SAP lands 3M as Business Suite 7 customer

SAP on Monday said that 3M will standardize its enterprise applications on SAP's Business Suite 7.

According to SAP, 3M will retire a bevy of legacy applications across the globe to standardize its software and processes. 3M has acquired a bevy of companies and their various applications for sales, supply chain and other items.

For its part, 3M will phase in the implementation of SAP over a series of years. 3M is deploying SAP's Business Suite 7 in Europe, which is installing demand forecasting and supply forecasting systems, and Asia Pacific, which is implementing SAP ERP. From there, 3M will install SAP elsewhere assuming those implementations go well.

Although SAP touted 3M as a new customer that's debatable. 3M in 2003 said it was a Business Objects customer. Since SAP acquired Business Objects it appears SAP inherited 3M as a customer and sold it additional applications.

In any case, the 3M implementation will be worth watching going forward.