Archon Solutions

17/05/2014

17/05/2014

SAP Helps Communications Providers Simplify Customer Plan Sharing

WALLDORF — SAP AG today announced the availability of a new version of the SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management solution. A new “allowances” functionality gives communications service providers (CSPs) a way to offer their customers better control over subscriptions and services. By leveraging allowance capabilities, CSPs can provide customers with highly personalized plans, add-ons and offerings that can be activated and consumed in real time.

In today’s market, carriers are seeing revenues from voice services decline at a rapid pace, and in developed markets some are already getting 50 percent of their average revenue per user (ARPU) from data services.* Consumers want to be able to buy, stack and share voice, data and messaging service quotas across all their devices, family members and business units, and to make changes to those allocations in real time. Furthermore, carriers are legally required to implement “bill shock protection.” In other words, carriers cannot surprise customers with unexpected charges at the end of a billing cycle. Therefore, customers need to be able to see the impact of any plan or activity changes will have on their bill as soon as that change is made. CSPs with billing systems that do not have the capabilities to flexibly manage services quotas are in danger of losing customers, as well as missing opportunities to increase revenue from existing customers. The new allowances capabilities in SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management address the needs of modern carriers, helping them to unlock completely new commercial possibilities.

Using allowances, CSPs can enhance their customers’ experience by giving them self-service control over how they consume services and the ability to easily share allowances with family members or colleagues. Business customers and individual consumers can have a flexible way to manage minutes, messaging and data across devices and among plan members. Allowances can be bought and stacked to increase the amount available or shared across services or billing periods. Customers can set priorities for usage and trigger re-fill conditions, as well as decide who can consume specific allowances. Because the convergent online charging system quickly sorts, finds and debits the correct allowances, customers can monitor usage and update priorities in real time.

Allowances also give carriers the ability to offer unique promotions and programs not previously possible. For example, a carrier could offer a roaming bundle designed for family vacations. This could be a short-term package of services added to a contract in real time, shareable among all plan members, easily tracked and configured by the carrier and the consumer alike and with a fixed end date. Carriers can attract and retain customers by offering this type of personalized, customized plans, which can help them build market share and maintain profitability. The fully integrated nature of allowances into the existing offer-to-cash process means that complex billing, revenue recognition and legal requirements related to service quotas are managed in a standard and automated way.

“SAP has a strategic focus on the telecommunications industry, and we work with CSPs that focus on providing a superb customer experience with great operational efficiency,” said Fergus O’Reilly, vice president, Solution Management, SAP. “By offering a real-time platform for launching, managing and analyzing personalized offers with unprecedented scalability and usability, we are providing carriers with the tools they need to create agile, customer-centric organizations.”

A new “allowances” functionality in SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management lets CSPs offer customers better control over subscriptions and services.

15/05/2014

SAP Brings 21st-Century Customer Service to Healthcare

SAP® Patient Relationship Management Empowers Healthcare Providers With the Tools to Meet the Expectations of Cost-Conscious, Savvy and Mobile Consumers

WALLDORF, Germany - SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the launch of the SAP® Patient Relationship Management solution, designed to help healthcare providers compete for increasingly assertive, knowledgeable and price-sensitive patients. With technology-driven advances in customer service transforming most industries, patients are demanding the same control over their healthcare experience. Healthcare IT leaders are addressing multiple challenges in treatment and payment, but patients have not typically enjoyed the visibility and responsiveness they now see in their relationships with retailers or financial institutions. SAP Patient Relationship Management closes the healthcare service quality gap, by putting the patient at the center of individualized care and supporting a treatment experience rooted in customer service.

According to Gartner, “healthcare delivery organization CIOs are now faced with a new type of patient who expects to be treated like a valued customer.”* A customer-centric culture is critical for healthcare providers seeking to protect and grow revenues in an increasingly competitive environment. Once nearly immune from consumer pressures, the healthcare industry — in all countries, regardless of the regulatory or delivery setting — must now earn the business of consumers who shop around and cross international borders to obtain the best value for money. Today, healthcare purchase decisions mimic those in every other industry, and are driven by more than cost alone. Treatment decisions are also shaped by peer and network feedback on social media and on overall consumer experience, most evident in developments such as the rise of medical tourism.

Designed in this context, SAP Patient Relationship Management is an integrated offering, combining the best-practice patient administration and billing functionality of the SAP® Patient Management application with the proven service functionality in the SAP® Customer Relationship Management application. With SAP Patient Relationship Management, healthcare providers can maintain a holistic view of each patient to tailor treatment decisions and offerings. The solution also provides embedded analytics to support continuous service improvement, cementing consumer loyalty over the long term.

“While it will always rightfully have a unique role, the healthcare industry’s business practices and imperatives are converging with those in other industries, a process driven largely by technology,” said Martin Kopp, vice president, head of Industry Business Solutions for Healthcare Providers, SAP. “With SAP Patient Relationship Management, patients will be more active participants in treatment, leading to better health outcomes, and providers will better manage their finances, strengthening the healthcare system for all.”

