudi Arabia and the UAE among 38 countries and 110 cities.
The organisations concerned had converted to SAP’s Netweaver – an open integration platform that enables users to integrate all their IT functions in response to business demand for growth, productivity, customer intimacy, and people empowerment.
Instead of scrapping or replacing existing systems, the technology provides ‘snap on’ solutions to leverage maximum benefit from past IT investment.
Netweaver is at the heart of enterprise services architecture (ESA), and SAP’s world tour aims to strengthen relationship with clients using the software while promoting adoption of ESA.
Dr Klaus Dahlke, representing SAP’s Global ERP Initiative, told World Tour audiences in Dubai and Al Khobar how the new business/IT architecture was able to achieve a wide range of benefits in efficiency, performance, and profitability for a wide spectrum of businesses.
“The trend reflects the growing focus on IT as a weapon to secure competitive business advantage,” he said.
“Instead of focusing on internal efficiencies, the best-run organisations are changing to outward-looking interaction with customers and suppliers to meet market demands for flexibility, speed, and innovation.”
Since launching the ESA release of mySAP ERP in June last year, the number of international users has grown to more than 2,000, the vast majority of whom cite ‘high business value’ as their motivation to adopt the system.
About SAP Arabia:
Established in 1994 in Jeddah and Dubai, SAP Arabia has enjoyed huge success while in charge of distributing SAP solutions in 19 countries in the Middle East and North Africa including (Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, New Palestine, Oman, Qatar, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen). SAP Arabia employs 70+ people and provides support and services covering e-business, finance, logistics and human resources processes at approximately 150+ Middle Eastern Companies, 25 per cent of them in the oil & gas sector. The company has offices and training facilities in Jeddah, Dubai, and Cairo dedicated to bringing support services closer to customers and partners across the Middle East & North Africa. SAP Arabia is committed to the regional market, through its team of professionals working closely with customers to ensure they gain maximum return on their SAP investment.
