August 2012

Dear ,

Welcome to the August edition of the SAP Solutions for Finance newsletter. The newsletter contains valuable information about SAP solutions for finance, including SAP solutions for enterprise performance management (EPM); SAP solutions for governance, risk, and compliance (GRC); and the SAP ERP Financials solution. Please feel free to forward the newsletter to your colleagues.

We look forward to serving your needs by sharing finance best practices, relevant news and customer stories, and upcoming event details.

1.

Monthly Spotlight: Mobilizing Finance

With the accelerating trend to enable insight to action at the fingertips of organizations, the finance organization can enable real-time decisions, mobilize enterprise information, increase enterprise productivity through mobile devices, and support key requirements including:

			Secure: allow enterprises to control data and access on any device based on role and user
			Seamless: extend enterprise financial processes to mobile devices for faster responsiveness and real-time information
			Personalized: visualize, explore, and analyze relevant information in the context of your role
			Real-time: respond to risks and opportunities and immediately deploy operational and strategic changes
			Collaborative: share information and interact with your team and business network around critical topics

The mobile apps already available for finance organizations supplement all end-to-end processes, from regulatory compliance and risk management to outperforming financial objectives to delivering superior service. These mobile apps include defining corporate strategy and performance indicators to meet targets, analyzing requests for access to corporate information and transactions, meeting the day-to-day goals of serving customers with knowledge of their credit and payment history, accelerating payments to vendors, and ensuring corporate compliance and cost control including employee travel and expense submissions and approvals.

For more information about how SAP is mobilizing finance and analytics:

			Visit the Line of Business Finance mobile app Website.
			Visit the Analytics mobile app Website.
			See the mobile-analytics infographic.
			Read the announcement of several mobile apps for Finance organizations in the press release.
			Read about the vision for keeping employees connected on the go in this blog and article.

2.

SAP Executives Recognized in the Market

SAP CFO Named One of the Top 100 Influential People in Finance
For Werner Brandt, CFO of SAP and one of Treasury & Risk's 100 Most Influential People in Finance in 2012, the biggest challenge of the past few years has been executing, financing, and integrating a steady stream of acquisitions. When it comes to integrating acquisitions, there is no one-size-fits-all, Brandt says: "One of the learnings for us was that it is good to treat every acquisition differently from an integration perspective, depending on the reasons for the acquisition itself."
See the Top 100 announcement and read the interview.

SAP Executive Named G6 Visionary for Shared Services
Six sell-side industry leaders were selected by a vote of the Asian community to present at the Shared Services and Outsourcing Network (SSON) 15th Annual Asian Shared Services and Outsourcing conference. Franz Deitering, global head of corporate shared services solutions at SAP, was one of the six elected. "It is a great honor to be elected by the largest community of shared services professionals to the team of G6 Visionaries in 2012," he says. "I am very much looking forward to sharing what I have learned from hundreds of SAP's customers, partners, and SAP itself over the last 16 years."
Read about the conference here.

3.

Customer Successes

ConAgra
Gerrit Schutte, CIO of ConAgra Foods, explains how the company benefits from real-time "integrated business planning" using the SAP Business Planning and Consolidation application on the SAP HANA platform.
Watch the video.

Ryerson
Ryerson is a leading processor and distributor of metals in North America. Discover how this industry leader is using SAP solutions for GRC to overcome IT deficiencies, identify segregation-of-duty conflicts, maintain compliance, and achieve cost efficiency.
Watch the video.

STULZ Air Technology Systems
Managing the details of business travel can distract from the job at hand. Make business travelers smile again with tools that enable them to focus on their business goals instead of on travel management. Hear from a customer how the SAP Travel OnDemand solution helps manage everything from travel-related planning to expense reimbursements.
Watch the presentation from the SAPPHIRE NOW conference on video.

TeliaSonera
Discover how a leading telecommunications firm automated labor-intensive processes that drive its centralized treasury services by deploying the SAP Bank Communication Management application in less than three months. The firm is on track to achieve a five-year ROI of more than 400% and a payback period of approximately one year.
Read the story (PDF, 301 KB).

Customer Collage
The SAP Business Planning and Consolidation application 10.0, version for SAP NetWeaver, now supports SAP HANA, SAP's next-generation, in-memory computing platform. Listen to customers articulate firsthand the value of this "killer" combination – SAP Business Planning and Consolidation powered by SAP HANA – for boosting performance, radically shrinking planning cycles, enabling real-time planning, analyzing big data, and improving decision-making processes.
Watch the video.

4.

SAP Solutions Updates for Finance

Release of SAP RealSpend
The new SAP RealSpend mobile app for the Apple iPad gives managers real-time budget and expense information anywhere and anytime using a consumer-oriented design. This app connects to the SAP ERP application and allows enterprise department managers to analyze discretionary spending, dig deeper into cost data, discover cost anomalies – and uncover profit opportunities – across products, customers, sales organizations, and channels.

Visit the Website for more details and a demo, and watch the video.

Release of SAP Net Margin Analysis
The new SAP Net Margin Analysis analytic application brings enterprises the most complete financial view of their business-to-business (B2B) operations. The analytic application uses advanced analytics to capture cost-to-serve metrics – the indirect costs hidden in supply chains that service and support customers. Data captured by SAP Net Margin Analysis is readily accessible, helping businesses reduce costs at a granular level and perform better.

Read the press release and visit the Website.

5.

Upcoming Events

CFO Dimensions Conference
September 18, Chicago, IL
Get event details

ASUG SAP BusinessObjects Solutions User Conference
September 10-13, Orlando, FL
Get event details

SAP Business Planning and Consolidation Hands-On Academy

			September 20, Chicago, IL
			September 25, Newtown Square, PA
			September 27, Palo Alto, CA

Get event details

SAP Financial Excellence Forum: Drive Financial Performance Excellence
October 9-10, Newtown Square, PA
Get event details

SAP Treasury Conference
October 2-4, Miami, FL
Get event details

International SAP Conference on Real Estate Management 2012
October 16-18, Prague, Czech Republic
Get event details

SAPPHIRE NOW and SAP TechEd Madrid
November x-x, Madrid, Spain
Get event details

6.

Webinars

September 28: Experience the Business Value of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation on SAP HANA
Register here.

On-Demand: Save Time, Money, and Sanity with a Simpler Way to Keep Track of Indirect Tax (with Dow Chemical Company)
Watch the Webinar.

On-Demand: Building and Maintaining a Rock-Solid BI Strategy
Watch the Webinar.

On-Demand: Three Questions Every Organization Should Ask to Optimize Risk Management Decisions
Watch the Webinar.

On-Demand: The Power of Mobile Analytics from SAP
Watch the Webinar.

For additional Webinars, go to Webinar Central.