SAP Patient Relationship Management helps streamline the patient experience along the continuum of care and embedded analytics provide performance measurement. Healthcare providers can track their performance and, guided by the solution, take the lead in patient relationships or with conditions where they have proven especially successful. Provider call center staff can enhance the patient experience through immediate response, personalized interaction and speedy resolution. Additional benefits of SAP Patient Relationship Management include:

A one-stop online interaction center with mobile functionality for patients, as they expect in other consumer experiences
Optimized staff and resource utilization rates through insight into forecast demand and availability
Ongoing patient relationship management, creating better patient experiences that may yield new revenue opportunities as an additional benefit
Social media analyses that assist with the design and marketing of treatment offerings based on online trends
*“A Superior Patient Experience Is a Meaningful Measure of Care Quality,” Barry Runyon, Gartner, February 13, 2014

About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: 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.

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.

14/05/2014

SAP NEWSBYTE - SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that the 9.1 versions of the SAP® Transportation Management (SAP TM) and SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) applications are now generally available, demonstrating the continuous innovation of two major components of the supply chain ex*****on platform.

SAP TM 9.1 offers customers holistic, end-to-end logistics process support, including integrated planning, orchestration, ex*****on, tracking and settlement of the physical movement of goods across all modes of transport with major innovations in rail transportation, for both rail carriers and shippers. The application has also been extended to enable both buying- and selling-side capabilities for analyzing, collaborating on and creating freight agreements with a comprehensive strategic freight management solution. Additionally, the collaboration portal allows for real-time collaboration between shippers, logistics service providers (LSPs) and freight forwarders and their carriers. Load optimization, direct EWM integration and parcel management top off the major innovations.

With SAP EWM 9.1, customers can plan, source, transport and deliver better than ever with the latest innovations. These include the shipping cockpit for shipment planning, ex*****on and monitoring, labor demand planning powered by the SAP HANA® platform with advanced predictive analytics, enhanced integration with quality management, direct EWM-TM integration, TM-EWM monitor and enhanced dock appointment scheduling with integration to the shipping cockpit.

“The viability of these latest solutions has been vetted through our customers, who will use new capabilities to meet the challenges they face in a complex supply chain landscape,” said Hans Thalbauer, senior vice president, Line-of-Business Solutions for Supply Chain, SAP. “As the modern supply chain continues to develop, we will continue to evolve these solutions to deliver the best tools possible.”

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

14/05/2014

***SAP Kicks off Big Data Tour in Europe***

SAP NEWSBYTE - SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today kicked off a 2014 Big Data tour in Europe, with the aim of educating companies, customers and prospects on how to harness the potential of Big Data in order to transform the agility of their businesses to help anticipate consumer trends, optimize their supply chains and drive the return on capital assets. At each tour stop, visitors will be able to view presentations by SAP experts, experience a number of showcases and learn more about SAP® solutions and the SAP HANA® platform. The tour will run through mid-November.

“Corporate data volumes continue to grow rapidly,” said Irfan Khan, senior vice president and general manager, Database & Technology, SAP. “The processing of this data is more challenging due to the variety of different data sets that the traditional IT landscapes now have to contend with. Conquering the data diversity enables new processes and solutions for problems that could not be solved in the past. To remain successful and maintain a competitive edge, companies must be able to evaluate and interpret these huge volumes of data, as well as new data sources from social media, sensors, and devices in real time.”

During the tour, SAP experts from product, services and data scientist organizations will demonstrate how organizations can leverage these new opportunities. A mobile showroom is the foundation of the tour and will travel throughout Europe to present use cases and scenarios that are otherwise only shown at events such as CeBIT or SAPPHIRE® NOW. Self-serve and guided demos will highlight how organizations can augment existing business processes and analytics with Big Data to offer strategic advantage over their competition when entering into new markets, attracting new customers and profiting more quickly from innovations. These demos will include:

A soccer showcase on how data can be used to field one of the world’s best soccer teams in terms of strategy and speed.
The automotive control center, which will show how companies are shaping the future of transportation through analyses of massive data volumes conducted in as little as seconds.
The smart vending machine, which will reveal how customer preferences can be anticipated, helping drive the satisfaction of the consumer experience as well as the profitability of each retail outlet.
Additional business scenarios enhanced by Big Data and Internet of Things that take advantage of SAP innovations in cloud, mobile and predictive analytics technologies such as SAP HANA, SAP® Fiori® apps and sentiment analysis.
To enhance reach and accessibility to SAP solutions and Big Data experts, the tour will stop at customer sites across Europe. In addition to the showcases and demos, SAP will offer a variety of tailored information sessions. An open house will offer visitors the chance to view SAP products on-site; during the strategy sessions, customers and SAP experts will collaborate on business objectives; and at a strategy day workshop, companies will be able to experience SAP solutions running in a test environment.

SAP today also announced new end-to-end Big Data services that help customers realize the potential of their data.

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