SAP and IBM Collaborate to Serve Transportation and Logistics Industry

ARMONK, N.Y. and WALLDORF, Germany, May 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM IBM and SAP AG SAP today announced plans for a global collaboration to provide tailored business applications and consulting services for the transportation and logistics industry.

Across the globe, transportation companies such as ocean liners, freight forwarders and railways recognize that challenges from energy costs to economic volatility remain outside their direct control. However, they can drive improved performance via superior service to their customers if they evolve core business process execution with analytics, cloud computing, mobile and other technology advances. IBM and SAP intend to meet this market need by delivering a next-generation transportation platform that aims to standardize functional processes while enabling innovation at the business process level to improve operational performance.

The new collaboration is intended to combine IBM's strategy, industry consulting and experience managing large-scale, global business transformation with SAP's expertise in co-innovating industry-specific enhancements to standard software with customers.

The new initiative is intended to combine SAP® software with IBM's implementation and configuration services. The SAP Transportation Management, SAP Event Management and SAP Customer Relationship Management applications, as well as the SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management solutions are planned to be integrated to provide a 360-degree view of individual customers. Backed by deep industry knowledge and experience from IBM's SAP Center of Competence, IBM's best practice templates will allow the transportation industry solution from SAP to be tailored to meet each transportation company's needs. This is intended to result in lower implementation costs and faster time to value.

SAP and IBM plan to work closely in the areas of business development, sales, sales support, marketing and consulting. Customers are envisioned to adopt the new solutions in step-by-step rollouts according to their specific organizational needs and existing infrastructures.

"In moving global freight today, the associated information is as important as the physical flow of the goods. Many freight companies are thus updating their legacy IT environments and embarking on large-scale transformational projects," said Till Dengel, vice president, Industry Business Unit Travel & Transportation, SAP AG. "By expanding their partnership, SAP and IBM together offer deep expertise in this market and this helps ensure that our customers can successfully transform their business with state-of-the-art IT."

"Like many industries today, transportation companies are responding to the imperative to treat their customers as markets of one. The experience a company creates for its customers has become a de facto element in their ability to compete," said Raimon Christiani, global Travel and Transportation industry lead, IBM Global Business Services. "Using best practices in analytics and other core competencies from IBM together with SAP software, our transportation clients will be better positioned to provide their customers with experiences that form the basis of sustained relationships."

IDC recently named IBM a leader in its Marketscape for SAP Implementation Service Providers, noting that, "IBM is able to provide its clients with a truly end-to-end suite of services and solutions to support all aspects of their SAP transformations." According to IDC's 2014 Global SAP Implementation Services Buyer Perception Survey, clients highlighted IBM to be most strong in integrating project teams with client's company, meeting the project timeline and communicating the value of the IBM services/solutions and delivery methodologies/tools that clients are currently consuming.

Together, IBM and SAP plan to help companies in the transportation industry answer such questions as why to transform their business through IT, how to adopt a hybrid on-premise and cloud landscape and how to keep the systems always up-to-date with future business requirements.

For more information, visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

Next Major Event: SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, June 3-5, 2014, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and for news and coverage during the event, visit the SAP News Center at www.news-sap.com.

About IBM
For more information on IBM business consulting services for SAP, visit www.ibm.com/services/us/business-consulting/sap-consulting.

About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP SAP helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 258,000 customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should" and "will" and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

© 2014 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. Please see http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx#trademark for additional trademark information and notices.

For customers interested in learning more about SAP products: 
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:
Jason Loesche, SAP, +1 (610) 661-8541, j.loesche@sap.com, EDT
SAP News Center press room; press@sap.com
Joanna Brewer, IBM media relations, +1 415-545-2270, jmbrewer@us.ibm.com, PDT

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110126/AQ34470LOGO

SOURCE SAP AG